Students helping each other will improve our schools

Letter to the Editor - Wisconsin State Journal

It was refreshing to learn that Madison’s new Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has an entry plan that includes citizen input on how Madison can best improve its low graduation performance. I would like to ask the Superintendent to consider that Madison adopt a district-wide community ethic of “all for one and one for all.” This would involve an explicit shared intention between both the teaching staff and the student body that teaching and learning is a joint enterprise.

Together the faculty and the student council might adopt a goal of increasing their class’ promotion and graduation rates. Joint meetings could be held between faculty and students to brainstorm how best to help all students succeed. Meritorious academic student achievement would require that students help their fellow students.

Students could pair up and sign learning pacts with one another. Students could volunteer as tutors for various subjects. Others could prepare and deliver homework and pre-exam reviews. Fundamentally the purpose would be to more intentionally empower all the students to share their knowledge and passion for learning with their peers. Once established such a school culture will benefit all students both academically and socially.

William R. Benedict

Madison

Crossing the rubicon                                               

Book could help loosen political gridlock

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THE CAP TIMES

Books of the Times by William Benedict

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

While members of the new Congress have now been sworn in many citizens remain worried that the political gridlock and mistrust will likely continue or even get worse in the months ahead.  Until late last year I too was pessimistic that this partisan divide would not get better. Then I discovered a book by social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt: “The Righteous Mind – Why Good Peopled Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” Before reading this book, I wondered what made me so convinced that my political party was right and the other was wrong?  

Haidt posits that 20 to 30 percent of your particular political persuasion is determined by only two genes which are handed down to you in the form of six unconscious moral foundations which predispose you toward a particular political ideology. The remaining 70 to 80 percent of your political predisposition is provided through your family history, life experiences and the times in which you live.

These six moral foundations include: Care versus harm, Fairness versus cheating, Liberty versus oppression, Loyalty versus betrayal, Authority versus subversion, and Sanctity versus degradation. Liberals tend toward Care and Fairness foundations and while the conservatives also include these, they are more likely to give greater emphasis to the remaining four foundations – Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity.

Haidt says each of these moral foundations act to both bind and blind us. Each colors our own particular moral persuasions and makes it difficult for others to convince us that we are wrong. Liberals often have difficulty seeing how the Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity moral foundations have anything to do with morality. It is these four that best help us to understand the richness and depth of conservative thought. All moral foundations have evolved over the past five hundred thousand years, and they have allowed us as a species to adapt and survive.

People whose DNA causes them to get special pleasure from novelty and variety while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are more inclined toward a liberal point of view. Conversely, if your genes incline you to be uncomfortable with new experiences and sensitive to threat from unknown danger, you then are more likely to be a conservative. By these definitions, this writer remains constitutionally a conservative.

At my birth in 1935 the Great Depression was just ending. I learned early from my working class parents that President Herbert Hoover was to blame for much of the suffering my family had gone through the past several years. During the depression my parents hitchhiked to Texas to find employment but found no work there. My family returned to Indiana and my dad and other World War I Veterans traveled to Washington DC to try and get their bonuses early.

Instead President Hoover ordered General McArthur to destroy their tent city and drove them out of Washington with tanks and the Calvary. My family story also involved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who after his election soon created the Civilian Conservation Corp and Works Progress Administration. Only then did my dad get a job. Soon afterwards Roosevelt created the Fair Deal including unemployment compensation and Social Security.

I often heard at our dinner table how thankful my parents were for the Democrats and for AFL/CIO labor unions which together had helped my parents to get out of poverty and find a secure job and a happy life. While my conservative personality and temperament has still not changed, I now know it has been both my familial and environmental history that has most influenced and shaped my politics. In spite of my more conservative DNA moorings, my family’s economic circumstances and the times we live in have shaped my strong political ideology and made me believe what I believe.

             

Perhaps Haidt’s greatest contribution is in humbling us by destroying the myth that humans operate mainly from their conscious and rational minds. Haidt does this by using a metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is used to represent the ninety percent of our unconscious mind while the conscious and rational part of our mind, the “conscious rider,” is a puny ten percent.

Neuropsychology research also supports Haidt’s view that when engaged in a political discussion we rely predominately on our unconscious and our intuition. After all, it is in the unconscious mind that the roots of our moral foundations are found. Strategic reasoning always comes after our intuitive response and usually takes the form of providing more evidence to support and justify our political argument. Recent research suggests that our conscious response is always intended to support and keep safe our moral reputation.

In the midst of the continuing political gridlock in our country I was delighted to read that the author’s analysis concluded that these two political perspectives were like yin and yang. Haidt notes that while liberals are more apt to see the victims in existing social arrangements, and continually push us to update these arrangements and invent better ones. He believes that liberals should continue to restrain corporations, and that some big problems really can be solved with regulation. Conversely he believes that conservatives provide a crucial counterweight to liberal reform movements. He believes that conservatives’ support and faith in the market is indispensable and that conservatives and liberals working together can check and balance each other.

Perhaps the best way for American citizens to better adapt to this period of partisan gridlock would be for each of us to read this book and familiarize ourselves with our own political genes and how we characteristically use our innate foundational narratives to make our case. Insights gained from this book can also help us to listen for and hear the others’ moral arguments. I predict that this can help all of us appreciate and respect each other more.

Why can’t our political leaders work together?

--> December 12, 2012

Brookville Democrat

Did you know that your genes help to determine whether you are a Democrat or a Republican? In a new book, “The Righteous Mind – Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.”  Jonathan Haidt identifies two important genes that predispose (but not predetermine) human political ideology, Haidt, a moral psychologist, reviews six major moral foundations which reside in our unconscious mind and from which we intuitively create our own personal and innate political narratives.

Briefly these moral foundations include Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation. Liberals tend toward Care and Fairness foundations and while the conservatives also include these, they are likely to give greater emphasis to the remaining four foundations – Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity.

Haidt says each of these foundations act to both bind and blind us. Each foundation confirms our own particular moral foundations and makes it difficult for others to convince us that we are wrong. Liberals often have difficulty of seeing how Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity moral foundations have anything to do with morality.

People whose DNA causes them to get special pleasure from novelty and variety while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are more inclined toward a liberal point of view. Conversely, if your genes incline you to be uncomfortable with new experiences and sensitive to threat from unknown danger, you are more likely to be a conservative.

In the midst of the continuing political gridlock in our country I was delighted to read that the author’s analysis concluded that these two political perspectives were like yin and yang. Quoting John Stuart Mill he notes that liberals are experts in care; they are better able to see the victims in existing social arrangements, and continually push us to update these arrangements and invent better ones. Haidt believes that liberals should continue to restrain corporations, and that some big problems really can be solved with regulation. Conversely he believes that conservatives provide a crucial counterweight to liberal reform movements. He believes that conservatives’ support and faith in the market is indispensable. Working together they can check and balance each other.

 

For many years I have wondered why some people are liberals and others conservative. Now I have some clarity. I no longer think that liberals by themselves have the total answer. We need the best of both parties. The author notes that these six distinct moral foundations have evolved over the past five hundred thousand years. They have allowed us as a species to adapt and survive.

Perhaps Haidt’s greatest contribution is in humbling us by destroying the myth that humans operate mainly from their conscious and rational minds. Haidt does this by using a metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is used to represent the ninety percent of our unconscious mind while the conscious and rational part of our mind, the conscious rider, is a puny ten percent. Haidt’s research should help us replace self-righteousness and intolerance with greater tolerance and humility when discussing politics.

John Adam observed that Thomas Jefferson rarely gave public speeches and instead took copious notes for legislative committee meetings. Adams, speculating about this peculiar Jefferson trait, was known to say, that like Jefferson, he knew of no instance of a legislator readily changing his opinion simply after listening to a colleague’s contrary opinion. This suggest that a person’s political persuasions are hard wired at the unconscious level and very rarely given up. Has this not been your experience?

Just as your genes help to predispose your moral foundations, developmental and other significant environmental experiences also contribute. After reading this book, for example, it was clear that my genes were such that at birth I was constitutionally a conservative. By nature even today new experiences make me anxious and I am often sensitive and quite frightened of danger and the unknown. Thus my DNA is that of conservative.

Why then have I never felt any thing else but a liberal? At my birth in 1935 the Great Depression was just ending. I learned early from my working class parents that  President, Herbert Hoover was to blame for all the suffering my family had gone through the past several years. During the depression my parents migrated/hitchhiked to Texas to find employment but found no work there. My family returned to Indiana and my dad and other World War I Veterans marched to Washington DC to try and get their bonus early. Instead President Hoover ordered General McArthur to destroy their tent city and drove them out of Washington with tanks and the calvary.

My family story also involved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who after his election soon created the Civilian Conservation Corp and Works Progress Administration. Only then did my dad get job. Soon afterwards Roosevelt created the Fair Deal including unemployment compensation and Social Security.

Few evenings at our dinner table did I not hear how thankful my parents were for the Democrats and for AFL/CIO labor unions which together had helped my parents to get out of poverty and find a secure job and a happy life. While my conservative personality and temperament has still not changed, I now know it has been my familial and environmental history that has most influenced and shaped my politics. My DNA and life experiences has shaped my moral foundations, and made me believe what I believe. 

             

The moral psychology research also supports the view that when engaged in a political discussion we rely predominately on our subconscious and our intuition. After all, it is in the subconscious mind that our sacred moral foundations are found. Strategic reasoning always comes after our intuitive response and usually takes the form of providing more evidence to support and justify our political argument. Recent research suggests that our conscious rider response is always intended to support and keep safe our moral reputation.

Perhaps the best way for Americans citizens to help break this partisan gridlock would be for each of us to read this book and familiarize ourselves with our own political genes and how we characteristically use our innate foundational narratives to make our case. Insights gained from this book can also help us to listen for and hear the others moral arguments. You will find that once you have been introduced to the true nature of your political genes and moral foundations they will become immediately recognizable --- both for you and the other. I predict that if you do, both of you will appreciate and respect each other more.

William R. Benedict blogs at: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com

Health Care Solution

As a family member with several cell base diseases I was delighted to read The Capital Times’ recent guest column, “FTC fighting deals to keep generic drugs off shelves.” Federal Trade Commissioner, Jon Leibowitz wrote, “Getting health care costs under control is a daunting and multifaceted challenge.”

He then went on to report how pharmaceutical companies collude with their competitors to keep lower generic alternatives to prescription drugs off the market and how the commission plans to ban such “pay-for-delay” settlements.

Leibowitz is challenging all citizens and health care consumers who are waiting for a single payer universal health care plan to arrive must meanwhile continue to take steps to

bring about more accessible and affordable health care to all our citizens. In this spirit I want to propose another simple approach that would save health care consumers billions of dollars annually.

Stop federal and state funding of biotech research and development companies without providing public health care benefit safeguards to ensure that stem cell derived cures and medications will be accessible and affordable to all Wisconsin citizens.

To date we have been promised only indirect trickle-down economic effects, including more jobs and a higher tax base from our support. While this is a worthy and much needed economic benefit, it alone is far too narrow and short sighted. If Wisconsin is to effectively manage its ever escalating and exorbitant health care costs we must act now.

A genuine public health care benefit for public funding of stem cell research can range from a percentage of biotech profits beyond a certain threshold to simply ensuring that drug costs and other stem therapies in Wisconsin will be managed and made at reasonable costs to all our citizens. Other public interests policy concerns have to do with whether medication discounts are to be given to low and medium income patients and other underserved groups?

Will Wisconsin taxpayers have any say to help ensure that such stem cell funding targets  prioritized disease groups such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and sickle cell anemia versus pursuing products that have only short-term commercial and cosmetic benefits?

Millions of our state tax dollars have already been spent and more have been added to this year’s biennium budget without any such consumer safeguards.  State innovation grants, tax credits and a host of other public financial incentives are being invested and now are in the state administrative pipeline.

Asking grantees to do the right thing after giving away the farm is like asking the fox to cough up the chickens after giving him the key to the hen house. If these stem cell policy concerns are not already on your civic or health care organization’s radar screen and advocacy agenda such neglect could be catastrophic for Wisconsin health care consumers.

The fundamental policy questions that you and your organization should be asking is should your organization support legislation for federal and state funding of stem cell research with public health care payback safeguards?

Respectfully yours,

William R. Benedict,

Madison.

Countering the effects of early childhood trauma

The Capital Times - Guest Column - October 20, 2012

Conservative columnist David Brooks, in his most recent 9/7/12 editorial in the New York Times discusses how early childhood traumas and risk factors sew the seeds of later physical and behavioral problems in adults. His solution was for much greater coordination and cooperation of all those who serve our youngest children.

To continue this early neglect of our youngest citizens that ultimately results each year in billions of dollars being spent in treating our most chronically ill adults is perhaps the number one reason for our country’s ever growing health care crisis.  

Fortunately for American taxpayer, Obama’s administration, his Department of Health and Human Services, and its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have already recognized this health and economic reality and have a sound and comprehensive solution to this ballooning health care crisis.

Called Project Launch, simply stated, the health and future prosperity of our country requires a greater investment in the physical and emotional health of our youngest children. The project presently consists of 35 communities who are pioneering new ways to promote and sustain young child wellness. The project’s target is children from birth through 8. The goal is for all children to reach their physical, social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive milestones.

Project Launch has five prevention and promotional strategies. These strategies should be upper most in the mind of every taxpayer who goes to the polls in November. If you are a citizen and taxpayer and concerned about the ever spiraling costs of health care and your increasing health insurance costs, support the present Administration. Your vote will mean that your supporting the continuation of  the following actions to end our health care crisis:

1. Health screening and assessments for every child birth through 8.
2. Integrate behavioral health care into primary health care settings.
3. Mental health consultation in all early child care and education settings.
4. Increasing focus on social and emotional well being.
5. Expand use of culturally-relevant evidenced-based prevention and wellness practices.

See you at the polls!

Benedict is a mental health reform advocate and blogs at danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com

Administration concerned with patient outcomes

Wisconsin State Journal - Opinion/Your Views

As a member of the Wisconsin Council on Mental Health and as one who has spent nearly a lifetime trying to introduce patient treatment outcomes technology into mental health organizations, I was distressed to see the editors of the Sunday Journal fail to describe President Obama’s already significant efforts in this regard.  But instead, they stated that his administration and the existing affordable health care act have only “dabbled” with this concept. This simply is not true. In fact Obama is and has been a strong advocate and spokesman for moving our health care forward from presently measuring and funding service volume to measuring and paying for patient treatment effectiveness outcomes.

Our readers and voters will be better informed by Googling SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration), Strategic Initiative #7: Outcomes and Quality, Department of Health and Human Services.

Hopefully when the moderator of the upcoming debate this week between the President and Gov. Romney asks which candidate has done the most to change the focus of health care for the better, readers of the Journal will have already completed their homework.

Benedict blogs at danecountyalmanac.com

New union will strengthen mental health services

The Capital Times

The shock waves caused by Wisconsin’s history-making citizen protests are becoming increasingly evident. It clearly acted as a tipping point for the mental health employees at Journey Mental Health Center (formerly the Mental Health Center of Dane County) when both clinical and support staff reached a breaking point with management, and decided that they needed greater empowerment and a louder voice.

After a ten month Journey campaign the National Labor Relations Board in Milwaukee, who conducted the election, recently reported that seventy-two percent of the professional staff and 54% of support staff at Journey voting, supported unionization with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

While recognizing management’s commitment to serving increasing numbers of underserved clients, there was disagreement in how best to do this. Many Journey employees believed that management seemed content to define the therapists’ professional autonomy and best practice expertise too narrowly. Staff complained that management often ignored broad clinician input before initiating new client access and case management practices, such as higher caseloads and related quality care issues.

Staff pushback to confront ever increasing job add-ons and productivity pressures were also ignored. Bread and butter issues such as salary and benefit increases, however, were far down the list of concerns expressed. Paramount was staff’s demand to be heard and to be seen as important collaborators with specialized knowledge and skills to share. “We have the right and responsibility to express our opinions,” one staffer emphasized in a recent radio interview.

 Newsletters helped inform all 300+ staff about the pros and cons of the union. This information prompted discussions and debate at the agency’s nine separate workplaces. Gradually unions were viewed by most staff as an effective means of addressing their concerns.

Without a union presence top down management structures in organizations are common. It’s increasingly clear that a union can help bring up everybody in the organization. Every employee has a voice and can make a contribution.

 Every organization has both an instrumental and expressive side. The former is concerned largely with the financial resources of the agency while the expressive or social side requires more diverse staff knowledge and skill sets, including both relationship and solidarity building skills. Owing to their professional training, these interactive and community-building skills can often best be found within the clinical staff. An agency or program manager who glibly dismisses this powerful resource does so at his/her own peril. Union/management committees can help insure that all staff resources are used in the most balanced, effective and efficient manner.

After learning of the election results, those who led this effort expressed hope that their success will be an inspiration to other mental health professionals and service agencies.

The Journey Mental Health Center has a stellar and nationally recognized mental health program. It has established a brilliant record of serving the serious mentally ill while at the same time has demonstrated the capacity to serve a broad and diverse clientele. It continues to pioneer new and innovative regimens of care and treatment strategies.

As a mental health professional and program evaluator for over thirty years, I am convinced that unionization at Journey will only serve to strengthen an already outstanding mental health program.

William R. Benedict
Mental Health Advocate
Danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com