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.