On August 21, 1831, enslaved American Nat Turner led about 70 of his enslaved and free Black neighbors in a rebellion to awaken his white neighbors to the inherent brutality of slaveholding and the dangers it presented to their own safety.
What the Republicans are doing to public education is disastrous, untenable and unforgivable. We must protect, support and improve public schools. And we must vote Democratic to preserve the promise of this country and our democracy.
Leaving aside for the moment the human rights issue of the right to adequate education, the status, security and prosperity of nations across the globe is substantially intertwined with the extent and quality of education enjoyed by their populations. As in increasing climate abuse, plutocrats are trading their dominant positions in the present for a weaker and beleaguered USA in years to come. The speak loudly of patriotism, but only to distract of their theft from the future.
I speak of education as a human right, BTW, because more so than any other species, we are what we learn. Baby sea turtles emerge from the sand with mama far away, and yet know what they need to do. While we are by no means the only creatures who educate our young, we evolved to do this far longer and elaborately that other species. The quality (and to a lesser degree, quantity) of that education has a lot to do with the quality of life for individuals, as well as whole societies; and may even determine whether or not our own species endures.
True. During my studies, toward an M.A. in Criminal Justice, I took an Ethics class (taught by a Franciscan priest). It was interesting - more philosophical than applied science. I often wondered, once I got out into the "real" world, when or how what I had learned could ever be raised in the course of an On The Job discussion without either being laughed out of the assignment or simply closing the door on any career advancement. My conclusion was to apply what I could where I could without using the word "ethics" in justifying my decisions or actions.
I lived in Boston for years, managing properties that housed students from the "ivy league" schools. They are not so smart. They simply want you to believe they are. They do get an A+ for arrogance and hubris, though.
36% of Harvard entries in the 2021 class were "Legacy" admission.
This means: White kids (since Harvard was all white 30 years ago) whose parents went there but whose SAT score and grades were too low to be admitted on competive scale in comparison to those applying with a 4.0 GPA from high school and a perfect SAT.
Some of which were rejected.
Yes. Affirmative action is actually mostly for white people in this country.
And those "kids" will be segued into jobs and positions that will perpetuate their wealth and their station in life. After all, one must protect the institution and the reputation.
A major portion of that elite education they received emphasized the importance of success and that the essence of "success" was power first and money second. (Power will always find ways of obtaining money and money only buys more power. The secret is to achieve more power while retaining your own money. Think Trump's perpetual fundraising methods.)
No part of that "success" includes the importance of raising up those who do not have power or money of their own only the value of using those who can help you achieve your success (with or without their agreement or to their own benefit). I was once taught (wisely) that no one who has power gives it away. Power must be taken. This sounds harsh - Machiavellian (a personality trait that denotes cunningness, the ability to be manipulative, and a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power). I don't necessarily support going to that extent but I know from personal experience that those who are not born into power/big money must work harder and find the knowledge/experience to rise above their birth status. Education is the primary key, whether it be at some elite educational institution or through wise guidance and an educational system/institution focused on preparing students for the "real world", the systems of power, and the intrinsic value of money/wealth and its application. No wonder the elite and power-born were not enthusiastic about the enslaved being educated. Even now, look at the attempts of white supremacist Republican groups/leaders in various states attempting to engineer public education toward indoctrination rather than expanded understanding, knowledge, and truth in history. See how the minds and acceptance of policies are cultivated toward worker-server roles separate from those of the elite and power classes. The Machiavellian philosophy teaches "leaders should be feared rather than loved, “if you cannot be both”, in order to avoid a revolt. (Read "Fear" by Bob Woodward), and "Leaders should have the support of the people because it's difficult to take action without their support." Are we talking about Trump, his mind-controlled "base" and his current Republican Party?
Well-stated! >>>"Even now, look at the attempts of white supremacist Republican groups/leaders in various states attempting to engineer public education toward indoctrination rather than expanded understanding, knowledge, and truth in history,"<<<
The sad and regrettable reality: A number of those Republicans are as deplete of basic intelligence and intellect as those they oppress; or, those who follow them willingly as lemmings.
They were that way to begin with. These schools need to weed out applicants who lack ethical values and human decency. That's true of DeSantis, as portrayed in a recent article in the NYer. Here it is:
At the end of the article, it says people around DeSantis are telling him all the women want to sleep with him. That made me laugh. Some promising news is that living in FL, I know Republicans and Independents who think he’s appalling and will not vote for him in November. Hoping…
What is the standard of "well educated"? Do Harvard, Yale, Princeton really provide a better education? Or are they so ingrown and inbred that they only reward those who buy into the status quo?
I attended a land-grant school, U. of Maryland. After four years' Military service, I left full time day school to attend night school due to an opportunity in the private business sector. I had the help of the GI Bill. I went on to spend fifty years in my career field. The last thirty of those fifty were in positions of GM, VP, COO and Senior Manager, overseeing multi-million dollar budgets to which I contributed in creating. I may not be the "rule", but I am indeed not the exception. Today, U of M is ranked 20th among public educational institutions. My brother-in-law attended Engineering School and his brother attended as well. Not bad for non-ivy leaguers, I'd say.
A nd to what degree does a "publish or perish" research culture shortchange undergraduates? I've heard tell and and seen some things that very strongly suggests it can. Yea research, but that may not help the undergrad. A very esteemed professor/researcher in my acquaintance says that his peers speak of their "teaching burdens" and "research opportunities". I am aware an undergraduate class that is no more than PhD candidate (who was overheard complaining about having to teach) running Powerpoint presentations; this in a very highly esteemed State University.
Their parents and families. And maybe community? Like in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”
“You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught from year to year. It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear…,” Home and family. Long before the Ivy League.
First, they we are speaking of are not necessarily admitted on the basis of merit, but more importantly, core values and character are going to be primarily determined outside of school; within a person's family and community. School can inform and influence that, but from a facilitation standpoint. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but not make it drink.
That said, a good education can greatly expand the awareness, including self-awareness, of the willing. If that has not occurred by college, the prognosis is not so encouraging.
Pretty much my first thought, along with "educated in what?" Nearly all of those elite institutions have long histories of misogyny, racism, classism, etc. I do wonder how some of them who don't seem all that bright could have graduated from Ivy League law schools and passed the bar, but it's also very possible that either (1) they're smarter than they let on, or (2) they got stupid after they graduated.
Yes, J L. “…speak loudly of patriotism, but only to distract of their theft from the future.” The future! That’s the true theft. Our children’s and our nation’s.
Trump did say he loved the poorly educated. And there’s a reason. The GOP has long stood in the way of education. I got my first whiff of that when Reagan was the governor of my state.
ThankYou ES!!! That Gov. Reagan initiated defunding public education - from Pre K to Post Doc - is a fact that needs to be emphasized. Reagan's acts influenced other Republican governors. I remember hearing horror stories from friends teaching at all levels and across the nation.
Trump is Reagan writ large and writ vulgar. When Trump tells his true believers 'I love the uneducated' they cheer because they believe he's giving them a winking membership to the club of 'those who know better.' They are too befuddled to see he's pulling the wool over their eyes. They are only welcome to the ranks of populist cannon fodder serving the plutocrats who have their vested interests in destroying our government.
I retired in the middle 90s from my job in education and while I taught a few classes, I was mainly the librarian. When I read about what is happening, I am thankful that I was able to mainly enjoy my time in education and while I had one person who was rather consistent in trying to influence what I had in the library and in one case where it was catalogued, I had relatively few problems like we see now. I am truly angry about the use of public funds going to religious schools and do not want to fund the indoctrination that goes on in those schools. We had a Catholic school next door in the small town where I taught, and we knew we would get their rejects. Our students were convinced that because schools were religious, they were somehow superior morally which is rubbish as I reminded them to lock up their stuff when we were playing basketball at a Catholic school in the Portland area. I also had to explain to some of the fundys that Catholics were also Christians as they referred to them as some kind of separate group. The local fundamentalists are busy here in Salem and try to influence what happens in the Salem Keizer school district. Fortunately, they are the minority on the school board at the moment. Some of the local ones are busy blasting their hatred in public spaces which was very bad at the park downtown last summer. As for banned books, that is a surefire way to make them more popular. I am always reminded of our senior lit teacher who told us that he couldn't teach The Miller's Tale and of course, we all ran out and read it. Hilarious. Finally, I have always despised St. RayGun and for death star, I have run out of words to describe how heinous he is.
To be clear, current law in Maine also requires that all schools that receive public tuition funds, even the private & religious, must complete the school approval process.
Actually that's not a fact: the average income of Trump voters is around $75,000, hard to earn without a high school diploma. And the supporters of Trump and his insurrection among politicians are graduates of Yale and Harvard and Stanford.
I'm a university professor and consider our education system largely a failure. It's been focused for 40 years on STEM subjects, and at the college level on majors that parents imagine will make the kids rich--or at least able to pay off mountains of unjust tuition debt. Critical thinking isn't a focus, nor are wide reading, foreign languages, encouragement of curiosity about the rest of the world or empathy with those in struggle.
Despite the enormous struggle of Black Americans to gain access to education, it no longer prepares most of us for informed citizenship, or even for enjoying life. This is a crisis, which you see Marj as you look at the phenomenon of fact-free liars and scoff-laws taking the reins of our state and federal governments.
Some Trump voters, Mitch McConnell, vote their privilege. Some their 'trickle down' and 'up by your bootstraps' aspirations fueled by plutocrat propaganda. GOP wedge issues have created single issue voters who put anti abortion and pro gun allegiance ahead of reasonable self interest and the greater good.
STEM does not preclude critical thinking. Actually much science is based of reaching consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence. The Framers intended to translate this into how we transfer power through elections, legislate through debate, adjudicate through deliberation.
The Republican Politics of Faith prioritizes irrational belief over evidence. As does much of commerce.
STEM does not of course preclude critical thinking! But my partner was a scientist, my best friend is a mathematician, father was an engineer and my brother's an economist: all agree--vehemently--that the kind of critical thinking required for informed citizenship is not taught best in STEM subjects. In my university at least it's difficult to add requirements from the humanities, arts or even non-mathematical social sciences to the curriculum of a science major ("they don't have time"! say the scientists on the Curriculum Committee), and most (not all) prefer their students to be enrolled in a B. S. rather than a B. A. degree.
An average of $75,000 a year means that many people make less and many people make more. But I worry about people taking for granted that Trump voters are uneducated or under-educated, because it isn't a fact. I wonder what kind of unexamined prejudice might lead so many people to believe it nonetheless. Trump voters are concentrated in suburbs. They are middle class on the whole. I know Trump voters who are business professors; none of my working class friends--current or in the town I grew up in are Ohio--are Trump voters. Yes, it takes all kinds to make a world, including the dark little world of Trump voters.
I think we ought consider generations of Americans who've attended the racist christian academies which sprung up as an alternative to federally mandated integrated public education. Now from elementary school through university. And including some home schooling and charter schools.
Trump's elevation is a litmus test of corruption - commercial, religious, and political - in the USA.
Remember trump is a dino (degreed in name only). He went to Upenn and paid others to write his papers. He is stupid but sly like a fox. I believe that his uneducated base sense this and love him because he IS one of them....
Trump personifies a self indulgence and lawlessness many in the GOP - plutocrats and populists - aspire to. Unmoored from the restraints of polite society many of the wealthy chose to stay within and from the economic restraints everyone else must live within. And unmoored from the restraints of religion. The sinner man as savior. The elevation of Trump is an indictment of many aspects of American society.
In the Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings (a great read by the way) a king wants to raze a rebellious city. His vizier says 'if you raze the city you will look bad, instead appoint a loudmouthed ignoramus and he will run it into the ground.' There is also mention of 'a wild ass who appeared out of nowhere and attacked the other animals, he shown like gold but within was all corruption.' Like I said, a great read. Also a good background for alliances and conflicts along the Silk Road. The poet and translator Dick Davies has two editions. The later includes more text. You can't have too much Shahnameh!
Lin, I made my comment before I read your comment! She said wasn't he responsible for Medicare. I told her no that it was Lyndon Johnson and then she said what about Social Security and I told her FDR. We are nearly the same age. She was married to a teacher and she was a teacher aid. Duh!
It’s broader than that. Reagan said “Government IS the problem”. Can you imagine being a business that would hire a CEO that says he wants to destroy the company?
Reagan was the seed and catalyst that has gotten us where we are today. Worst President ever!!
The ethics demanded in government differ from those in the private sector. Many Republicans do not understand that. For example, in government, lawyers are hired to enforce laws. In the private sector, they are hired to find ways to get around them.
We have so many...and I am one for sure that it undereducated. I do have a BS from ISU at the age of 43-a little late- but it provided for my single family! It is never too late to learn!!!!
Raygun was mainly against Education because of Penury. The current crop seems to be against it as a badge of misogyny. What is amazing is when they manage to find women legislators who agree?
Also terrifying was US Map chart compiled by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) from Bureau of Labor data, showing the relative underpayment of Teachers compared to comparable college-educated workers. (What would those professions be?)
In only 4 States was the percentage of underpayment single-digit. RI, WY, NJ, & SC was almost as mind blowing as the States paying Teachers more than 30% less: CO, AZ, OK, VA, AL with WA & OR in 29% below range.
And suddenly, 'republican' State Legislators are wondering where all the Teachers have gone - and Why!! I can but imagine what will be the Teacher news out of FL & TX this Fall.
Thanks for sharing the link. I was not surprised by the inclusion of Arizona teachers as among the most underpaid. A family member was a public school teacher there for many years. When she revealed how much she was earning despite decades of experience, I was shocked.
Thank you for the post and the link. I had seen that in the news I get from EPI, and was appalled to see MA on the list as underpaying. That may be on a state-wide basis: in my school district, I don't see teachers driving old cars like I did when we lived in Florida. We don't scrimp on education (my property taxes prove that - and I'm happy to pay them).
One of my grade school friends told me the wonders of Reagan last evening. I tried to enlighten her to no avail. She is a devout born again Christian. She has bought into the Big Lie.
It seems 65%-75% of the Country has to play Johnny Appleseed to the balance by bringing the Good News to them. Truly Sad.
Reagan was one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. Close to Treasonous in his Administration. Although we thought worse of Nixon for the lives lost.
But, then came tRUmp. Suddenly, we let Reagan comments slide and wouldn't mind having a beer with an Artist named W.
I’m always mystified by the number of people who love RR. Like the followers of trumpism today, who when presented with the facts, they reject them. It’s all there in black and white, not to mention what they saw with their own eyes, but they choose to stick with an alternate reality. (Or alternative facts I suppose)!
C C, I hear your frustration. And I see the education debate as trying to appease all adults -at the expense of the actual children. The bottom line is money. That exposes all the dirty little secrets of the educational debate. Public education was fine until Brown vs Board of Ed. tried to level the playing field. Suddenly a whole lot of white people no longer believed in public education if their dollars would also help black and brown children get educated. The gop underfunding of the social safety net has pushed more expectations onto under paid teachers to cope with poverty, homelessness, domestic abuse, mental illness delivering negatively affected children into overcrowded classrooms. Adult hysteria over comprehensive sex education and cultural acceptance of changing gender norms, have left teachers and school libraries gagged to respond - or worse, much worse. Dems are framed as just wanting to throw money at the situation (money IS needed) ,but they lack loud voices as to an effective educational vision. We are content -it seems- to prop up an inadequate public system, because it’s public. Without a Vision of what we want it to be: A level playing field that builds on each child’s ability to the fullest, producing a civil, competent member of society. With society providing a threshold of stability to make this possible. Deliver children truly cared for by adults and the greater society, and education is a cake-walk. Once children are born their “preciousness-quotient” seems to plummet. They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. All necessary. And worthy of an excellent education. For everyone’s benefit!
"They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. "
Reagan's creepily successful political mission was to stir resentment of of the whole premise of democracy; that is to say, the sharing of the ultimate power of choice and of social responsibility in shares among ALL of the governed. He championed instead those who somehow manage to acquire the most money, which Republicans will tell you (and have certainly told me more times than I can count) is solely a product of their virtue. It is true enough that some arguably virtuous behaviors can result in making money, but things become far more complicated once an individual worker is compensated for their actual labor. Robert Reich has argued that Trump would be richer had he parked his inheritance in an index fund, and that also ignores Trump's shady relationship with the mob, and the money "pouring in from Russia". You don't become a billionaire by millions of hours of your own labor. I'm not sure that there is anything inherently wrong with living on the profits of investments. I am doing so in my years of dotage, but not everyone starts out at the same starting line on that one, economically or educationally, as Trump certainly did not. Lincoln simply told the plain truth when he said:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
That's pretty much the opposite of what our nominal "Republicans" are saying when they speak of "supply side" or "job creators". It's the old, feudal idea that a handful of people who own most everything are the indispensable benefactors of all of society. That can get complicated but it's mostly crap. Monopolies grow and present an impenetrable barrier to competition far less to the degree they serve markets but to the degree that they extortionately control them; what the Mafia does by somewhat rougher means.
Thus the once popular concept of anti-trust, which is the real thorn in the side of modern Republican financial patrons. Take a long-view look at the flow of money and the intent of policy since the "Reagan Revolution". And pure greed has no conscience.
Who makes, who takes? Who has gained and who suffers under the spell of "Republican" ideology? And who, when logic is clean, and evidence accounted for, is telling the truth?
Sorry that this post seems to have been posted twice. When I clicked "post" the screen froze then red letters came up that said "something went wrong". So I clicked again, and after an and the post immediately came up, but then after about a minute, came up again.
"They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. "
Reagan's creepily successful political mission was to stir resentment of of the whole premise of democracy; that is to say, the sharing of the ultimate power of choice and of social responsibility in shares among ALL of the governed. He championed instead those who somehow manage to acquire the most money, which Republicans will tell you (and have certainly told me more times than I can count) is solely a product of their virtue. It is true enough that some arguably virtuous behaviors can result in making money, but things become far more complicated once an individual worker is compensated for their actual labor. Robert Reich has argued that Trump would be richer had he parked his inheritance in an index fund, and that also ignores Trump's shady relationship with the mob, and the money "pouring in from Russia". You don't become a billionaire by millions of hours of your own labor. I'm not sure that there is anything inherently wrong with living on the profits of investments. I am doing so in my years of dotage, but not everyone starts out at the same starting line on that one, economically or educationally, as Trump certainly did not. Lincoln simply told the plain truth when he said:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
That's pretty much the opposite of what our nominal "Republicans" are saying when they speak of "supply side" or "job creators". It's the old, feudal idea that a handful of people who own most everything are the indispensable benefactors of all of society. That can get complicated but it's mostly crap. Monopolies grow and present an impenetrable barrier to competition far less to the degree they serve markets but to the degree that they extortionately control them; what the Mafia does by somewhat rougher means.
Thus the once popular concept of anti-trust, which is the real thorn in the side of modern Republican financial patrons. Take a long-view look at the flow of money and the intent of policy since the "Reagan Revolution". And pure greed has no conscience.
Who makes, who takes? Who has gained and who suffers under the spell of "Republican" ideology? And who, when logic is clean, and evidence accounted for, is telling the truth?
It's not about money or NY would have the best schools and the finest services. They don't.
Today's Democratic party thinks it has a lock on virtue. It is a place where the ends justify any means. Why does it promote Open Borders, Defund the police and reject school choice if it really cared about "black and brown people" outcomes? It seems to me to care more about votes, power and virtue signaling. Just look at the cities Progressives run? Crazy. As for education we should have higher expectations and give everyone a better chance to succeed rather than telling everyone they are a victim and that the other guy is the problem. We are all in this together. Also calling half the country racist has got to stop.
It is about Money - the proper application of it. And, "Today's Democratic party" does have "a lock on virtue". Just look at the alternative party and their "Facts". It is obvious that you listen to too much Faux Entertainment or Bannoan Pods (Pots). You are describing today's 'republieCon/tRUmpLieQon' party. Real progressives are the best chance we have. Like Mayor Pete. He's not Perfect, but he can talk and think and chew gum at the same time. I have higher expectations from him. BTW: I do not know of any Democratic elected official in my area who tells anyone "they are a victim".
I got a call from an old and beloved friend who was pretty off the charts liberal back in the day (like early 1970s). When politics was mentioned, he was clear that he was not into Trump, yet perhaps spoke even more harshly about progressives, who he claims "hate everything". He mentioned in particular Sanders, who he dismissed as "a clown". When I see this on message boards I wonder about trolling (divide and conquer) but I am very aware that a lot of it is fully sincere, and it is not all that uncommon.
I don't know how to brand myself politically, as I like to mix and match; whatever works. I'm so-so or dubious about some "progressive" positions, and also about some of the (whatever you want to call it) DNC-approved positions. I have voted with Democrats since I was eligible, and lately would vote for a sack of sand (which would at least do no harm) over any Republican. That's not brand loyalty, it's just survival.
From what I can see, the "progressives" I am aware of are far more on the same page with "mainstream" Democrats than not, especially considering the malignant alternative performance of Republicans. That some do not seem to see that seems weird to me and even (given the circumstances) dangerous.
And what, after all is a just democracy, if not an environment in which people can differ reasonably peacefully, and sometimes even grudgingly creatively, excepting behaviors, such as drunk driving or polluting, which are unacceptably irresponsible, or those that are deliberately predatory.
The Southern states seem to fully embrace the bigoted,, demented, hatefulness requirements of gop membership...the obviousness of their southern states educational system is indicative of such requirements.
Another issue is republicans perception of law enforcement.
It would seem to all of us who have not been elected into southern states federal Congress lack the very special dispensations afforded to those we actually have elected into Federal Congress for the purpose of protecting ALL of our interests…
EXCEPT
When the protection of Congress members of southern states interest become in conflict with ALL of our national interests…We see in actuality in every such instance those Congress members of southern states will enjoy a type of JUSTICE NOT to ever be enjoyed by ALL those who voted in ALL such “Above-The-Law” Congressional Members…
To Wit:
A federal judge ordered Lindsey Graham the white old sniveling bigoted Senator from bigoted South Carolina to testify in the Fulton County DA’s investigation this week.
Of course his oiled slick rich attorneys appealed the ruling up to the 11th Circuit court of appeals.
Something most of us could never achieve.
Not surprisingly that good old boy court is permitting it’s bigoted brethren Graham to skip his scheduled testimony this week.
What the hell, Eh!?
After all in the deep southern redness where the law treats crime differently depending upon the color of one’s skin such special white dispensations are the De rigueur.
So just how special is Flimsily Lindisily…
His attorneys have now cooked up a scheme where the red state “district judge” will adjudicate whether or not the speech and debate clause privilege afforded to members of Congress for conducting their official responsibilities could mean a South Carolina Senator’s Georgia election’s fraud crime might be conveniently ruled a “quashel” of Lindisily’s subpoena!
It’s just gutting public education even further which is the purpose in the first place. Today’s trumpublicans have no more use for a good public educational system than they have for used toilet paper. Dumb down the electorate.
Keep in mind, the first thing most strongmen do in any government takeover is to round up and kill the educators. Not a pretty picture to contemplate.
Pathetic. You politicize a fundamental issue to play into your partisan worldview. Look in the mirror. What if you were in a dystopian school with no way out? In your world that is just fine. Trumpian indeed. You are one of the sheep.
No, David, ;SPW' is correct. Draining Cash from the Public's Coffers was part of the plan Betsy and her group of Church-schooled co-conpirators had in mind. Mike Pence, another Church-schooled lad of another religion thought it a wonderful idea and signed Indiana on to the plan. The idea is to Fix those dystopian schools NOT to make it impossible financially to do that. I had to do that years ago, and it can be done.
It seems you may be one of the sheep - or didn't you see last night's tRUmp News.
So easy to jerk your knee. If you want to send your kids to Religious or other Private school, Fine. You Pay for it! Just like my parents did. The Public has no business funding parochial or private schools. Period.
If Betsy Prince DeVos, with her 7 yachts and inherited Millions, wants to scholarship them, fine by me. She has no business lining up We the 99.7% to do so.
tRUmp card? Yes, he belongs in Jail for so many things we can no longer keep count. If he, with his $Billions, wants to scholarship kids, Perfect! He won't need his $Billions where he's going.
Disastrous and unforgivable, yes. Untenable, I fear not. White supremacist inclinations have a tenacious (or worse, quite possibly unbreakable) hold on most white Americans.
You are right but who do you modify as "they". In many communities it is the monopoly school system. Why do you think in New York families are lined up to get into charter schools? Some are really good -Success Academy. Change can be good.
David, as usual, you focus on one thing and ignore the complexities. School systems are underfunded. Teacher pay is often the first thing cut, as well as teaching supplies. Let's not forget facility maintenance. Charter schools are over-rated: they can cherry pick their students, and still they perform poorly, as repeated studies bear out. Yes, there are some good ones, but there are an awful lot of pretty bad ones. It's stunning to see other nations who prioritize education, are willing to pay taxes to support schools and pay teachers as the valued professionals they are. Up front costs pay off down the line. Over and over again. And yet we play a kind of cake-walk game in which kids are the losers. And America, because we are losing a sustainable future.
Yes, Annie. It's distorting the issue to equate supporting and improving public schools with accepting the status quo. Our public schools need to be improved and must be a big priority in this country. They have been ignored for far too long. Just spending more money by itself won't make them better. Some schools in poor areas have done a great job teaching their students, because people who have better ideas are running them or listening to those who have those better ideas. Some schools are being drained of funds by administrators who hire friends to conduct "studies" that help no one but the administrator and their friends. I'm not saying this is happening everywhere. But when America decides something is a priority, we have accomplished amazing things. Creating great public school systems around the country is critical to having an informed, intelligent, upwardly mobile and voting public. It's disingenuous for those like Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis and their many aiders and abettors to strip down and hamstring public education as if it cannot be vastly improved. They don't want an informed, intelligent, well-educated electorate. They want to control the country from their imaginary thrones, like they are something special and more important that the rest of the country. They want power and don't care how many people they hurt to get it. The truth is that people who think their money or their religious zealotry make them better than everyone else are dangerous, deluded and morally crippled. We need to create a strong public school system across this country and while it will take time and dedication, it can certainly be done. But it starts with good, caring, smart leadership from someone who wants all of America to prosper and to give every child a strong, start with a great education.
“They” are the elitist Progressive America. The kind that go to elitist northern boarding schools, then to Harvard and off then to the battle fields of dystopian New England colleges where sheep are fed.
Our public schools in general are terrible. It’s not the money or NYC would be great. It’s being real, demanding and accountable. I imagine that is Supremacist or some other nonsense these days. Choice and competition is not a bad thing given the broken state of things.
The problem with detecting "Value" is the 20some year wait to find out if there really was "Value" from the Change or Spending. Compounding the problem of where is the '"Value" are the Students and their families who must be served by the Public system who would be "unaccepted" by the "Charter" system. Largely, the "Charter" system thoroughout the US is a charter to discriminate, propagandize, or cherry pick students.
I don't entirely disagree that Republicans "hate America" but America is many things. What they seem to hate is democracy, and the idea of sharing power and responsibility with others. What they appear to want it to completely rule the roost, self-righteous dictatorship.
I disagree. Our schools need radical change. We saw it recently in Virginia. Woke educational ideology sent a tin eared Terry McAuliffe went down in flames when parents were told to stand down and woke ideologist played Stalin. Give children, all children, choice and a path to great success and we will all win. It has nothing to do with racism. Democrats, and their Teachers Union, are now on the wrong side of this issue. Exceptionalism and choice are not racist when on offer to all.
I agree that our schools need radical change. Dramatic change.
First, there should be a universal curriculum that reflects the TRUTHS of our history and an open discussion of diversity and the great value that brings to a tolerant and compassionate society. The alternative we see playing out in Florida and elsewhere is mental inbreeding which simply produces more bigots and haters.
Second, all schools should be supervised in offering that universal curriculum and lose funding when bigotry and "exceptionalism" is taught in lieu of reality and the rights of ALL Americans to live freely and openly.
Layer on to that a consistent history class at EVERY age that carefully and accurately explains who we are and what we did with a mission of doing it all better in the future. Start with the genocide of indigenous Americans and carry it right through to the present - where black men are shot in cold blood at traffic stop by cops - because they are black.
There is honor and horror in our history. Our kids need to learn about both so we can evolve from this racist, sexist, liar dominated culture. Teach truth. Teach reality. Leave "gods" and hate at home. 100% equally funded education for every child regardless of zip code.
You are right. We do need "RADICAL" change. Righteous change.
BTW, IMO, being "woke" is being real. It is admitting error. It is wanting to be a better, more loving human. It is wanting fairness and justice. Don't we all want that?
I am so sick and tired of the use of the word “woke.” I am fed up with the blame cast on teachers’ unions. I am an public school elementary librarian (thank goodness - in a blue state). It is not “woke” to teach about the true horrors of slavery and oppression; it is not “woke” to ensure that diverse groups of people are given a voice in our curriculums and books. They are just as much a part of this Country as white,Christian, straight men!! Student choice is a fig leaf for defunding our public schools and this “woke” business is just another way that the GOP and their dark money billionaires keep this Country divided so that we don’t unite in our opposition to them and their greedy, runaway capitalism.
The motive is, of course, to propagandize White 'xtian' nazism into Our Future while Profiting RW Propaganda organs. (Note: xtian is used in place of Christian because there is no Christianity to be found in most these entities.)
And David Carroll I Disagree with your reasoning.....
I notice you used the word STALIN several times. No need to mention other country's dictatotor's when using examples - there are ENOUGH examples here in the UNITED STATES. Take my state TEXAS for example..... Where a KELLER school board (Politically CHARGED I might add) pulled books just this last week ....... Which includes the Diary of Anne Frank - which I might add really KNEW WHAT about living on THE WRONG SIDE........
A graphic novel interpretation of the Anne Frank diary. Not the actual Diary of Anne Frank. But I agree with you! My kids went to Keller ISD schools and I’m appalled! The Bible was on the list too, but I heard at the last minute it didn’t get banned.
It’s upsetting to be in the whirlwind of this educational piece of history.
I agree that our schools need radical change, and all of this might be good for us to create new public educational systems that actually are better attuned to the Information Age. Teachers are required to do way too much in their professions with little compensation besides the love of teaching. But when they must teach children who have learning differences, behavioral and mental health issues, hunger and poverty issues, foster/adopted/divorce and grief issues, and yes, darker pigmented skin, or practice different religions than the white privileged kids—then education is severely compromised. Add a pandemic and rethuglican oppression for education and voting and we are back to the overt days of slavery of all colors of people who lack education. This is the white supremacist/monied elite with their knees of our necks. This is the dumbing down of America to keep it enslaved. This is this extremist cult of the party of sedition and treason against our country and Constitution main premise-- who have said outright and supported, "I love the uneducated (they are easier to control and keep enslaved). As with everything in America, we have deep changes to make in every level of our society. But going backwards and maintaining the Caste System of feudal lords and kings absolutely NOT an option in this country. The majority of us are are much more enlightened that that (I hope!) and will fight for the rights of All The People. But the way, what color is your skin, David?
Not to mention that schools have become targets for every gun nut with illusions of fame and notoriety. And many wonder why teachers are leaving in droves???
Yes, I work with the adolescents of today who have to have massacre prevention drills. This is fricking insanity and the republicans cure is more f-ing guns. How christian, with a small c. What would Jesus do? I doubt encourage more guns. Idiots.
Lots of communities fund their schools through property taxes. In one community in which I lived, there was a mileage increase on the ballot to raise funds to build a new high school. The current was significantly overcrowded. One person said, “I know we need a new school. But this tax is the only one I can vote against, so I’m voting against it.” Two more tries were needed, but eventually the new school was built. But what a selfish, shortsighted attitude!!!! 😖
In Oregon for many years the property tax was the main way of funding local schools. We had to go to voters and if they didn't vote in the budget, school didn't start. I remember one year where we had a late start because of this and students crying. Now the state mainly funds schools and local bonds pay for new buildings and upgrades. And then recently it took us three tries to fund the local fire district. I was appalled at the arguments against the levy.
Pensa, I wonder more about David’s nationality than about the color of skin. I imagine him sitting in St. Petersburg trying to come up with inflammatory statements using the American buzz word of the day most calculated to upset us. Best to ignore him, I think.
Well, I would consider Russians to be fair-skinned... and some to feel they are uber privileged in that. And of course, there are people of color or Jewish who follow the fascists white-privileged, crowd thinking. There is no accounting for identifying with your captor. Stephen Miller is a good example. Totally clueless that he advocated for rich, white males who are not so keen on Jews or POC. Or that darker0pigmented guy on our SCOTUS whose white wife appears to have helped the coup d'etat against the American government...and sanity. He may think he is white skinned by association. No one is going to suppress his vote at the polls or put him in jail because he is unusually "protected."
Yes, and where is that little weasel these days? I hope he is spilling his guts to trying to save himself. That would just be sweet justice if he is a whistleblower for the trump regimen..."He who shall not be questioned." Would love to know his family's history.
He's doing exactly what he's here for, Chris, -- a distraction from our advocacy on behalf of democracy, learning from HCR and from each other -- that shiny object that DJT, the Russians & the Republicans are so good at -- even here.
Exactly Fern! I have repeatedly posted here that he is a troll--whether one paid to plant seeds and sow discord, or the modern version of the "landline heavy breather" attempted to get his jollies over upsetting people, I am not sure. He got pretty crazed a week or so back, really inflammatory statements (which I commented to him that made me laugh, I find his comments in direct proportion to how anxious/worried the Right is becoming). That must have struck a nerve as he's calmed down considerably (and became rather boring.) But do watch, as the Trump train is speeding up towards the cliff, I am sure he'll get all worked up again. :)
Do you have any suggestions when the choices now before us are authoritarianism/fascism vs. democracy? Those of us who know history and how tyranny rises, see exactly what is happening in this country. Who do you think are the REAL dividers? The hate mongers? The liars and destroyers of democracy and the purveyors of propaganda and white supremacy thinking taking away our rights as if they are kings. Chastise those who hate and are trying to destroy this country. Yes, I will stare down and call out fascism because so many people around the world died to save us from it. And I will stare down and call out racists who try to take us back to whatever year they think they will have total power again. I have given David Carroll and some other guy this week total respect and earnest conversation. Then they turn the tables and spew lies and propaganda. Most of the time, we just ignore trolls here. Sometimes it is a good engagement to see if they will provide facts to back up their stance. I find it mostly an exercise in dealing with brainwashed people and deep their training goes. There's nothing that will reach them, but I never fail to try. Hope springs eternal...to a degree.
Universal public education, done well, leaves young adults well-equipped to <make choices and to choose a path to success>. When parents make that choice, the powerful breed more power, the powerless remain powerless. Equality of early education strengthens our democracy, in my view. If the parents want to pay for a non-public education, that's their choice - but taxes should support only public education.
I respectfully disagree. I am talking about giving “ everyone” and every family the choice of their share of tax money and sending their children to better schools. Universal public education today generally is awful. I was on the Board of a private boarding school for 8 years. We could have had 40%+ of the students from any background if they could have paid something. Competition. It works.
The charters and Xtian schools look good when the public schools in your area have been defunded to the bone. From this vantage point of self fulfilled prophesy, the “pro-choice education” gang after starving and crippling the public system, say “But we NEED choice! Look at the condition of our local school!” They are all for “completion” as long as “competition” is rigged in their favor. Public taxes for public education! The churches with their boatloads of money, can fund their own schools, with the left over from all their sex abuse law suits.
Actually no. I'm talking about fully funding public education. Is the goal an educated and successful citizenry or perpetuating a system that is failing our families and students?
Sure and pulling the funds from the public school system so a kid can attend a private boarding school will help fully fund public education (sarcasm intended).
Ah, an elitist view of the wealthy who can afford to send their child to a Prep School (aka a private boarding school). Their Prep Schools are so well endowed financially they can offer any child wealthy enough to attend a them decent education. Yet you argue pulling money from the public sector to add to a Prep School’s endowment. What the….!!!???
Btw everyone here should be made aware that every Prep School in my state is a registered as a Non Profit Organization! Yes with the incredible amount of money they have, all are Non Profit Organizations.
I pay taxes which support public education. I have no children (and never will). I don’t fight the tax I pay to support public education but I could. After all since I have no children why should I pay for some other persons kid to get educated?! Shouldn’t I be able to pull the tax money I pay for public education out of the public education system and use it however I see fit? Based on your argument I should have the right to those funds.
However I see public education as something a community does to the benefit of the community as a whole. To pull those funds and direct them elsewhere would hurt my community/ the city in which I live. Rather than pull those funds from the public sector and put the funds in a private schools hands (in your case those already so incredibly endowed Prep Schools) how about focusing on how to improve the public education in your community. How about giving a sh** about those less well off financially than the wealthy that can afford to attend the Prep School!
And your claim: “We could have had 40%+ of the students from any background if they could have paid something.” in reality is a total crock. The “if they could have paid something” is nothing but a lie. Those families of children in the public schools cannot afford “the something” to cover the remaining money/ tuition to attend a Prep School no matter how much money they could get from the public school system allotted to their child’s education. They simply cannot afford what’s left of the Private/ Prep School’s tuition.
I speak from direct experience. I have worked with the Private/ Prep School system and see the workings. Even children who are gifted in some way (academically, athletically, artistically) are rarely, if ever, given a scholarship to cover the tuition money beyond which their parents could afford, much less given full scholarship to attend.
When it comes to supporting public education vs pulling a child’s allotted tax money from the public school system and using it for a child to attend a private school….. You write “Competition. It works.”
But it’s not about Competition it’s about Caring. Caring about your community. Caring about the Community’s public school system. Do what you can to make it better. All children who attend will benefit and therefore the community as a whole will benefit.
That said I don’t begrudge my tax dollars paying for a child in my community to attend our public school system. In the long run I and my community will be better off.
You are full of baloney. Public schools in many cases care very little about outcomes. In fact as a developed country our schools in general suck. Charter schools are one option. Other well run private schools are another. Nobody anointed our public school system as a monopoly although the Union would like it that way. Also the Boarding school I am talking about is not well endowed and on the margin could absolutely spread its dollars further if it had them. The school does a great job and has been around for 150 years. Not all are Phillips Exeter that is a terrific school. A lousy school system with poor outcomes should beware. Good school systems will flourish and I am sure there are many. What are you afraid of?
“I was on the Board of a private boarding school for 8 years.”
Instead of supporting and promoting that private/ prep school by being on its Board you could have been spending those 8 years working to better the public school system where you live.
David, you've posted a lot of nonsense designed to distract us from intelligent discussion. In all this time you have not revealed anything specific about yourself as a person. This is a toss-away, suitably vague, that reveals nothing, and gives you no credibility. It pretty much seals my sense of you as a liar here primarily to pull attention to yourself. You are bogus.
I’ve debated whether to respond, but here it is. As a Virginia educated K-BA senior, I was appalled by the knuckle dragging, mouth breathers who were so easily swayed by propagandists. On the other hand I was disgusted by the educated buzz word pseudo christofacsists who advanced the propaganda in order to prop up a failing ideology. No way do I want those folks setting public school curricula. Looks like we got what we deserved in Virginia. An ambitious dilettante rich guy with his eye on higher office with no regard for Virginia other than as a stepping stone to that higher office. Reminds me of Eddy Dalton in the ‘80’s.
She ran against a long serving Democrat, Bill Parkerson, who was President Pro Tem of the Virginia State Senate. As such he did much for my (then) locality, and the state. I was on his campaign staff. Her aim was the Governorship and when her political aspersions were stymied folded her flag and went home. She served only one year in the Senate before launching her campaign for Lt. Governor.
From Wikipedia.
"Edwina Panzer "Eddy" Dalton (born June 12, 1936) is a former first lady of Virginia. After the death of her husband, John N. Dalton, she ran as a Republican for the Senate of Virginia, serving one term from 1988 to 1992. In 1989, she ran unsuccessfully against Don Beyer for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia."[1]
Again, I respectfully disagree. Glenn Youngkin was elected by a crossover vote in both Northern Virginia and Tidewater. Terry committed political suicide backing the status quo going so far as to bring Randi Weingarten to the state. It was his to lose and he lost it. Younkin is a pro choice education advocate who wants Virginia to be competitive as a place to do business. He won when two months before the election nobody thought he had a good chance. He ran a compelling campaign and travelled the state. Dilettante is Beto. Younkin made his fortune after playing basketball at Rice. He put himself in the public field of battle and won a surprising victory. Don’t underestimate him. He is hard working and a good guy notwithstanding what you think of his politics if one is allowed to say that these days.
Exceptionalism? Borne from the backs of our enslaved and redskins of original residents ...
Some educated are simply awoke to horrors perpetrated by the misogynistic, racist nature of our patriarchy. Our current "originalists" warn us that the courts now view laws from the intent of our founders; those white males who owned the black, murdered the red, and subjugated all women.
Personally your take on the situation turns my stomach. You have a very stilted view of the situation! Not at all what is going on in our public schools! McAuliffe was tied to the Waco tragedy. Not education.
Choice sounds so wonderful on the surface! But the devil is in the details.
Our current system says that if you live in neighborhood A, you go to school A and bus transportation is provided if you live too far away to walk. Parents simply need to get their children out of bed and push them out the door in the morning. So why is Albuquerque dealing with a chronic absenteeism rate of 43% - students who have missed at least 10 days of school? We have a few charter and magnet schools, where parents may apply for their children and admission is by “lottery”. The first “cherry picking” level is that parents have to care enough to learn about options and apply. The second level is the willingness/ability to transport the student to school. Despite claims that the lottery is fair, those two levels eliminate a lot of kids. So much for choice. Then there are the behavior and/or academic performance rules, which can quickly push out “undesirable” students.
So school choice sounds wonderful, but there’s not nearly as much choice as advertised.
"Choice" in schools sounds so like "freedom". But the truth is that for every dollar that goes to a charter school or religious school a dollar is sucked away from public schools and the damage is devastating to those left behind.
IMO, all of these alternatives are contrary to educational equality and punish the poor.
Please avoid using a Ridiculous Person™️ to support your views.
Private schools concentrate the concentrated wealth. We know that. That's a feature, not a bug, of our race to the worst inequality since we invented money – thanks St. Ronnie and Little Newt.
Weiss is not only ridiculous, she's a propagandist.
Agree re: Rep. Cheney. That said, I never, ever forget her anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-climate, pro-Chamber of Commerce, voting record.
As for Weiss, any life choice that puts me crosswise with Wonkette probably wants examining. As my cynical Never Trumper pal Michael says, Weiss "probably has a good agent."
Cheney's been invaluable. But I have the same problems you do with her voting record. That said, the acceleration of climate change seems to be accelerating. It's scary. Maybe she'll come around on that, and maybe that will push her to question the rest of her views on policy. (And maybe I'm dreaming.)
I've read about the kind of stuff I posted from Weiss about CRT in schools from teachers in NYC schools, and elsewhere, sounding equally pernicious. I also read Andrew Sullivan regularly. As for me, my views align more closely with Bernie Sanders than any other recent (last two elections) Democratic candidates. And my family of origin was strongly pro-worker on both sides.
"Protect, support and improve." Your comment implies that you don't get it. You can't work to improve something if you allow it, over time, to be completely destroyed by those who don't want it to succeed.
Republicans don't want people to understand the world, especially the country and states where they live and their histories. This includes discouraging young people from questioning the status quo. Why? To make people easier to manipulate and control. And make it more difficult for minority communities to advance economically. Hurting public education and banning books are the easiest tactics.
“Education is the point at which we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young would be inevitable.
And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.” (Hannah Arendt, from Between Past and Future, p.193)
I realize it's a oversimplification, but it seems to me that the world is divided, at least to a large extent, between those who primarily wish to empower humanity and those who prefer to dominate.
Michael Bales, yes, repubs, conservatives, work to prevent truth and equality in education. Not just the South. 8 states voted against an anti spanking law that even included schools. But “we” historically don’t want government interfering except for funding. The United Nations developed “The Convention on the Rights of the Child.” At one point only Somalia and USA had not ratified . And now it’s just USA that has signed but not ratified. Why?
“The George W. Bush Administration opposed CRC and expressed serious political and legal concerns with the treaty, arguing that it conflicted with U.S. laws regarding privacy and family rights. The election of President Obama in 2008 focused renewed attention on the possibility of U.S. ratification. May 7, 2022”
W was a critical factor in the education debacle, or rather the enablers (sort of like chump). Never will forgive Ted Kennedy for his kumbaya with W on this.
Proverbs 11:29: ''He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.'' Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind about the Scopes Monkey Trial. Here we go again…
We got ourselves a "troll"! They drop little irritating tidbits in order to get a reaction. Probably didn't get enough attention when growing up. Sadly, that's quite common.
Chris Buczinsky - "Open up to the possibility that 'troll' is a quick way to avoid engagement with someone who genuinely disagrees."
I agree. I may fault Mr. Carroll for making many statements without explanation (supporting evidence) but I find that his stating disagreement on many issues to be a legitimate use of this Forum. If you find flaws or errors in his theories (opinions?) then you should clearly state them. Name-calling will never get anyone to a "meeting of the minds." In other words, we would never get outside the "Communication Silo" that groups such as this are at risk.
David Carroll is a long-standing -- let's say, "contrarian" -- on this site. He's been accused of everything from spiteful trollery to paid trollery. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But his view isn't really very interesting. He generally responds to attempts to engage in dialogue with escalating rudeness. He NEVER offers a cogent dialogue or debate: he instructs in the Right Way, and mocks any alternative view.
He comes, and he goes. We've had a long silent period, but he's BAAAACK!
In terms of what Christ was and what he taught, anti-Christian.
These people would like to restore the social order of the Roman Empire at the time when Jesus lived.
But they can't. It is far too advanced for them.
*
I was a schoolkid in South Africa when Apartheid was being brought in, so one of the first things I understood was the plan to place a low ceiling on non-whites' education, so that "the lesser breeds" should never rise above the station kindly allotted to them by their "betters"...
Unfortunately, the white suprematists are working to turn America into a backwater, trailing far behind the rest of a world they can only rob and exploit.
Peter, Here is a way to look backward that I hope spurs us forward as well.
” Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education must not simply teach work – it must teach life.” – W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois was and is a giant, an American sociologist, socialist, historian and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist; he was also the author of 21 books. The most remarkable among them, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, a 1903 work of American literature, It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, a cornerstone of African-American literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Souls_of_Black_Folk
He was a founder of the Niagara Movement, a collective of civil rights activists who drew up a statement of principles opposed to the Atlanta Compromise, a speech given by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. The Niagara Movement was a movement comprised of African-American intellectuals founded in 1905 at Niagara Falls. It was dedicated to obtaining civil rights for African-Americans. For more about the movement, see below.
Niagara Movement - Oberlin College and Conservatory
Du Bois was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and edited its journal, The Crisis. ‘… using his perch to draw attention to the still widespread practice of lynching, pushing for nationwide legislation that would outlaw the cruel extrajudicial killings. A 1915 article in the journal gave a year-by-year list of more than 2,700 lynchings over the previous three decades.’ (NAACP) See link below.
Du Bois is known for the concept of the “talented tenth.” ‘He believed that full citizenship and equal rights for African Americans would be brought about through the efforts of an intellectual elite; for this reason, he was an advocate of a broad liberal arts education at the college level.’
The more I look at the antics of politicians, the more I remember my cynical Neapolitan colleague's parting shot on returning to work after a coffee break:
"Andiamo far finta..."
(Let's go back and pretend to work.)
(The Soviet variation:
"They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work...")
Who can keep up with the speed and stupefying acceleration of change today?
Some few may understand what's going on but most politicians ran after the train and missed it... a long time ago...
So now they're like kids at play, giving us a great mime show, pretending the train's just coming in and they are getting on it... They who didn't even buy a ticket... and when they did, it was for the wrong train...
Many or most should in any case be kept well away from trains and the exercise of adult responsibilities, as they know only how to wreck things.
No, if the world's to be saved, it will be by ordinary people. Mainly, I suspect, women, thanks to greater mental flexibility. People who dare to be themselves, people who, when they see what needs doing -- and no one doing it -- just roll up their sleeves and get on with doing what needs to be done.
Some rare politicians fit this profile. Like Stacey Abrams.
Yes, Peter, as you wrote '..., if the world's to be saved, it will be by ordinary people.' We must see and act against what is happening before our eyes -- the Republicans, chief among them, DeSantis, are STOMPING on education, the precious lives of our children and the future of the country.
'And now, in 2022, we are in a new educational moment. Between January 2021 and January 2022, the legislatures of 35 states introduced 137 bills to keep students from learning about issues of race, LBGTQ+ issues, politics, and American history. More recently, the Republican-dominated legislature of Florida passed the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, tightly controlling how schools and employee training can talk about race or gender discrimination.'
'Republican-dominated legislatures and school districts are also purging books from school libraries and notifying parents each time a child checks out a book. Most of the books removed are by or about Black people, people of color, or LGBTQ+ individuals.' (Letter)
Stay tuned for information about how states are destroying public school education.
Censorship by fascists. Our free speech needs to be revisited due to extremists' mind-control propagandist tactics. They sure are petrified of Democracy, Truth, Justice and our Melting Pot!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this, Fern, especially for that first quote. I'm a retired teacher and am finding it very painful to see what my former colleagues (and their students) are experiencing now. Also, I have read ABOUT W.E.B. Du Bois but have never read any of his actual works. Now I know where to start (I copied and pasted this into my notes app). Education is a lifelong endeavor.
Judith, I had an emotional response to your generosity. My readings of W.E.B. Du Bois began when I was ready, past fifty. It is natural for me to think of him, particularly, now. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this, Fern. You capture the essence and brilliance of Du Bois. “The Talented Tenth.” And you also capture the “poverty “ and racism of our America, a country that since 1619 has marginalized and brutalized the African American. And any other human being who might be called “the other”.
I wonder how much of the non-graduating numbers have to do with the irrelevant, misleading history that’s taught in schools? Kids respond to relevant, frank information and respectful listening to their take on their moment in time. Pushing this narrow view of our history onto them is ludicrous. They see the falsity of it everyday. It’s only a formula for shutting down their minds.
Thought so. If you were to continue to educate yourself further, by continuing to study in this forum, you might be endangered as Derek Black was when he left his white supremacist community and attended college. His new friends helped him learn about his racist propagandist approach to life and he truly woke up.
Derek Black, is a former leader of the white nationalist movement, a movement that emerged rebranded from white supremacy. Derek was raised in the movement. His father, Don Black, is a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as was his godfather, David Duke, long time leader of the KKK. The internet's largest white nationalist site, was and maybe still is, Stormfront.
When Derek was in his teens, he started the companion website Kids' Stormfront. (nice hatred indoctrination website for American and non-Americas kiddies. Derek made speeches, hosted a radio show and was considered the movement's heir apparent. After spending the first 22 years of his life in the movement, he left in 2013 and renounced his former views. His life and why he left the movement he helped lead is the subject of the new book "Rising Out Of Hatred" by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow. Thank God Derek went to college and stopped indoctrinating innocent youth with white supremacist hogwash.
If we don't out-organize, out-smart, and out-vote these people, we will have an American Taliban ruling this country one day soon.
Our beautiful future--our children's children--will be mindless compliant deplorables without access to a quality education that is based on reality, not madness.
All I can say is that as I read this summary of the attack on public schools, the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, my main response is that this can’t be happening. Yet it is happening and it shows how far we have slipped in a relatively short period of time. Thanks Dr. Richardson for keeping us aware.
I did not know how painful it is to be ignorant, how hopeless and futile an illiterate life can be.
Before I moved to Portugal 30 years ago, I had never lived with illiterate people. Most of the people my age here only had access to a fourth grade education. The village school had 40 seats and it was obligatory to wear shoes, so the child would carry his shoes to school and put them on to enter the classroom. Birth control was finally made available ten years ago, and many families had 8 or 9 children. It was common to beat children who tried to learn to read. Many only went for two or three years. They learned that dinosaurs were not real, the Earth was flat, etc. One teacher told me she was hired to teach because she had a law degree (she is from an old wealthy family) to work in a village in the mountains far from any city.
Her students were of all ages, together in one classroom, whose breakfast consisted of coffee with aguardente, the local hootch, a relative of brandy made from pressed grape stems.
Television arrived in 1990 but was limited. Poverty of the mind is shocking. Women were only allowed off the farm if they had produce by to sell, which they carried on their heads, walking to market.
My neighbor had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, so we took her, with her husband's permission, for a picnic there. She watched the waves come crashing in on the beach and absorbed the movement into her body, stretching her whole body up and then contracting down, like a small child. She stared at the flat ocean horizon and said, "That's the end of the Earth. Ships go to the edge and drop off and go to Hell."
I said, "No, my parents live over there.".
She countered, "I don't see them."
She was a fine judge of character and knew who was trustworthy.
When Soares came to power, years after the dictator Salazar went crazy and died, government began. A health system was put into place, water to each home, education to 9th grade, and in 2008 was increased to 12th grade. Everyone, regardless of their lower schooling could start university with a government grant. The country literacy rate soured overnight. The change was miraculous. Young people became professionals, the whole country worked to reach the European Union standards, and greatly succeeded, although it can not compete without natural resources.
Life in Portugal has changed so much for the better. But inequality can never be erased. Thirty years ago one student told me her lesson the first day of 10th grade was about who was inferior and who was superior. No gradients. She has raised three children. And they vote.
And they have emerged, are still emerging, from the most extraordinarily airtight system of repression, the Salazar regime, a truly heroic -- anti-heroic -- undertaking whose aim was to stop the clock and preserve the Portuguese people from all contact with the 20th century.
This impossible Looking-Glass-Land regime, not Orban's kleptocratic sham, should provide the inspiration for America's finders-keepers-am-I-my-brother's-keeper pseudo-conservatives... With the PIDE, a snooping system to put all others in the shade, a thought police of watchdogs to sniff out and snuff out the first signs of thinking wherever it raised its ugly head.
Thank you again, Susan Lorraine Knox, for this marvelous snapshot of a perfect dictatorship in action.
*
Unfortunately, I fear that America may be more influenced by the example of Salazar's neighbor, a million dead, concentration camps, death squads and three and a half decades under the heavy iron ferule of a wily Caudillo...
We have been. I am optimistic that we are turning around. It's a little bit like trying to get that oversized cargo ship through the Suez Canal, though. We just have to keep at it until we get it to the point it is facing in the right direction. A year ago I was depressed and people on this forum helped keep me going. This year, I am optimistic. The job (and it is a job) of people like David Carroll is to try to keep us focused on bogus misdirection so we feel discouraged. I've learned to skip over the "us vs them" threads people get drawn into, and focus on the threads that show the potential we have in front of us, and the ways we can advance that potential. Brings to mind that old saying from my younger activist days: "Keep on keeping on."
When I was a small child, around the time of the Pleistocene Age, it was apparent to me then that children had to go to school to learn history
in order to make intelligent choices on Election Day. (Both my parents were very involved Stevenson/Kennedy Democrats.) I saw even then that universal, mandatory, education was a pillar of a functioning democracy.
Today’s Republicans understand this principle very well. They also understand that if we have free, open, honest elections with wide participation by an educated electorate, they are doomed.
Therefore, like the slaveholders of the 1830’s, and the autocrats of 20th century dictatorships, fascist and communist, education must be withheld, suppressed, and tightly controlled.
Today’s Republican Party would begin the teaching of American history with, “Once upon a time…”
No, it would start with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and move to the ‘amazing discovery of America in 1492’ to the Founding Fathers and Washington’s refusal to tell a lie and his ‘wooden’ teeth, and a myth that this Government was founded as a Christian system. But you’re right about the fiction.
I find it outrageous how Republicans and many Southern states rationalise creating a second class of human beings in society either through education discrimination, voting "reform", labor laws etc. Always it's the darker skinned people who are meant to be repressed, but many poor whites are too. Then they justify it as "states rights" or "financial reform" or "patriotism" or whatever. With this whole push many people who could be productive, contributing, taxpaying members of society are repressed to the benefit of the self appointed elite. It's like the rest of the worlds' democracies are moving on towards racial equality and fairness, and Americans are still pre civil war in mentality. It is just incredible how stupid the whole attitude is, and NOT a good reflection on the USA.
Yes, the cult of trumpets are manipulated enough that they support those who intend to quash their rights to education and knowledge to maintain their enslavement. The Matrix in real life. Sucking their life energy and leaving them nothing in little podlike bodies. Look at the movies and tv programs that also promote violence for violence's sake, and inane humor or quests for beauty and brawn, but little intellect (Kardashians--I still cannot figure out what they do for humanity, but am not interested enough to research their reality show). And what is with all these fake eyebrows, tight spanx to pretend we are not fat, butt deodorant commercials... Are we really this shallow? Who controls the media, entertainment industry and education controls our minds and depths of them if we do not question and critically think. The algorithms and data mining in our technology (phones, computers, watches) are manipulative, I fear, and very dangerous to the well-being of a free-thinking, free speech society. Big Brother squared by a billion can go very wrong, as we have been witnessing. And yet, here we are in this community of respectful (mostly) free thinkers who know the world can be better than the direction we are being driven (in reverse).
This reminds me of the mid-20th century wake-up call of Rachel Carson’s formidable tome, “Silent Spring”. Environmental degradation by all these “miraculous” chemicals! Social Media has created a thought-pollution we are just beginning to see and be horrified by. The internet and unlimited connectivity was supposed to be a utopian dream. Instead we have the nightmare. “The Matrix”. We don’t know how to clean it up. It affects everything. We need to develop a social-media-sanitation-system, replace all the lead-pipe-leaching “dis” and “mis” information sites with non-poisonous “pipes”, and detox our minds. We can work to elevate public education all we want, but if we do not concurrently address the mind-pollution of social media, we are going to remain “dis-eased”.
Well put, Michele. Well put. It is on us with the help of youth, to look to this as we re-create America. I know several teens who are turning off their phones. Some youth, who get sent away to Wilderness Programs without electronics for time out from society, occasionally return and see how awful social media actually makes them feel about themselves.
Wilderness instructs us about life unobscured by human conceits. We become so caught up in our made-up worlds that we forget what we are part of.
It seems to me that my springs are indeed becoming more silent, literally. I can at least say with confidence that some species of birds that I used to regularly see on our patch are far less common or even (apparently) entirely absent, compared to 20 years ago.
I am sitting inside in a much-needed rainstorm as the drought here in the northeast kingdom is shriveling the plants and corn fields. Our small creeks and rivers are much smaller and the beavers are trying hard to preserve the water. Our local ponds and creeks have become just soft mud. I hope today's rain, and that forecasted tomorrow, replenishes the very diminished aquifers on which many of us humans and animals depend.
Must agree, Michele. These things are absolutely linked. How to clean up the social media mess w/o authentic education? How to educate in that toxic soup of social media? You've really put your finger on it.
The general idea of Facebook seems potentially virtuous but the narcissistic culture it cultivates and commercially exploits. I wonder if, like donation sustained Wikipedia, more humanity-centered alternative are possible. This forum is that in a specific way, though gated by cost, for the good and bad of that.
Hallelujah, Sista Virginia! I know some very intelligent, educated people who fell down that faux hole. Some are saying that they don't like trump the man, but they like what he has done. That is how damaging brainwashing is. They are Almost thinking, but not quite... On the other hand, I agree that he and his actors are playing an important role of showing us and the world how everything needs to change and/or be protected. Just not reversed but taking us forward to our true potential as lifted out of an adolescent democracy into a mature, adult democracy that needs to quickly catch up to a rapidly changing world.
I am baffled every time I hear someone say that they don't like Trump but like some of the things he has "done for our country".
For the life of me, I can't think of what those things would be. For certain select parts of our society, yes, but not for America or for the majority of Americans. I think I finally have a sense of what's going on with that, though. I suspect it has to do with the need we all have (well, most) to think of ourselves as decent human beings. It enables people to step away from the toxic addiction to a toxic human being, without having to eat crow to do it. It enables people to do brave things that are risky and just plain scary because you'd have to question your worth as a human being.
But ultimately, in the Jan 6th hearings, and in media interviews and discussions online, letting go of the addiction to the toxic person opens the door to thinking in new ways without giving up their sense of themselves.
And I think that it is our responsibility to make that movement a safe one, by stopping using language that is no better than the terms of privileged racism and misogyny, stop dividing us up into "us vs. them", and stop the childish use of demeaning terms.
Give people a chance to reconsider and grow by keeping that door open and welcoming. Where there's a chance, work on commonalities.
I think that power and money is an equal-opportunity corrupter, but yes, the right wing in particular seems to worship money and power (while painting it as something noble).
Sell or hide the TV set. Put up something interesting in its place - say a bookshelf. I've been living in a place without television for nearly five years now and I can't say I miss it much.
I stopped watching commercial TV in the run-up to the Bush II Iraq War, not only because the news programs became so rah-rah propagandistic, and/or irrelevant, but because the ads had become so increasingly obnoxious and numerous. I discovered that reading the Guardian online was giving me better information that was turning out to be accurate. I still subscribe to and occasionally watch PBS, though it seems a shadow of it's former self, and riddled with shallow fundraising infomercials, quiz show-like antique-appraisals, and a fixation with royalty. My guilty pleasure on PBS is murder mysteries, though I think the quality has become more uneven, while some shows, such as Frontline, Nature, and Nova, remain strong.
I used to think that the inherent peer-to-peer architecture of the Internet, and the explosion of independent creativity unleashed by Tim Berners-Lee's creation, the World Wide Web, was inherently resistant to top-down domination, and that remains provisionally true today, but not nearly so true as I had once thought, and the open season on privacy invasion has very sinister potential beyond what Orwell could have dreamt, as we are now seeing in China.
That said, the Internet, our nation, and life are to fair degree, what we make of them. The price of an open society is contrasting, and sometimes conflicting, tastes and agendas, but a shared sense of solidarity, and shared responsibility for building and protecting true "liberty AND justice for ALL can make it work; and working on that goal, beyond the commercially-focused model, seems the only way that is likely to happen, or at least be far better approached.
(Excessively asymmetric) power tends to corrupt, and money is power, or at least a key component of it. With enough money one can of one shops, purchase treason or murder for hire, or buy a senator. Violence is another kind of power. Violence is always coercive and money easily can be. The love of universal liberty and justice is also a power, but decentralized by definition. A just democracy divides political power into shares of choice and responsibility, with provisos that certain human rights are (genuinely) unalienable for all.
Ironically, what was once very much the "Party of Lincoln" now enlists an army of conquest by rekindling and manipulating identification with the Confederacy.
In 2007, I visited Mississippi with a group of high school students and another teacher to do volunteer work.. We met a 54-year-old Black man there who told us that until he was a senior in high school, he and his fellow Black students were dismissed at noon to go work in the fields. He would have been a senior @1971.
He said, “They want to keep us uneducated, keep us poor, keep us laboring in their fields.”
I was astounded. My husband was 54 at that time. I couldn’t believe that was legal in America in the 1960s. We have never been the country I imagined we were. Now, the soulless party of Trump wants to take us backwards.
The republicans have been planning this for 40+ years. Ronnie had a monkey and trump is merely the gross reincarnation of his dancing monkey groping our flagpole.
My understanding is that after Brown v. Board of Ed... 1954(?) is when people like Roy Crohn and maybe Kochs(?) recognized that an organized, concerted project of destroying public education was needed for Rs to maintain any power since they already knew they were outnumbered. So that's when it began in earnest. Long term, well-orchestrated and systematic. Bearing fruit many decades later... as in... now. Has anyone else learned this version of history?
And then they installed...DeVos as the head of education. That was the clear moment they succeeded in total control of so many dismantlers of America paid for by whom? US!
He was a very wise man about their goals for maintaining a a free but still enslaved workforce—if that is possible to be actually be free and enslaved at the same time.
On August 17, the president of the American Historical Association, James H. Sweet, published his letter, “ IS HISTORY HISTORY? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present” and handed the enemies of public education a stick to beat us with. On August 19 he published an apology, which may console his membership, but will not stop white supremacists from using his words at every future school board meeting.
I do find some hope in this SCOTUS ruling from 1982, but it will likely meet the same fate as Roe if it comes before the current court:
At the entrance of a university in South Africa, the following message was posted for contemplation.
"Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the the use of long range missiles...It only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in the examinations by students..."
"Patients die at the hands of such doctors...
Buildings collapse at the hands of such engineers...
Money is lost at the hands of such economists and accountants...
Humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars...
Justice is lost at the hands of such judges...
The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation."
-Anon.
This is where the Republicans are leading. Generations lost for the sake of a few years of power.
The corollary to that being of course, that governments with qualified, dedicated bureaucrats are the people who make a functional democratic republic possible. We are still functioning because there are so many still doing their jobs. I am grateful for that.
I posted this comment the other day about education. It bears repeating in light of Heather's Letter today.
Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC)
Aug 20
I watched one of Beto O'Rourke's rallies in a very "red" town in Texas. He converted many voters who were interviewed for the video. One converted voter who was a teacher was inspired by Beto's remarks about education. In the video he said these words about teachers: "We want to be seen as the profession that creates all others..." He also spoke of his wish that teachers be trusted and get respect. I suspect he meant trust that teachers will educate, not indoctrinate. Respect? Oh, my. Yes, indeed!
The key word in public education is - Public - meaning for all.
Public Education is not just for the children of parents that are against teaching thorough US History embracing all of its ills as well as its successes. Or, teaching lessons to embrace diversity and by that meaning kindness and compassion. Sadly, these loud news grabbing parents and there equally obnoxious representatives fail to remember that their views are not supportive of Public Education.
My view of a thoroughly informed student learning all our history and the diversity in its citizens has equal weight in the public discourse surrounding what will be taught in our Public schools.
Our voices must be heard and that will only happen through participation in voting and attending your local school board meetings and making your wishes known.
Additionally, I believe Public Education is also to be fought for by those that do not have children as well. Why? Because our Public Education system is supposed to help provide for an educated citizenry. A citizenry that will grow up to be our future voices in all things that matter.
"Sadly, these loud news grabbing parents and there equally obnoxious representatives fail to remember that their views are not supportive of Public Education."
Love your post, Karen! High quality public education for all Americans, regardless of their zip code. Yes! My only exception is this sentence above.
I don't believe it's an oversight at all. I think it is exactly what they intend. Seems to me like we have at least two generations of Americans who've now been intentionally failed by this effort to defund and otherwise sabotage public education for all. (Classism and racism at work to divide us.) Fear of empowering everyone is truly dangerous in our country.
Letting ignorant parents run or harass a school board is probably not going to get us where we need to go. Input, yes. Intimidation of professionals, no.
Many factors are contributing to the dumbing-down of Americans. In addition to poor education there is a poor diet of highly processed foods, lack of exercise and serious pollution including air, water and lead, and a steady diet of strategic misinformation. It's easy to see in people's bad choices and behaviors. Unfortunately, the Civil War of the mid 1800s was not successful in rooting this out of our system and "the South has risen again" indeed. What will it take to change the USA (and so many other places on Earth) to truly civil and just societies for all, finally?
It has long been suspected that TV and it's equivalents makes us less thoughtful. That would seem hard to prove, but passively absorbing content that is entirely managed by an outside party, as much as we now do, could be expected to condition passive thinking while self-governance requires engagement. Even reading from this screen is not as passive because you have to actively reconstitute meaning from the code on a page; and you control the pace, lingering here, skimming there. If I recall correctly, Emerson talked about "creative reading" which I think can be done, and done more easily with print than with tele-viewing; the latter more aggressively occupying available mental space. I love visual communication, and used to work in it, but any media has its strength and weakness, as well as application bearing varying intents .
As for education; while learning a trade/profession is certainly a central part of it, I have sense a 40 year push to make preparation for employment virtually the sole focus; which may suit employers, but will likely not be the wisest course for the individual or for society.
I see this in the TANF evolution. It was originally meant to allow one parent—the mother—stay home with young children during very formative years. Men often could not access the same benefit to stay at home. Reagan hyped the ‘welfare queen’ nonsense and, perhaps as a gender equality issue, turned it to ‘workfare.’ Now the (ridiculously inadequate and barely updated amount since the 70’s) benefit is so encumbered with conditions to get parents back to work despite the huge barriers in infrastructure such as affordable childcare, educational inaccessibility and simple transportation problems, that it can cost more than the payout offers. This is the poverty these unwanted babies being welcomed into. Until the quality of childcare and early educational infrastructure are addressed and poverty reduced for growing young minds, workplaces become more family friendly, and primary education is less tied to property values and the workarounds of these vouchers, inequity and elitism in our society will persist. We will be educating minimally to maintain a worker or welfare class and squandering the ingenuity of our human resource.
J L — that word. Engagement. Democracy fails without that verb. This is our Democracy's crisis call to the apathetic to do exactly that—despite the intense manipulation and propaganda against it by a smaller percentage. What we learn and discuss in this forum is what is needed in the larger sphere...but then you get the irritating mosquitos of propaganda invading. Voting must save us enough to begin to make the drastic changes we need for these times—of planting new seeds of democracy.
If we are really thinking of 'government of the people, by the people, for the people" as anything more that a pleasing arrangement of words, then obviously democracy hands us a share of responsibility for outcomes as well as choice. The ultimate buck is supposed to stop with us, and channel-surfing does not fit the job description. We are supposed to be selecting "representatives", not "only I can fix it" types. As we might engage an attorney, we hire a "president" not anoint a short-term king, nor a court of celebrity royals. Somehow a yearning for the latter keeps creeping in.
Read "Four arguments for the elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. He advocates that the medium is not reformable. Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever.
Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns."
Yet I remember a time and a place, Britain in the 1960s, when penicillin was not misused and BBC television was lively, stimulating, creative, well worth watching.
Now, I have a tv but haven't watched it for years. Apart from disgusting snippets of January 6th, Agent Orange doing his all-in wrestler's act circling round Mrs Clinton, and a single occasion a few years ago when I saw a prominent far right French politician debating, lost my cool and... suffered from high blood pressure for a fortnight... (Not my thing. I was a 125:65 guy at the time... But I do conclude from the experience that, in combination with tv, the first amendment can be nearly as or as dangerous as today's criminally lunatic interpretation of the second...)
You know, after many hours have gone by since I read this comment, I cannot for my life remember what Jerry Mander wrote because the name just had me upside in stitches and I could never take whatever it was seriously. Might re-visit tomorrow... Or perhaps someone can provide the short cliff notes.
Hi Jody! Now that i got past the humor of the author's name, :D ... i do have some recollection of learning about this work when i was in college. Today, it seems to me that TV is being replaced by the internet. We don't own a TV, and haven't for decades. Most people i know are online, not watching TV. Not that being online doesn't have its own issues and challenges for us... like the social media dilemma being discussed here. They're just different.
Must completely agree on the concept that just because technology exists doesn't mean it's benign. Eliminating these things is not likely to happen... genie out of the bottle. Educating ourselves to use these things wisely seems the only option... and that could take years...IF we could even recognize the value of doing that. You raised some valid concerns here... thanks!
Thanks for your comments. I found it hard to get past the author's name. I, too, have not watched TV for a long time although, once in a while, I stream something. I can't help but feel that the new technology is like TV on steroids. At the same time, I get lots of my news on line (Love HCR) and would have gone crazy these past several years without my discoveries that, even though I live in Trump country, I am not as alone as I sometimes feel. The problem is that in my area, a huge amount of the populace has been drugged by FOX. It's on at the garages, auto parts stores, doctors' offices, hospitals, etc. Rush Limbaugh was being broadcast at a local clothing store. A small meat market where I used to shop has a picture of an AR-15 on the front door.
I gather that we tend to teach "science" today as "technical training" but I'll risk saying that under the hood is an epistemology; what can we do to expand our understanding of the world as it is and be confident, in practical terms, that our maps accurately jibe with the territory? I think that under it's methodology is a commitment to intellectual integrity. And that is not just relevant to official "STEM" subject matter. I suppose you could crank through the scientific method and produce supportable results in a robotic way, probably such algorithms already exist, but wonder and fealty to accuracy can super-charge the process of discovery as it did for Einstein; the recursive asking an re-asking, "Did I get that right"?, What did I miss? Is there a better way to look at it". Anyone can profit from such an exercise, who may care about the "subject" of science or not. That said, science explains a lot, on an ongoing day to day basis.
The American democratic experiment- never thought in this lifetime that one would be seeing its decline. The children of today and those who shall follow will need every ounce of courage to change this downward spiral. It is difficult to accept that today’s adults are spineless.
And what happens when they decide finally to revolt against the “olds”? Our demographic bulge will reach the age of inability and need massive help. How willing are today’s young people going to be to help out a generation that f*cked it all up for them?
This “Letter” from Heather is essential reading. The dissolution of the public school setting has been going on for quite a long time. I am a retired public school teacher and in about 1997, we noticed changes in our district’s curriculum and pedagogy. Our district supervisors asked us not to use traditional grammar books. (I kept mine on the lowest shelves of the bookcases). I proceeded to close my classroom door and use those books when possible. During the George W. Bush years along came “No Child Left Behind” although teachers referred to that as “No Teacher Left Standing.” As those years progressed, in September other 8th grade teachers and I noticed the same thing. By 2002, students came to us with a deficient base of knowledge. No Child Left Behind meant that months were devoted to teaching them how to perform on state mandated tests. If you add the influx of more screen time, and “smart phone” use, here we are. I have to wonder if the Marjorie Taylor Green/Lauren Boehberts of today were products of this slow circling of the drain of public education. They certainly do plumb the depths of ignorance. Republicans continue to target public school education in the worst possible way. Public schools are vital to the health of the democracy yet here we are. The current state of public schools is demoralizing and requires that we give it emergency care.
I worked in public schools in 80’s and 90’s. Hard enough then, I can’t imagine after the W Bush years; the “tea party” types were just getting revved up.
And in 1959, Jim Johnson, an Arkansas Supreme Court Justice, told thousands at a pro- segregation rally to "do what needs to be done" to stop integration of public schools. The history is long is this continuing attempt to limit what our children can learn, and in what way, and with what sources. These letters become ever more valuable.
What the Republicans are doing to public education is disastrous, untenable and unforgivable. We must protect, support and improve public schools. And we must vote Democratic to preserve the promise of this country and our democracy.
Leaving aside for the moment the human rights issue of the right to adequate education, the status, security and prosperity of nations across the globe is substantially intertwined with the extent and quality of education enjoyed by their populations. As in increasing climate abuse, plutocrats are trading their dominant positions in the present for a weaker and beleaguered USA in years to come. The speak loudly of patriotism, but only to distract of their theft from the future.
I speak of education as a human right, BTW, because more so than any other species, we are what we learn. Baby sea turtles emerge from the sand with mama far away, and yet know what they need to do. While we are by no means the only creatures who educate our young, we evolved to do this far longer and elaborately that other species. The quality (and to a lesser degree, quantity) of that education has a lot to do with the quality of life for individuals, as well as whole societies; and may even determine whether or not our own species endures.
Republicans want to assure that better quality of life is left only for the rich and powerful to enjoy and endure.
Some of the worst Repub “leaders”are graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford. How did thess well educated men turn into what they have become?
Greed, power, none are immune. Geo Washington said it best “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
“Ethics” is not a mandatory course of study and there is no baseline graduation require that one possesses any
True. During my studies, toward an M.A. in Criminal Justice, I took an Ethics class (taught by a Franciscan priest). It was interesting - more philosophical than applied science. I often wondered, once I got out into the "real" world, when or how what I had learned could ever be raised in the course of an On The Job discussion without either being laughed out of the assignment or simply closing the door on any career advancement. My conclusion was to apply what I could where I could without using the word "ethics" in justifying my decisions or actions.
This is it in a nutshell.
When I worked for the IN Dept of Rev we auditors had to sign ethic statements after viewing online videos!
I lived in Boston for years, managing properties that housed students from the "ivy league" schools. They are not so smart. They simply want you to believe they are. They do get an A+ for arrogance and hubris, though.
36% of Harvard entries in the 2021 class were "Legacy" admission.
This means: White kids (since Harvard was all white 30 years ago) whose parents went there but whose SAT score and grades were too low to be admitted on competive scale in comparison to those applying with a 4.0 GPA from high school and a perfect SAT.
Some of which were rejected.
Yes. Affirmative action is actually mostly for white people in this country.
And those "kids" will be segued into jobs and positions that will perpetuate their wealth and their station in life. After all, one must protect the institution and the reputation.
And the alumni donations
Mike,
Harvard publishes legacy stats?
A major portion of that elite education they received emphasized the importance of success and that the essence of "success" was power first and money second. (Power will always find ways of obtaining money and money only buys more power. The secret is to achieve more power while retaining your own money. Think Trump's perpetual fundraising methods.)
No part of that "success" includes the importance of raising up those who do not have power or money of their own only the value of using those who can help you achieve your success (with or without their agreement or to their own benefit). I was once taught (wisely) that no one who has power gives it away. Power must be taken. This sounds harsh - Machiavellian (a personality trait that denotes cunningness, the ability to be manipulative, and a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power). I don't necessarily support going to that extent but I know from personal experience that those who are not born into power/big money must work harder and find the knowledge/experience to rise above their birth status. Education is the primary key, whether it be at some elite educational institution or through wise guidance and an educational system/institution focused on preparing students for the "real world", the systems of power, and the intrinsic value of money/wealth and its application. No wonder the elite and power-born were not enthusiastic about the enslaved being educated. Even now, look at the attempts of white supremacist Republican groups/leaders in various states attempting to engineer public education toward indoctrination rather than expanded understanding, knowledge, and truth in history. See how the minds and acceptance of policies are cultivated toward worker-server roles separate from those of the elite and power classes. The Machiavellian philosophy teaches "leaders should be feared rather than loved, “if you cannot be both”, in order to avoid a revolt. (Read "Fear" by Bob Woodward), and "Leaders should have the support of the people because it's difficult to take action without their support." Are we talking about Trump, his mind-controlled "base" and his current Republican Party?
Well-stated! >>>"Even now, look at the attempts of white supremacist Republican groups/leaders in various states attempting to engineer public education toward indoctrination rather than expanded understanding, knowledge, and truth in history,"<<<
The sad and regrettable reality: A number of those Republicans are as deplete of basic intelligence and intellect as those they oppress; or, those who follow them willingly as lemmings.
So they were indoctrinated into the elite, not educated?
I guess the question is, "Were they well educated at those locations, or is that simply an assumption we make?"
Yes, good point.
It is about the money! They are bought!
they were probably that way to begin with
There was a recent article on DeSantis, probably in The Atlantic. As a kid, he was the way he is now.
Not The Atlantic. The NYer. Here it is:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/27/can-ron-desantis-displace-donald-trump-as-the-gops-combatant-in-chief
Terrifying article! We should be more afraid of him than DJT!
They were that way to begin with. These schools need to weed out applicants who lack ethical values and human decency. That's true of DeSantis, as portrayed in a recent article in the NYer. Here it is:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/27/can-ron-desantis-displace-donald-trump-as-the-gops-combatant-in-chief
At the end of the article, it says people around DeSantis are telling him all the women want to sleep with him. That made me laugh. Some promising news is that living in FL, I know Republicans and Independents who think he’s appalling and will not vote for him in November. Hoping…
Ideally:
“Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.” – John Adams
Money conquers ethics
Too often it does. Not always.
What is the standard of "well educated"? Do Harvard, Yale, Princeton really provide a better education? Or are they so ingrown and inbred that they only reward those who buy into the status quo?
I attended a land-grant school, U. of Maryland. After four years' Military service, I left full time day school to attend night school due to an opportunity in the private business sector. I had the help of the GI Bill. I went on to spend fifty years in my career field. The last thirty of those fifty were in positions of GM, VP, COO and Senior Manager, overseeing multi-million dollar budgets to which I contributed in creating. I may not be the "rule", but I am indeed not the exception. Today, U of M is ranked 20th among public educational institutions. My brother-in-law attended Engineering School and his brother attended as well. Not bad for non-ivy leaguers, I'd say.
A nd to what degree does a "publish or perish" research culture shortchange undergraduates? I've heard tell and and seen some things that very strongly suggests it can. Yea research, but that may not help the undergrad. A very esteemed professor/researcher in my acquaintance says that his peers speak of their "teaching burdens" and "research opportunities". I am aware an undergraduate class that is no more than PhD candidate (who was overheard complaining about having to teach) running Powerpoint presentations; this in a very highly esteemed State University.
Their parents and families. And maybe community? Like in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”
“You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught from year to year. It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear…,” Home and family. Long before the Ivy League.
First, they we are speaking of are not necessarily admitted on the basis of merit, but more importantly, core values and character are going to be primarily determined outside of school; within a person's family and community. School can inform and influence that, but from a facilitation standpoint. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but not make it drink.
That said, a good education can greatly expand the awareness, including self-awareness, of the willing. If that has not occurred by college, the prognosis is not so encouraging.
Pretty much my first thought, along with "educated in what?" Nearly all of those elite institutions have long histories of misogyny, racism, classism, etc. I do wonder how some of them who don't seem all that bright could have graduated from Ivy League law schools and passed the bar, but it's also very possible that either (1) they're smarter than they let on, or (2) they got stupid after they graduated.
A close friend, family as well, graduated from Harvard. I credit that institution for his ultimate suicide.
Response to Chris Buczinsky’s comment:
An assumption indeed, yet any other assumption or generalization would be just as well to avoid.
There are good humans with degrees from most any and every school.
Excellent post. thanks.
They are FAR from patriotism, but HIGH on fascism.
Yes, J L. “…speak loudly of patriotism, but only to distract of their theft from the future.” The future! That’s the true theft. Our children’s and our nation’s.
Exactly right!
Are you talking about Hunter and the CFEC? What?
Trump did say he loved the poorly educated. And there’s a reason. The GOP has long stood in the way of education. I got my first whiff of that when Reagan was the governor of my state.
ThankYou ES!!! That Gov. Reagan initiated defunding public education - from Pre K to Post Doc - is a fact that needs to be emphasized. Reagan's acts influenced other Republican governors. I remember hearing horror stories from friends teaching at all levels and across the nation.
Trump is Reagan writ large and writ vulgar. When Trump tells his true believers 'I love the uneducated' they cheer because they believe he's giving them a winking membership to the club of 'those who know better.' They are too befuddled to see he's pulling the wool over their eyes. They are only welcome to the ranks of populist cannon fodder serving the plutocrats who have their vested interests in destroying our government.
I retired in the middle 90s from my job in education and while I taught a few classes, I was mainly the librarian. When I read about what is happening, I am thankful that I was able to mainly enjoy my time in education and while I had one person who was rather consistent in trying to influence what I had in the library and in one case where it was catalogued, I had relatively few problems like we see now. I am truly angry about the use of public funds going to religious schools and do not want to fund the indoctrination that goes on in those schools. We had a Catholic school next door in the small town where I taught, and we knew we would get their rejects. Our students were convinced that because schools were religious, they were somehow superior morally which is rubbish as I reminded them to lock up their stuff when we were playing basketball at a Catholic school in the Portland area. I also had to explain to some of the fundys that Catholics were also Christians as they referred to them as some kind of separate group. The local fundamentalists are busy here in Salem and try to influence what happens in the Salem Keizer school district. Fortunately, they are the minority on the school board at the moment. Some of the local ones are busy blasting their hatred in public spaces which was very bad at the park downtown last summer. As for banned books, that is a surefire way to make them more popular. I am always reminded of our senior lit teacher who told us that he couldn't teach The Miller's Tale and of course, we all ran out and read it. Hilarious. Finally, I have always despised St. RayGun and for death star, I have run out of words to describe how heinous he is.
To be clear, current law in Maine also requires that all schools that receive public tuition funds, even the private & religious, must complete the school approval process.
Good to know, but I have no idea what the school approval process is.
I don't know how to comment respectfully that his supporters truly are the under educated and not really in tune enough to understand his putdown?
Actually that's not a fact: the average income of Trump voters is around $75,000, hard to earn without a high school diploma. And the supporters of Trump and his insurrection among politicians are graduates of Yale and Harvard and Stanford.
I'm a university professor and consider our education system largely a failure. It's been focused for 40 years on STEM subjects, and at the college level on majors that parents imagine will make the kids rich--or at least able to pay off mountains of unjust tuition debt. Critical thinking isn't a focus, nor are wide reading, foreign languages, encouragement of curiosity about the rest of the world or empathy with those in struggle.
Despite the enormous struggle of Black Americans to gain access to education, it no longer prepares most of us for informed citizenship, or even for enjoying life. This is a crisis, which you see Marj as you look at the phenomenon of fact-free liars and scoff-laws taking the reins of our state and federal governments.
Where to start?
Some Trump voters, Mitch McConnell, vote their privilege. Some their 'trickle down' and 'up by your bootstraps' aspirations fueled by plutocrat propaganda. GOP wedge issues have created single issue voters who put anti abortion and pro gun allegiance ahead of reasonable self interest and the greater good.
STEM does not preclude critical thinking. Actually much science is based of reaching consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence. The Framers intended to translate this into how we transfer power through elections, legislate through debate, adjudicate through deliberation.
The Republican Politics of Faith prioritizes irrational belief over evidence. As does much of commerce.
STEM does not of course preclude critical thinking! But my partner was a scientist, my best friend is a mathematician, father was an engineer and my brother's an economist: all agree--vehemently--that the kind of critical thinking required for informed citizenship is not taught best in STEM subjects. In my university at least it's difficult to add requirements from the humanities, arts or even non-mathematical social sciences to the curriculum of a science major ("they don't have time"! say the scientists on the Curriculum Committee), and most (not all) prefer their students to be enrolled in a B. S. rather than a B. A. degree.
An average of $75,000 a year means that many people make less and many people make more. But I worry about people taking for granted that Trump voters are uneducated or under-educated, because it isn't a fact. I wonder what kind of unexamined prejudice might lead so many people to believe it nonetheless. Trump voters are concentrated in suburbs. They are middle class on the whole. I know Trump voters who are business professors; none of my working class friends--current or in the town I grew up in are Ohio--are Trump voters. Yes, it takes all kinds to make a world, including the dark little world of Trump voters.
History of our country needs more truthful attention! More interest in what our government is doing...less in looking forward to the coming of Christ!
I think we ought consider generations of Americans who've attended the racist christian academies which sprung up as an alternative to federally mandated integrated public education. Now from elementary school through university. And including some home schooling and charter schools.
Trump's elevation is a litmus test of corruption - commercial, religious, and political - in the USA.
Remember trump is a dino (degreed in name only). He went to Upenn and paid others to write his papers. He is stupid but sly like a fox. I believe that his uneducated base sense this and love him because he IS one of them....
Another take.
Trump personifies a self indulgence and lawlessness many in the GOP - plutocrats and populists - aspire to. Unmoored from the restraints of polite society many of the wealthy chose to stay within and from the economic restraints everyone else must live within. And unmoored from the restraints of religion. The sinner man as savior. The elevation of Trump is an indictment of many aspects of American society.
In the Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings (a great read by the way) a king wants to raze a rebellious city. His vizier says 'if you raze the city you will look bad, instead appoint a loudmouthed ignoramus and he will run it into the ground.' There is also mention of 'a wild ass who appeared out of nowhere and attacked the other animals, he shown like gold but within was all corruption.' Like I said, a great read. Also a good background for alliances and conflicts along the Silk Road. The poet and translator Dick Davies has two editions. The later includes more text. You can't have too much Shahnameh!
Good take, but in a way you are also describing an unmoored two-year old brat who keeps screaming his two-word vocabulary--NO! and MINE!
BTW, thank you for the recommended read (why haven't I heard of it?)....
Lin, I made my comment before I read your comment! She said wasn't he responsible for Medicare. I told her no that it was Lyndon Johnson and then she said what about Social Security and I told her FDR. We are nearly the same age. She was married to a teacher and she was a teacher aid. Duh!
Undereducated. TFG loves the undereducated. What other civilization ever honored a failure in the education system?
It’s broader than that. Reagan said “Government IS the problem”. Can you imagine being a business that would hire a CEO that says he wants to destroy the company?
Reagan was the seed and catalyst that has gotten us where we are today. Worst President ever!!
The ethics demanded in government differ from those in the private sector. Many Republicans do not understand that. For example, in government, lawyers are hired to enforce laws. In the private sector, they are hired to find ways to get around them.
Authoritarians substitute propaganda for education, with great success, temporarily.
We have so many...and I am one for sure that it undereducated. I do have a BS from ISU at the age of 43-a little late- but it provided for my single family! It is never too late to learn!!!!
Raygun was mainly against Education because of Penury. The current crop seems to be against it as a badge of misogyny. What is amazing is when they manage to find women legislators who agree?
Also terrifying was US Map chart compiled by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) from Bureau of Labor data, showing the relative underpayment of Teachers compared to comparable college-educated workers. (What would those professions be?)
In only 4 States was the percentage of underpayment single-digit. RI, WY, NJ, & SC was almost as mind blowing as the States paying Teachers more than 30% less: CO, AZ, OK, VA, AL with WA & OR in 29% below range.
And suddenly, 'republican' State Legislators are wondering where all the Teachers have gone - and Why!! I can but imagine what will be the Teacher news out of FL & TX this Fall.
(find your State at go.epi.org/teacherpay22 )
Thanks for sharing the link. I was not surprised by the inclusion of Arizona teachers as among the most underpaid. A family member was a public school teacher there for many years. When she revealed how much she was earning despite decades of experience, I was shocked.
Thank you for the post and the link. I had seen that in the news I get from EPI, and was appalled to see MA on the list as underpaying. That may be on a state-wide basis: in my school district, I don't see teachers driving old cars like I did when we lived in Florida. We don't scrimp on education (my property taxes prove that - and I'm happy to pay them).
I see my adopted state, Virginia, made it to #3. Nothing to celebrate, for sure. Thank you for your post, Westtreker.
Yes, I'm from CA too and remember that.
One of my grade school friends told me the wonders of Reagan last evening. I tried to enlighten her to no avail. She is a devout born again Christian. She has bought into the Big Lie.
It seems 65%-75% of the Country has to play Johnny Appleseed to the balance by bringing the Good News to them. Truly Sad.
Reagan was one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. Close to Treasonous in his Administration. Although we thought worse of Nixon for the lives lost.
But, then came tRUmp. Suddenly, we let Reagan comments slide and wouldn't mind having a beer with an Artist named W.
I’m always mystified by the number of people who love RR. Like the followers of trumpism today, who when presented with the facts, they reject them. It’s all there in black and white, not to mention what they saw with their own eyes, but they choose to stick with an alternate reality. (Or alternative facts I suppose)!
C C, I hear your frustration. And I see the education debate as trying to appease all adults -at the expense of the actual children. The bottom line is money. That exposes all the dirty little secrets of the educational debate. Public education was fine until Brown vs Board of Ed. tried to level the playing field. Suddenly a whole lot of white people no longer believed in public education if their dollars would also help black and brown children get educated. The gop underfunding of the social safety net has pushed more expectations onto under paid teachers to cope with poverty, homelessness, domestic abuse, mental illness delivering negatively affected children into overcrowded classrooms. Adult hysteria over comprehensive sex education and cultural acceptance of changing gender norms, have left teachers and school libraries gagged to respond - or worse, much worse. Dems are framed as just wanting to throw money at the situation (money IS needed) ,but they lack loud voices as to an effective educational vision. We are content -it seems- to prop up an inadequate public system, because it’s public. Without a Vision of what we want it to be: A level playing field that builds on each child’s ability to the fullest, producing a civil, competent member of society. With society providing a threshold of stability to make this possible. Deliver children truly cared for by adults and the greater society, and education is a cake-walk. Once children are born their “preciousness-quotient” seems to plummet. They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. All necessary. And worthy of an excellent education. For everyone’s benefit!
"They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. "
Reagan's creepily successful political mission was to stir resentment of of the whole premise of democracy; that is to say, the sharing of the ultimate power of choice and of social responsibility in shares among ALL of the governed. He championed instead those who somehow manage to acquire the most money, which Republicans will tell you (and have certainly told me more times than I can count) is solely a product of their virtue. It is true enough that some arguably virtuous behaviors can result in making money, but things become far more complicated once an individual worker is compensated for their actual labor. Robert Reich has argued that Trump would be richer had he parked his inheritance in an index fund, and that also ignores Trump's shady relationship with the mob, and the money "pouring in from Russia". You don't become a billionaire by millions of hours of your own labor. I'm not sure that there is anything inherently wrong with living on the profits of investments. I am doing so in my years of dotage, but not everyone starts out at the same starting line on that one, economically or educationally, as Trump certainly did not. Lincoln simply told the plain truth when he said:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
That's pretty much the opposite of what our nominal "Republicans" are saying when they speak of "supply side" or "job creators". It's the old, feudal idea that a handful of people who own most everything are the indispensable benefactors of all of society. That can get complicated but it's mostly crap. Monopolies grow and present an impenetrable barrier to competition far less to the degree they serve markets but to the degree that they extortionately control them; what the Mafia does by somewhat rougher means.
Thus the once popular concept of anti-trust, which is the real thorn in the side of modern Republican financial patrons. Take a long-view look at the flow of money and the intent of policy since the "Reagan Revolution". And pure greed has no conscience.
Who makes, who takes? Who has gained and who suffers under the spell of "Republican" ideology? And who, when logic is clean, and evidence accounted for, is telling the truth?
Sorry that this post seems to have been posted twice. When I clicked "post" the screen froze then red letters came up that said "something went wrong". So I clicked again, and after an and the post immediately came up, but then after about a minute, came up again.
"They are viewed more as either makers or takers, not as all the pieces of the same puzzle. "
Reagan's creepily successful political mission was to stir resentment of of the whole premise of democracy; that is to say, the sharing of the ultimate power of choice and of social responsibility in shares among ALL of the governed. He championed instead those who somehow manage to acquire the most money, which Republicans will tell you (and have certainly told me more times than I can count) is solely a product of their virtue. It is true enough that some arguably virtuous behaviors can result in making money, but things become far more complicated once an individual worker is compensated for their actual labor. Robert Reich has argued that Trump would be richer had he parked his inheritance in an index fund, and that also ignores Trump's shady relationship with the mob, and the money "pouring in from Russia". You don't become a billionaire by millions of hours of your own labor. I'm not sure that there is anything inherently wrong with living on the profits of investments. I am doing so in my years of dotage, but not everyone starts out at the same starting line on that one, economically or educationally, as Trump certainly did not. Lincoln simply told the plain truth when he said:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
That's pretty much the opposite of what our nominal "Republicans" are saying when they speak of "supply side" or "job creators". It's the old, feudal idea that a handful of people who own most everything are the indispensable benefactors of all of society. That can get complicated but it's mostly crap. Monopolies grow and present an impenetrable barrier to competition far less to the degree they serve markets but to the degree that they extortionately control them; what the Mafia does by somewhat rougher means.
Thus the once popular concept of anti-trust, which is the real thorn in the side of modern Republican financial patrons. Take a long-view look at the flow of money and the intent of policy since the "Reagan Revolution". And pure greed has no conscience.
Who makes, who takes? Who has gained and who suffers under the spell of "Republican" ideology? And who, when logic is clean, and evidence accounted for, is telling the truth?
It's not about money or NY would have the best schools and the finest services. They don't.
Today's Democratic party thinks it has a lock on virtue. It is a place where the ends justify any means. Why does it promote Open Borders, Defund the police and reject school choice if it really cared about "black and brown people" outcomes? It seems to me to care more about votes, power and virtue signaling. Just look at the cities Progressives run? Crazy. As for education we should have higher expectations and give everyone a better chance to succeed rather than telling everyone they are a victim and that the other guy is the problem. We are all in this together. Also calling half the country racist has got to stop.
It is about Money - the proper application of it. And, "Today's Democratic party" does have "a lock on virtue". Just look at the alternative party and their "Facts". It is obvious that you listen to too much Faux Entertainment or Bannoan Pods (Pots). You are describing today's 'republieCon/tRUmpLieQon' party. Real progressives are the best chance we have. Like Mayor Pete. He's not Perfect, but he can talk and think and chew gum at the same time. I have higher expectations from him. BTW: I do not know of any Democratic elected official in my area who tells anyone "they are a victim".
I am going to ignore your final sentence.
I got a call from an old and beloved friend who was pretty off the charts liberal back in the day (like early 1970s). When politics was mentioned, he was clear that he was not into Trump, yet perhaps spoke even more harshly about progressives, who he claims "hate everything". He mentioned in particular Sanders, who he dismissed as "a clown". When I see this on message boards I wonder about trolling (divide and conquer) but I am very aware that a lot of it is fully sincere, and it is not all that uncommon.
I don't know how to brand myself politically, as I like to mix and match; whatever works. I'm so-so or dubious about some "progressive" positions, and also about some of the (whatever you want to call it) DNC-approved positions. I have voted with Democrats since I was eligible, and lately would vote for a sack of sand (which would at least do no harm) over any Republican. That's not brand loyalty, it's just survival.
From what I can see, the "progressives" I am aware of are far more on the same page with "mainstream" Democrats than not, especially considering the malignant alternative performance of Republicans. That some do not seem to see that seems weird to me and even (given the circumstances) dangerous.
And what, after all is a just democracy, if not an environment in which people can differ reasonably peacefully, and sometimes even grudgingly creatively, excepting behaviors, such as drunk driving or polluting, which are unacceptably irresponsible, or those that are deliberately predatory.
And, Democrats cannot be associated with our $29.7 Trillion National Debt!
Raygun started it, W added to it, and Trump piled it on!
Biden just Paid a bit back or it would be over $30T!
Bill paid a chunk back. Barack stomped out its meteoric rise.
David...
You must expand your informational resources from only one source your clan watch all day and night, Eh!?
Try finding the definition of CRITICAL THINKING and then add it to your minimalistic repertoire...
Betsy DeVos pushedd charter schools, and even managed to secure TAX funding for them. She was and is a conniving (expletive).
Expletive Expletive!
Nahhh. Best I keep it civilized! 😈👏
The Southern states seem to fully embrace the bigoted,, demented, hatefulness requirements of gop membership...the obviousness of their southern states educational system is indicative of such requirements.
Another issue is republicans perception of law enforcement.
It would seem to all of us who have not been elected into southern states federal Congress lack the very special dispensations afforded to those we actually have elected into Federal Congress for the purpose of protecting ALL of our interests…
EXCEPT
When the protection of Congress members of southern states interest become in conflict with ALL of our national interests…We see in actuality in every such instance those Congress members of southern states will enjoy a type of JUSTICE NOT to ever be enjoyed by ALL those who voted in ALL such “Above-The-Law” Congressional Members…
To Wit:
A federal judge ordered Lindsey Graham the white old sniveling bigoted Senator from bigoted South Carolina to testify in the Fulton County DA’s investigation this week.
Of course his oiled slick rich attorneys appealed the ruling up to the 11th Circuit court of appeals.
Something most of us could never achieve.
Not surprisingly that good old boy court is permitting it’s bigoted brethren Graham to skip his scheduled testimony this week.
What the hell, Eh!?
After all in the deep southern redness where the law treats crime differently depending upon the color of one’s skin such special white dispensations are the De rigueur.
So just how special is Flimsily Lindisily…
His attorneys have now cooked up a scheme where the red state “district judge” will adjudicate whether or not the speech and debate clause privilege afforded to members of Congress for conducting their official responsibilities could mean a South Carolina Senator’s Georgia election’s fraud crime might be conveniently ruled a “quashel” of Lindisily’s subpoena!
What a crock, Eh!?
Wow...Incredible really
Yup...
It’s just gutting public education even further which is the purpose in the first place. Today’s trumpublicans have no more use for a good public educational system than they have for used toilet paper. Dumb down the electorate.
Keep in mind, the first thing most strongmen do in any government takeover is to round up and kill the educators. Not a pretty picture to contemplate.
Pathetic. You politicize a fundamental issue to play into your partisan worldview. Look in the mirror. What if you were in a dystopian school with no way out? In your world that is just fine. Trumpian indeed. You are one of the sheep.
Haven’t been around very long have you David?
No, David, ;SPW' is correct. Draining Cash from the Public's Coffers was part of the plan Betsy and her group of Church-schooled co-conpirators had in mind. Mike Pence, another Church-schooled lad of another religion thought it a wonderful idea and signed Indiana on to the plan. The idea is to Fix those dystopian schools NOT to make it impossible financially to do that. I had to do that years ago, and it can be done.
It seems you may be one of the sheep - or didn't you see last night's tRUmp News.
Love it. You are a religious bigot playing the Trump card afraid of choice. Feed them cake ;). Good luck :)
Huh??
So easy to jerk your knee. If you want to send your kids to Religious or other Private school, Fine. You Pay for it! Just like my parents did. The Public has no business funding parochial or private schools. Period.
If Betsy Prince DeVos, with her 7 yachts and inherited Millions, wants to scholarship them, fine by me. She has no business lining up We the 99.7% to do so.
tRUmp card? Yes, he belongs in Jail for so many things we can no longer keep count. If he, with his $Billions, wants to scholarship kids, Perfect! He won't need his $Billions where he's going.
Good Luck to you!
What they are doing to our country is disastrous, untenable and unforgivable. Heaven help our future generations!
Disastrous and unforgivable, yes. Untenable, I fear not. White supremacist inclinations have a tenacious (or worse, quite possibly unbreakable) hold on most white Americans.
Rex
total B.S. or worse...
You need help. Race crazed. Get your nose out of Kendi’s books and get real. You had too much cool aide
You are right but who do you modify as "they". In many communities it is the monopoly school system. Why do you think in New York families are lined up to get into charter schools? Some are really good -Success Academy. Change can be good.
David, as usual, you focus on one thing and ignore the complexities. School systems are underfunded. Teacher pay is often the first thing cut, as well as teaching supplies. Let's not forget facility maintenance. Charter schools are over-rated: they can cherry pick their students, and still they perform poorly, as repeated studies bear out. Yes, there are some good ones, but there are an awful lot of pretty bad ones. It's stunning to see other nations who prioritize education, are willing to pay taxes to support schools and pay teachers as the valued professionals they are. Up front costs pay off down the line. Over and over again. And yet we play a kind of cake-walk game in which kids are the losers. And America, because we are losing a sustainable future.
Yes, Annie. It's distorting the issue to equate supporting and improving public schools with accepting the status quo. Our public schools need to be improved and must be a big priority in this country. They have been ignored for far too long. Just spending more money by itself won't make them better. Some schools in poor areas have done a great job teaching their students, because people who have better ideas are running them or listening to those who have those better ideas. Some schools are being drained of funds by administrators who hire friends to conduct "studies" that help no one but the administrator and their friends. I'm not saying this is happening everywhere. But when America decides something is a priority, we have accomplished amazing things. Creating great public school systems around the country is critical to having an informed, intelligent, upwardly mobile and voting public. It's disingenuous for those like Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis and their many aiders and abettors to strip down and hamstring public education as if it cannot be vastly improved. They don't want an informed, intelligent, well-educated electorate. They want to control the country from their imaginary thrones, like they are something special and more important that the rest of the country. They want power and don't care how many people they hurt to get it. The truth is that people who think their money or their religious zealotry make them better than everyone else are dangerous, deluded and morally crippled. We need to create a strong public school system across this country and while it will take time and dedication, it can certainly be done. But it starts with good, caring, smart leadership from someone who wants all of America to prosper and to give every child a strong, start with a great education.
“They” are the elitist Progressive America. The kind that go to elitist northern boarding schools, then to Harvard and off then to the battle fields of dystopian New England colleges where sheep are fed.
Our public schools in general are terrible. It’s not the money or NYC would be great. It’s being real, demanding and accountable. I imagine that is Supremacist or some other nonsense these days. Choice and competition is not a bad thing given the broken state of things.
Are you prepared to have your Tax Dollars siphoned off or to pay more Tax Dollars to Fix the Problem?
If that spending is value yes.
I think most of use will agree.
The problem with detecting "Value" is the 20some year wait to find out if there really was "Value" from the Change or Spending. Compounding the problem of where is the '"Value" are the Students and their families who must be served by the Public system who would be "unaccepted" by the "Charter" system. Largely, the "Charter" system thoroughout the US is a charter to discriminate, propagandize, or cherry pick students.
BS You are afraid of success.
https://www.educationnext.org/what-explains-success-academy-charter-network/
If we dumb it all down and almost all students fail in life why do it at all?
Underscoring the truth that republicans Hate America and Americans, except, maybe, that one.
In everything they say, do, or enact, they demonstrate that underpinning truth.
Yet, TG, they are a Minority Party amounting to predictably 36% of the population - and declining.
I don't entirely disagree that Republicans "hate America" but America is many things. What they seem to hate is democracy, and the idea of sharing power and responsibility with others. What they appear to want it to completely rule the roost, self-righteous dictatorship.
I disagree. Our schools need radical change. We saw it recently in Virginia. Woke educational ideology sent a tin eared Terry McAuliffe went down in flames when parents were told to stand down and woke ideologist played Stalin. Give children, all children, choice and a path to great success and we will all win. It has nothing to do with racism. Democrats, and their Teachers Union, are now on the wrong side of this issue. Exceptionalism and choice are not racist when on offer to all.
I agree that our schools need radical change. Dramatic change.
First, there should be a universal curriculum that reflects the TRUTHS of our history and an open discussion of diversity and the great value that brings to a tolerant and compassionate society. The alternative we see playing out in Florida and elsewhere is mental inbreeding which simply produces more bigots and haters.
Second, all schools should be supervised in offering that universal curriculum and lose funding when bigotry and "exceptionalism" is taught in lieu of reality and the rights of ALL Americans to live freely and openly.
Layer on to that a consistent history class at EVERY age that carefully and accurately explains who we are and what we did with a mission of doing it all better in the future. Start with the genocide of indigenous Americans and carry it right through to the present - where black men are shot in cold blood at traffic stop by cops - because they are black.
There is honor and horror in our history. Our kids need to learn about both so we can evolve from this racist, sexist, liar dominated culture. Teach truth. Teach reality. Leave "gods" and hate at home. 100% equally funded education for every child regardless of zip code.
You are right. We do need "RADICAL" change. Righteous change.
BTW, IMO, being "woke" is being real. It is admitting error. It is wanting to be a better, more loving human. It is wanting fairness and justice. Don't we all want that?
All the prophets of every faith were "woke".
Exactly, Bill. Thank you for explaining so well!
YES!
Excellent, Bill! ❤️
Teach the truth!
Common curriculum tried to address that universal curriculum issue.
♥️👍
Woke us dystopian and fascist. That said you are heading in the right direction.
I guess ‘Woke” enters the column of multiple meanings like “Freedom”, “Patriotism”, “Love”, and “Facts”.
I am so sick and tired of the use of the word “woke.” I am fed up with the blame cast on teachers’ unions. I am an public school elementary librarian (thank goodness - in a blue state). It is not “woke” to teach about the true horrors of slavery and oppression; it is not “woke” to ensure that diverse groups of people are given a voice in our curriculums and books. They are just as much a part of this Country as white,Christian, straight men!! Student choice is a fig leaf for defunding our public schools and this “woke” business is just another way that the GOP and their dark money billionaires keep this Country divided so that we don’t unite in our opposition to them and their greedy, runaway capitalism.
Re: Defunding our Public Schools
The motive is, of course, to propagandize White 'xtian' nazism into Our Future while Profiting RW Propaganda organs. (Note: xtian is used in place of Christian because there is no Christianity to be found in most these entities.)
And David Carroll I Disagree with your reasoning.....
I notice you used the word STALIN several times. No need to mention other country's dictatotor's when using examples - there are ENOUGH examples here in the UNITED STATES. Take my state TEXAS for example..... Where a KELLER school board (Politically CHARGED I might add) pulled books just this last week ....... Which includes the Diary of Anne Frank - which I might add really KNEW WHAT about living on THE WRONG SIDE........
A graphic novel interpretation of the Anne Frank diary. Not the actual Diary of Anne Frank. But I agree with you! My kids went to Keller ISD schools and I’m appalled! The Bible was on the list too, but I heard at the last minute it didn’t get banned.
It’s upsetting to be in the whirlwind of this educational piece of history.
"Graphic" novel interpretation........Would they of pulled the book if there was actual pictures of the horrors of the Holocaust?
Would they HAVE pulled the book?
Yes, the district pulled the book. The district is reviewing the book. The book was one of 41 books pulled for review.
https://www.npr.org/tags/725876373/book-ban
This is not the first time this has happenned. It's a repeat.
I agree that our schools need radical change, and all of this might be good for us to create new public educational systems that actually are better attuned to the Information Age. Teachers are required to do way too much in their professions with little compensation besides the love of teaching. But when they must teach children who have learning differences, behavioral and mental health issues, hunger and poverty issues, foster/adopted/divorce and grief issues, and yes, darker pigmented skin, or practice different religions than the white privileged kids—then education is severely compromised. Add a pandemic and rethuglican oppression for education and voting and we are back to the overt days of slavery of all colors of people who lack education. This is the white supremacist/monied elite with their knees of our necks. This is the dumbing down of America to keep it enslaved. This is this extremist cult of the party of sedition and treason against our country and Constitution main premise-- who have said outright and supported, "I love the uneducated (they are easier to control and keep enslaved). As with everything in America, we have deep changes to make in every level of our society. But going backwards and maintaining the Caste System of feudal lords and kings absolutely NOT an option in this country. The majority of us are are much more enlightened that that (I hope!) and will fight for the rights of All The People. But the way, what color is your skin, David?
Not to mention that schools have become targets for every gun nut with illusions of fame and notoriety. And many wonder why teachers are leaving in droves???
Yes, I work with the adolescents of today who have to have massacre prevention drills. This is fricking insanity and the republicans cure is more f-ing guns. How christian, with a small c. What would Jesus do? I doubt encourage more guns. Idiots.
❤
Lots of communities fund their schools through property taxes. In one community in which I lived, there was a mileage increase on the ballot to raise funds to build a new high school. The current was significantly overcrowded. One person said, “I know we need a new school. But this tax is the only one I can vote against, so I’m voting against it.” Two more tries were needed, but eventually the new school was built. But what a selfish, shortsighted attitude!!!! 😖
In Oregon for many years the property tax was the main way of funding local schools. We had to go to voters and if they didn't vote in the budget, school didn't start. I remember one year where we had a late start because of this and students crying. Now the state mainly funds schools and local bonds pay for new buildings and upgrades. And then recently it took us three tries to fund the local fire district. I was appalled at the arguments against the levy.
Pensa, I wonder more about David’s nationality than about the color of skin. I imagine him sitting in St. Petersburg trying to come up with inflammatory statements using the American buzz word of the day most calculated to upset us. Best to ignore him, I think.
KR, you're right. Best to ignore the David troll.
Well, I would consider Russians to be fair-skinned... and some to feel they are uber privileged in that. And of course, there are people of color or Jewish who follow the fascists white-privileged, crowd thinking. There is no accounting for identifying with your captor. Stephen Miller is a good example. Totally clueless that he advocated for rich, white males who are not so keen on Jews or POC. Or that darker0pigmented guy on our SCOTUS whose white wife appears to have helped the coup d'etat against the American government...and sanity. He may think he is white skinned by association. No one is going to suppress his vote at the polls or put him in jail because he is unusually "protected."
You are right, of course. I find Stephen Miller completely baffling and horrifying.
Yes, and where is that little weasel these days? I hope he is spilling his guts to trying to save himself. That would just be sweet justice if he is a whistleblower for the trump regimen..."He who shall not be questioned." Would love to know his family's history.
Yes, David. What color is your skin?
He's doing exactly what he's here for, Chris, -- a distraction from our advocacy on behalf of democracy, learning from HCR and from each other -- that shiny object that DJT, the Russians & the Republicans are so good at -- even here.
Exactly Fern! I have repeatedly posted here that he is a troll--whether one paid to plant seeds and sow discord, or the modern version of the "landline heavy breather" attempted to get his jollies over upsetting people, I am not sure. He got pretty crazed a week or so back, really inflammatory statements (which I commented to him that made me laugh, I find his comments in direct proportion to how anxious/worried the Right is becoming). That must have struck a nerve as he's calmed down considerably (and became rather boring.) But do watch, as the Trump train is speeding up towards the cliff, I am sure he'll get all worked up again. :)
He answered in the affirmative. I was pretty sure he was not a POC.
Do you have any suggestions when the choices now before us are authoritarianism/fascism vs. democracy? Those of us who know history and how tyranny rises, see exactly what is happening in this country. Who do you think are the REAL dividers? The hate mongers? The liars and destroyers of democracy and the purveyors of propaganda and white supremacy thinking taking away our rights as if they are kings. Chastise those who hate and are trying to destroy this country. Yes, I will stare down and call out fascism because so many people around the world died to save us from it. And I will stare down and call out racists who try to take us back to whatever year they think they will have total power again. I have given David Carroll and some other guy this week total respect and earnest conversation. Then they turn the tables and spew lies and propaganda. Most of the time, we just ignore trolls here. Sometimes it is a good engagement to see if they will provide facts to back up their stance. I find it mostly an exercise in dealing with brainwashed people and deep their training goes. There's nothing that will reach them, but I never fail to try. Hope springs eternal...to a degree.
Universal public education, done well, leaves young adults well-equipped to <make choices and to choose a path to success>. When parents make that choice, the powerful breed more power, the powerless remain powerless. Equality of early education strengthens our democracy, in my view. If the parents want to pay for a non-public education, that's their choice - but taxes should support only public education.
I respectfully disagree. I am talking about giving “ everyone” and every family the choice of their share of tax money and sending their children to better schools. Universal public education today generally is awful. I was on the Board of a private boarding school for 8 years. We could have had 40%+ of the students from any background if they could have paid something. Competition. It works.
You’re not talking about competition. You’re talking about defunding public education.
The charters and Xtian schools look good when the public schools in your area have been defunded to the bone. From this vantage point of self fulfilled prophesy, the “pro-choice education” gang after starving and crippling the public system, say “But we NEED choice! Look at the condition of our local school!” They are all for “completion” as long as “competition” is rigged in their favor. Public taxes for public education! The churches with their boatloads of money, can fund their own schools, with the left over from all their sex abuse law suits.
Actually no. I'm talking about fully funding public education. Is the goal an educated and successful citizenry or perpetuating a system that is failing our families and students?
Sure and pulling the funds from the public school system so a kid can attend a private boarding school will help fully fund public education (sarcasm intended).
Ah, an elitist view of the wealthy who can afford to send their child to a Prep School (aka a private boarding school). Their Prep Schools are so well endowed financially they can offer any child wealthy enough to attend a them decent education. Yet you argue pulling money from the public sector to add to a Prep School’s endowment. What the….!!!???
Btw everyone here should be made aware that every Prep School in my state is a registered as a Non Profit Organization! Yes with the incredible amount of money they have, all are Non Profit Organizations.
I pay taxes which support public education. I have no children (and never will). I don’t fight the tax I pay to support public education but I could. After all since I have no children why should I pay for some other persons kid to get educated?! Shouldn’t I be able to pull the tax money I pay for public education out of the public education system and use it however I see fit? Based on your argument I should have the right to those funds.
However I see public education as something a community does to the benefit of the community as a whole. To pull those funds and direct them elsewhere would hurt my community/ the city in which I live. Rather than pull those funds from the public sector and put the funds in a private schools hands (in your case those already so incredibly endowed Prep Schools) how about focusing on how to improve the public education in your community. How about giving a sh** about those less well off financially than the wealthy that can afford to attend the Prep School!
And your claim: “We could have had 40%+ of the students from any background if they could have paid something.” in reality is a total crock. The “if they could have paid something” is nothing but a lie. Those families of children in the public schools cannot afford “the something” to cover the remaining money/ tuition to attend a Prep School no matter how much money they could get from the public school system allotted to their child’s education. They simply cannot afford what’s left of the Private/ Prep School’s tuition.
I speak from direct experience. I have worked with the Private/ Prep School system and see the workings. Even children who are gifted in some way (academically, athletically, artistically) are rarely, if ever, given a scholarship to cover the tuition money beyond which their parents could afford, much less given full scholarship to attend.
When it comes to supporting public education vs pulling a child’s allotted tax money from the public school system and using it for a child to attend a private school….. You write “Competition. It works.”
But it’s not about Competition it’s about Caring. Caring about your community. Caring about the Community’s public school system. Do what you can to make it better. All children who attend will benefit and therefore the community as a whole will benefit.
That said I don’t begrudge my tax dollars paying for a child in my community to attend our public school system. In the long run I and my community will be better off.
You are full of baloney. Public schools in many cases care very little about outcomes. In fact as a developed country our schools in general suck. Charter schools are one option. Other well run private schools are another. Nobody anointed our public school system as a monopoly although the Union would like it that way. Also the Boarding school I am talking about is not well endowed and on the margin could absolutely spread its dollars further if it had them. The school does a great job and has been around for 150 years. Not all are Phillips Exeter that is a terrific school. A lousy school system with poor outcomes should beware. Good school systems will flourish and I am sure there are many. What are you afraid of?
You wrote:
“I was on the Board of a private boarding school for 8 years.”
Instead of supporting and promoting that private/ prep school by being on its Board you could have been spending those 8 years working to better the public school system where you live.
Seems the baloney on your plate is what’s full.
Have you thought through the implications of such a model? Just curious. Game it out.
David, you've posted a lot of nonsense designed to distract us from intelligent discussion. In all this time you have not revealed anything specific about yourself as a person. This is a toss-away, suitably vague, that reveals nothing, and gives you no credibility. It pretty much seals my sense of you as a liar here primarily to pull attention to yourself. You are bogus.
I’ve debated whether to respond, but here it is. As a Virginia educated K-BA senior, I was appalled by the knuckle dragging, mouth breathers who were so easily swayed by propagandists. On the other hand I was disgusted by the educated buzz word pseudo christofacsists who advanced the propaganda in order to prop up a failing ideology. No way do I want those folks setting public school curricula. Looks like we got what we deserved in Virginia. An ambitious dilettante rich guy with his eye on higher office with no regard for Virginia other than as a stepping stone to that higher office. Reminds me of Eddy Dalton in the ‘80’s.
Don't know Eddy Dalton, Gail.
She ran against a long serving Democrat, Bill Parkerson, who was President Pro Tem of the Virginia State Senate. As such he did much for my (then) locality, and the state. I was on his campaign staff. Her aim was the Governorship and when her political aspersions were stymied folded her flag and went home. She served only one year in the Senate before launching her campaign for Lt. Governor.
From Wikipedia.
"Edwina Panzer "Eddy" Dalton (born June 12, 1936) is a former first lady of Virginia. After the death of her husband, John N. Dalton, she ran as a Republican for the Senate of Virginia, serving one term from 1988 to 1992. In 1989, she ran unsuccessfully against Don Beyer for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia."[1]
Thanks so much, Gail.
Again, I respectfully disagree. Glenn Youngkin was elected by a crossover vote in both Northern Virginia and Tidewater. Terry committed political suicide backing the status quo going so far as to bring Randi Weingarten to the state. It was his to lose and he lost it. Younkin is a pro choice education advocate who wants Virginia to be competitive as a place to do business. He won when two months before the election nobody thought he had a good chance. He ran a compelling campaign and travelled the state. Dilettante is Beto. Younkin made his fortune after playing basketball at Rice. He put himself in the public field of battle and won a surprising victory. Don’t underestimate him. He is hard working and a good guy notwithstanding what you think of his politics if one is allowed to say that these days.
Those “crossover votes” fell for propaganda and a bumper sticker slogan. Again.
Exceptionalism? Borne from the backs of our enslaved and redskins of original residents ...
Some educated are simply awoke to horrors perpetrated by the misogynistic, racist nature of our patriarchy. Our current "originalists" warn us that the courts now view laws from the intent of our founders; those white males who owned the black, murdered the red, and subjugated all women.
Go Frederick!!!
Propaganda ruled the fools in that instance, but you make it sound so “exceptional.”
Personally your take on the situation turns my stomach. You have a very stilted view of the situation! Not at all what is going on in our public schools! McAuliffe was tied to the Waco tragedy. Not education.
Choice sounds so wonderful on the surface! But the devil is in the details.
Our current system says that if you live in neighborhood A, you go to school A and bus transportation is provided if you live too far away to walk. Parents simply need to get their children out of bed and push them out the door in the morning. So why is Albuquerque dealing with a chronic absenteeism rate of 43% - students who have missed at least 10 days of school? We have a few charter and magnet schools, where parents may apply for their children and admission is by “lottery”. The first “cherry picking” level is that parents have to care enough to learn about options and apply. The second level is the willingness/ability to transport the student to school. Despite claims that the lottery is fair, those two levels eliminate a lot of kids. So much for choice. Then there are the behavior and/or academic performance rules, which can quickly push out “undesirable” students.
So school choice sounds wonderful, but there’s not nearly as much choice as advertised.
"Choice" in schools sounds so like "freedom". But the truth is that for every dollar that goes to a charter school or religious school a dollar is sucked away from public schools and the damage is devastating to those left behind.
IMO, all of these alternatives are contrary to educational equality and punish the poor.
Of course
Ah, er, ummm ( decision made to not further waste any energy)
Thanks for the laugh!
Absolutely right. There's a lot of woke sh*t going on in elite schools from the upper west side to LA. Here's an accounting of some of that.
https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites
Are you for real?
Yes. Are you? What makes you real?
Choice does not equate to better, right?
He's right. There's CRT in schools from the Upper West Side to the posh parts of LA.
https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites
Please avoid using a Ridiculous Person™️ to support your views.
Private schools concentrate the concentrated wealth. We know that. That's a feature, not a bug, of our race to the worst inequality since we invented money – thanks St. Ronnie and Little Newt.
Weiss is not only ridiculous, she's a propagandist.
https://www.wonkette.com/bari-weiss-is-a-ridiculous-person
I probably have a 90% disagreement with Liz Cheney on policies. But I still think she's done a helluva good job on the Jan 6th committee.
Likewise, Weiss is good on some things, wonkette notwithstanding.
Agree re: Rep. Cheney. That said, I never, ever forget her anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-climate, pro-Chamber of Commerce, voting record.
As for Weiss, any life choice that puts me crosswise with Wonkette probably wants examining. As my cynical Never Trumper pal Michael says, Weiss "probably has a good agent."
Cheney's been invaluable. But I have the same problems you do with her voting record. That said, the acceleration of climate change seems to be accelerating. It's scary. Maybe she'll come around on that, and maybe that will push her to question the rest of her views on policy. (And maybe I'm dreaming.)
I've read about the kind of stuff I posted from Weiss about CRT in schools from teachers in NYC schools, and elsewhere, sounding equally pernicious. I also read Andrew Sullivan regularly. As for me, my views align more closely with Bernie Sanders than any other recent (last two elections) Democratic candidates. And my family of origin was strongly pro-worker on both sides.
WTF?
True on all counts. No time for Anton troll, so bye
Preserve what is a disaster. Nice. Got it.
"Protect, support and improve." Your comment implies that you don't get it. You can't work to improve something if you allow it, over time, to be completely destroyed by those who don't want it to succeed.
Republicans don't want people to understand the world, especially the country and states where they live and their histories. This includes discouraging young people from questioning the status quo. Why? To make people easier to manipulate and control. And make it more difficult for minority communities to advance economically. Hurting public education and banning books are the easiest tactics.
“Education is the point at which we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young would be inevitable.
And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.” (Hannah Arendt, from Between Past and Future, p.193)
Rowshan, Five stars!!!!
Thank you, Irene!
I realize it's a oversimplification, but it seems to me that the world is divided, at least to a large extent, between those who primarily wish to empower humanity and those who prefer to dominate.
'Twas ever thus
Modern life is complex in your head, but the laws of nature are unchanging.
The black Columbia linguist John McWhorter has a recent book out, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Betrayed Black America.
Michael Bales, yes, repubs, conservatives, work to prevent truth and equality in education. Not just the South. 8 states voted against an anti spanking law that even included schools. But “we” historically don’t want government interfering except for funding. The United Nations developed “The Convention on the Rights of the Child.” At one point only Somalia and USA had not ratified . And now it’s just USA that has signed but not ratified. Why?
“The George W. Bush Administration opposed CRC and expressed serious political and legal concerns with the treaty, arguing that it conflicted with U.S. laws regarding privacy and family rights. The election of President Obama in 2008 focused renewed attention on the possibility of U.S. ratification. May 7, 2022”
https://www.google.com/search?q=un+rights+of+the+child+2022&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
W was a critical factor in the education debacle, or rather the enablers (sort of like chump). Never will forgive Ted Kennedy for his kumbaya with W on this.
Proverbs 11:29: ''He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.'' Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind about the Scopes Monkey Trial. Here we go again…
A lot of 'em don't understand the world, themselves. (Although Dems have a few blinders, too. But it's a much bigger problem with repubs.)
BS
???
Wouldn't it help, Mr Carroll, if you stopped making noises, polite or rude, and explained yourself?
We got ourselves a "troll"! They drop little irritating tidbits in order to get a reaction. Probably didn't get enough attention when growing up. Sadly, that's quite common.
Chris Buczinsky - "Open up to the possibility that 'troll' is a quick way to avoid engagement with someone who genuinely disagrees."
I agree. I may fault Mr. Carroll for making many statements without explanation (supporting evidence) but I find that his stating disagreement on many issues to be a legitimate use of this Forum. If you find flaws or errors in his theories (opinions?) then you should clearly state them. Name-calling will never get anyone to a "meeting of the minds." In other words, we would never get outside the "Communication Silo" that groups such as this are at risk.
David Carroll is a long-standing -- let's say, "contrarian" -- on this site. He's been accused of everything from spiteful trollery to paid trollery. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But his view isn't really very interesting. He generally responds to attempts to engage in dialogue with escalating rudeness. He NEVER offers a cogent dialogue or debate: he instructs in the Right Way, and mocks any alternative view.
He comes, and he goes. We've had a long silent period, but he's BAAAACK!
Engage at your own risk.
Hmm, “A Bridge Too Far”, perhaps
Ah, there’s that “respectful” disagreement rising to the surface
Explain bs. Repubs are who think the last election was stolen no? They are more captured by fictions. But are not alone.
Pseudo-Christian, Spooky, pseudo-Christian.
In terms of what Christ was and what he taught, anti-Christian.
These people would like to restore the social order of the Roman Empire at the time when Jesus lived.
But they can't. It is far too advanced for them.
*
I was a schoolkid in South Africa when Apartheid was being brought in, so one of the first things I understood was the plan to place a low ceiling on non-whites' education, so that "the lesser breeds" should never rise above the station kindly allotted to them by their "betters"...
Unfortunately, the white suprematists are working to turn America into a backwater, trailing far behind the rest of a world they can only rob and exploit.
Peter, Here is a way to look backward that I hope spurs us forward as well.
” Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education must not simply teach work – it must teach life.” – W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois was and is a giant, an American sociologist, socialist, historian and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist; he was also the author of 21 books. The most remarkable among them, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, a 1903 work of American literature, It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, a cornerstone of African-American literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Souls_of_Black_Folk
He was a founder of the Niagara Movement, a collective of civil rights activists who drew up a statement of principles opposed to the Atlanta Compromise, a speech given by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. The Niagara Movement was a movement comprised of African-American intellectuals founded in 1905 at Niagara Falls. It was dedicated to obtaining civil rights for African-Americans. For more about the movement, see below.
Niagara Movement - Oberlin College and Conservatory
https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Niagara%20Movement/niagaramain.htm
Du Bois was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and edited its journal, The Crisis. ‘… using his perch to draw attention to the still widespread practice of lynching, pushing for nationwide legislation that would outlaw the cruel extrajudicial killings. A 1915 article in the journal gave a year-by-year list of more than 2,700 lynchings over the previous three decades.’ (NAACP) See link below.
https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/web-du-bois
Du Bois is known for the concept of the “talented tenth.” ‘He believed that full citizenship and equal rights for African Americans would be brought about through the efforts of an intellectual elite; for this reason, he was an advocate of a broad liberal arts education at the college level.’
W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise of Black Education
Thank you, Fern. This is precious.
*
The more I look at the antics of politicians, the more I remember my cynical Neapolitan colleague's parting shot on returning to work after a coffee break:
"Andiamo far finta..."
(Let's go back and pretend to work.)
(The Soviet variation:
"They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work...")
Who can keep up with the speed and stupefying acceleration of change today?
Some few may understand what's going on but most politicians ran after the train and missed it... a long time ago...
So now they're like kids at play, giving us a great mime show, pretending the train's just coming in and they are getting on it... They who didn't even buy a ticket... and when they did, it was for the wrong train...
Many or most should in any case be kept well away from trains and the exercise of adult responsibilities, as they know only how to wreck things.
No, if the world's to be saved, it will be by ordinary people. Mainly, I suspect, women, thanks to greater mental flexibility. People who dare to be themselves, people who, when they see what needs doing -- and no one doing it -- just roll up their sleeves and get on with doing what needs to be done.
Some rare politicians fit this profile. Like Stacey Abrams.
Yes, Peter, as you wrote '..., if the world's to be saved, it will be by ordinary people.' We must see and act against what is happening before our eyes -- the Republicans, chief among them, DeSantis, are STOMPING on education, the precious lives of our children and the future of the country.
'And now, in 2022, we are in a new educational moment. Between January 2021 and January 2022, the legislatures of 35 states introduced 137 bills to keep students from learning about issues of race, LBGTQ+ issues, politics, and American history. More recently, the Republican-dominated legislature of Florida passed the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, tightly controlling how schools and employee training can talk about race or gender discrimination.'
'Republican-dominated legislatures and school districts are also purging books from school libraries and notifying parents each time a child checks out a book. Most of the books removed are by or about Black people, people of color, or LGBTQ+ individuals.' (Letter)
Stay tuned for information about how states are destroying public school education.
Censorship by fascists. Our free speech needs to be revisited due to extremists' mind-control propagandist tactics. They sure are petrified of Democracy, Truth, Justice and our Melting Pot!
Peter, I love your analogy of people "missing the train". It is so accurate of many in the rethuglican party.
❤️❤️❣️ What you said, Peter!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this, Fern, especially for that first quote. I'm a retired teacher and am finding it very painful to see what my former colleagues (and their students) are experiencing now. Also, I have read ABOUT W.E.B. Du Bois but have never read any of his actual works. Now I know where to start (I copied and pasted this into my notes app). Education is a lifelong endeavor.
Just yesterday I received a Summer Reads newsletter from Foreign Affairs with an article by W.E.B. Du Bois. It's from 1935, about Ethiopia/Abyssinia in the context of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. It's one of the limited number of articles available to non-subscribers. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ethiopia/1935-10-01/inter-racial-implications-ethiopian-crisis
At the end of this article are links to two other articles, one of them also by Du Bois.
Thank you!
Judith, I had an emotional response to your generosity. My readings of W.E.B. Du Bois began when I was ready, past fifty. It is natural for me to think of him, particularly, now. Thank you.
Dear Pat, Now, more than ever, I remember the teachers who are part of my understanding, knowledge and care. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this, Fern. You capture the essence and brilliance of Du Bois. “The Talented Tenth.” And you also capture the “poverty “ and racism of our America, a country that since 1619 has marginalized and brutalized the African American. And any other human being who might be called “the other”.
attempted like
Thank you, Citizen60. I am happy that you read it.
❤
Thanks Fern. Essential. Link to Niagara Movement info?
G. Zinn, Please see 'Niagara Movement -Oberlin College and Conservatory after opening the link.
https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Niagara%20Movement/niagaramain.htm
❤️
I wonder how much of the non-graduating numbers have to do with the irrelevant, misleading history that’s taught in schools? Kids respond to relevant, frank information and respectful listening to their take on their moment in time. Pushing this narrow view of our history onto them is ludicrous. They see the falsity of it everyday. It’s only a formula for shutting down their minds.
I respectfully disagree
Is that because you are white, Christian nationalist?
At times, is it possible that the specificity of labels fail us?
The New Thesaurus is still in draft stage as the editors gag on the infinity of self myopia
That must be it :)
Thought so. If you were to continue to educate yourself further, by continuing to study in this forum, you might be endangered as Derek Black was when he left his white supremacist community and attended college. His new friends helped him learn about his racist propagandist approach to life and he truly woke up.
Derek Black, is a former leader of the white nationalist movement, a movement that emerged rebranded from white supremacy. Derek was raised in the movement. His father, Don Black, is a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as was his godfather, David Duke, long time leader of the KKK. The internet's largest white nationalist site, was and maybe still is, Stormfront.
When Derek was in his teens, he started the companion website Kids' Stormfront. (nice hatred indoctrination website for American and non-Americas kiddies. Derek made speeches, hosted a radio show and was considered the movement's heir apparent. After spending the first 22 years of his life in the movement, he left in 2013 and renounced his former views. His life and why he left the movement he helped lead is the subject of the new book "Rising Out Of Hatred" by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow. Thank God Derek went to college and stopped indoctrinating innocent youth with white supremacist hogwash.
Ouch.
Let me put this plainly:
If we don't out-organize, out-smart, and out-vote these people, we will have an American Taliban ruling this country one day soon.
Our beautiful future--our children's children--will be mindless compliant deplorables without access to a quality education that is based on reality, not madness.
It must not be so!
Yup. Well said, Gus.
You are so right
All I can say is that as I read this summary of the attack on public schools, the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, my main response is that this can’t be happening. Yet it is happening and it shows how far we have slipped in a relatively short period of time. Thanks Dr. Richardson for keeping us aware.
I did not know how painful it is to be ignorant, how hopeless and futile an illiterate life can be.
Before I moved to Portugal 30 years ago, I had never lived with illiterate people. Most of the people my age here only had access to a fourth grade education. The village school had 40 seats and it was obligatory to wear shoes, so the child would carry his shoes to school and put them on to enter the classroom. Birth control was finally made available ten years ago, and many families had 8 or 9 children. It was common to beat children who tried to learn to read. Many only went for two or three years. They learned that dinosaurs were not real, the Earth was flat, etc. One teacher told me she was hired to teach because she had a law degree (she is from an old wealthy family) to work in a village in the mountains far from any city.
Her students were of all ages, together in one classroom, whose breakfast consisted of coffee with aguardente, the local hootch, a relative of brandy made from pressed grape stems.
Television arrived in 1990 but was limited. Poverty of the mind is shocking. Women were only allowed off the farm if they had produce by to sell, which they carried on their heads, walking to market.
My neighbor had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, so we took her, with her husband's permission, for a picnic there. She watched the waves come crashing in on the beach and absorbed the movement into her body, stretching her whole body up and then contracting down, like a small child. She stared at the flat ocean horizon and said, "That's the end of the Earth. Ships go to the edge and drop off and go to Hell."
I said, "No, my parents live over there.".
She countered, "I don't see them."
She was a fine judge of character and knew who was trustworthy.
When Soares came to power, years after the dictator Salazar went crazy and died, government began. A health system was put into place, water to each home, education to 9th grade, and in 2008 was increased to 12th grade. Everyone, regardless of their lower schooling could start university with a government grant. The country literacy rate soured overnight. The change was miraculous. Young people became professionals, the whole country worked to reach the European Union standards, and greatly succeeded, although it can not compete without natural resources.
Life in Portugal has changed so much for the better. But inequality can never be erased. Thirty years ago one student told me her lesson the first day of 10th grade was about who was inferior and who was superior. No gradients. She has raised three children. And they vote.
Thank you, thank you for this.
Such a people!
And they have emerged, are still emerging, from the most extraordinarily airtight system of repression, the Salazar regime, a truly heroic -- anti-heroic -- undertaking whose aim was to stop the clock and preserve the Portuguese people from all contact with the 20th century.
This impossible Looking-Glass-Land regime, not Orban's kleptocratic sham, should provide the inspiration for America's finders-keepers-am-I-my-brother's-keeper pseudo-conservatives... With the PIDE, a snooping system to put all others in the shade, a thought police of watchdogs to sniff out and snuff out the first signs of thinking wherever it raised its ugly head.
Thank you again, Susan Lorraine Knox, for this marvelous snapshot of a perfect dictatorship in action.
*
Unfortunately, I fear that America may be more influenced by the example of Salazar's neighbor, a million dead, concentration camps, death squads and three and a half decades under the heavy iron ferule of a wily Caudillo...
Thank you for sharing this. Sadly, we are headed backward, are we not?
We have been. I am optimistic that we are turning around. It's a little bit like trying to get that oversized cargo ship through the Suez Canal, though. We just have to keep at it until we get it to the point it is facing in the right direction. A year ago I was depressed and people on this forum helped keep me going. This year, I am optimistic. The job (and it is a job) of people like David Carroll is to try to keep us focused on bogus misdirection so we feel discouraged. I've learned to skip over the "us vs them" threads people get drawn into, and focus on the threads that show the potential we have in front of us, and the ways we can advance that potential. Brings to mind that old saying from my younger activist days: "Keep on keeping on."
Susan, thank you for sharing this powerful experience. I will share with my staff. Facts matter. Education matters.
Hard to heart this. But thank you for sharing this. And did spellcheck change soared to soured? Interesting homonyms!
Sprllcheck. Is run by Kosacks!
When I was a small child, around the time of the Pleistocene Age, it was apparent to me then that children had to go to school to learn history
in order to make intelligent choices on Election Day. (Both my parents were very involved Stevenson/Kennedy Democrats.) I saw even then that universal, mandatory, education was a pillar of a functioning democracy.
Today’s Republicans understand this principle very well. They also understand that if we have free, open, honest elections with wide participation by an educated electorate, they are doomed.
Therefore, like the slaveholders of the 1830’s, and the autocrats of 20th century dictatorships, fascist and communist, education must be withheld, suppressed, and tightly controlled.
Today’s Republican Party would begin the teaching of American history with, “Once upon a time…”
No, it would start with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and move to the ‘amazing discovery of America in 1492’ to the Founding Fathers and Washington’s refusal to tell a lie and his ‘wooden’ teeth, and a myth that this Government was founded as a Christian system. But you’re right about the fiction.
I find it outrageous how Republicans and many Southern states rationalise creating a second class of human beings in society either through education discrimination, voting "reform", labor laws etc. Always it's the darker skinned people who are meant to be repressed, but many poor whites are too. Then they justify it as "states rights" or "financial reform" or "patriotism" or whatever. With this whole push many people who could be productive, contributing, taxpaying members of society are repressed to the benefit of the self appointed elite. It's like the rest of the worlds' democracies are moving on towards racial equality and fairness, and Americans are still pre civil war in mentality. It is just incredible how stupid the whole attitude is, and NOT a good reflection on the USA.
Yes, the cult of trumpets are manipulated enough that they support those who intend to quash their rights to education and knowledge to maintain their enslavement. The Matrix in real life. Sucking their life energy and leaving them nothing in little podlike bodies. Look at the movies and tv programs that also promote violence for violence's sake, and inane humor or quests for beauty and brawn, but little intellect (Kardashians--I still cannot figure out what they do for humanity, but am not interested enough to research their reality show). And what is with all these fake eyebrows, tight spanx to pretend we are not fat, butt deodorant commercials... Are we really this shallow? Who controls the media, entertainment industry and education controls our minds and depths of them if we do not question and critically think. The algorithms and data mining in our technology (phones, computers, watches) are manipulative, I fear, and very dangerous to the well-being of a free-thinking, free speech society. Big Brother squared by a billion can go very wrong, as we have been witnessing. And yet, here we are in this community of respectful (mostly) free thinkers who know the world can be better than the direction we are being driven (in reverse).
You read my mind
You provide me with sanity, Sista Jeri!
This reminds me of the mid-20th century wake-up call of Rachel Carson’s formidable tome, “Silent Spring”. Environmental degradation by all these “miraculous” chemicals! Social Media has created a thought-pollution we are just beginning to see and be horrified by. The internet and unlimited connectivity was supposed to be a utopian dream. Instead we have the nightmare. “The Matrix”. We don’t know how to clean it up. It affects everything. We need to develop a social-media-sanitation-system, replace all the lead-pipe-leaching “dis” and “mis” information sites with non-poisonous “pipes”, and detox our minds. We can work to elevate public education all we want, but if we do not concurrently address the mind-pollution of social media, we are going to remain “dis-eased”.
Well put, Michele. Well put. It is on us with the help of youth, to look to this as we re-create America. I know several teens who are turning off their phones. Some youth, who get sent away to Wilderness Programs without electronics for time out from society, occasionally return and see how awful social media actually makes them feel about themselves.
Wilderness instructs us about life unobscured by human conceits. We become so caught up in our made-up worlds that we forget what we are part of.
It seems to me that my springs are indeed becoming more silent, literally. I can at least say with confidence that some species of birds that I used to regularly see on our patch are far less common or even (apparently) entirely absent, compared to 20 years ago.
I am sitting inside in a much-needed rainstorm as the drought here in the northeast kingdom is shriveling the plants and corn fields. Our small creeks and rivers are much smaller and the beavers are trying hard to preserve the water. Our local ponds and creeks have become just soft mud. I hope today's rain, and that forecasted tomorrow, replenishes the very diminished aquifers on which many of us humans and animals depend.
Must agree, Michele. These things are absolutely linked. How to clean up the social media mess w/o authentic education? How to educate in that toxic soup of social media? You've really put your finger on it.
The general idea of Facebook seems potentially virtuous but the narcissistic culture it cultivates and commercially exploits. I wonder if, like donation sustained Wikipedia, more humanity-centered alternative are possible. This forum is that in a specific way, though gated by cost, for the good and bad of that.
I totally agree. Such brain washing everywhere, even grabs university educated folks. The right wing press is all about maintaining power and money.
Hallelujah, Sista Virginia! I know some very intelligent, educated people who fell down that faux hole. Some are saying that they don't like trump the man, but they like what he has done. That is how damaging brainwashing is. They are Almost thinking, but not quite... On the other hand, I agree that he and his actors are playing an important role of showing us and the world how everything needs to change and/or be protected. Just not reversed but taking us forward to our true potential as lifted out of an adolescent democracy into a mature, adult democracy that needs to quickly catch up to a rapidly changing world.
Ironic how one of the more prominent emotional adults in the room in recent years has been a Swedish school-girl.
And that she took on the orange flambé made her a double heroine in my book!
I recall those flame-thrower eyes. She does not suffer (malignant) fools gladly.
I am baffled every time I hear someone say that they don't like Trump but like some of the things he has "done for our country".
For the life of me, I can't think of what those things would be. For certain select parts of our society, yes, but not for America or for the majority of Americans. I think I finally have a sense of what's going on with that, though. I suspect it has to do with the need we all have (well, most) to think of ourselves as decent human beings. It enables people to step away from the toxic addiction to a toxic human being, without having to eat crow to do it. It enables people to do brave things that are risky and just plain scary because you'd have to question your worth as a human being.
But ultimately, in the Jan 6th hearings, and in media interviews and discussions online, letting go of the addiction to the toxic person opens the door to thinking in new ways without giving up their sense of themselves.
And I think that it is our responsibility to make that movement a safe one, by stopping using language that is no better than the terms of privileged racism and misogyny, stop dividing us up into "us vs. them", and stop the childish use of demeaning terms.
Give people a chance to reconsider and grow by keeping that door open and welcoming. Where there's a chance, work on commonalities.
I think that power and money is an equal-opportunity corrupter, but yes, the right wing in particular seems to worship money and power (while painting it as something noble).
Sell or hide the TV set. Put up something interesting in its place - say a bookshelf. I've been living in a place without television for nearly five years now and I can't say I miss it much.
Good for you. I stopped in the '70's. I find social media to be the same. Just wastes how I want to use my time and brain cells.
I stopped watching commercial TV in the run-up to the Bush II Iraq War, not only because the news programs became so rah-rah propagandistic, and/or irrelevant, but because the ads had become so increasingly obnoxious and numerous. I discovered that reading the Guardian online was giving me better information that was turning out to be accurate. I still subscribe to and occasionally watch PBS, though it seems a shadow of it's former self, and riddled with shallow fundraising infomercials, quiz show-like antique-appraisals, and a fixation with royalty. My guilty pleasure on PBS is murder mysteries, though I think the quality has become more uneven, while some shows, such as Frontline, Nature, and Nova, remain strong.
I used to think that the inherent peer-to-peer architecture of the Internet, and the explosion of independent creativity unleashed by Tim Berners-Lee's creation, the World Wide Web, was inherently resistant to top-down domination, and that remains provisionally true today, but not nearly so true as I had once thought, and the open season on privacy invasion has very sinister potential beyond what Orwell could have dreamt, as we are now seeing in China.
That said, the Internet, our nation, and life are to fair degree, what we make of them. The price of an open society is contrasting, and sometimes conflicting, tastes and agendas, but a shared sense of solidarity, and shared responsibility for building and protecting true "liberty AND justice for ALL can make it work; and working on that goal, beyond the commercially-focused model, seems the only way that is likely to happen, or at least be far better approached.
(Excessively asymmetric) power tends to corrupt, and money is power, or at least a key component of it. With enough money one can of one shops, purchase treason or murder for hire, or buy a senator. Violence is another kind of power. Violence is always coercive and money easily can be. The love of universal liberty and justice is also a power, but decentralized by definition. A just democracy divides political power into shares of choice and responsibility, with provisos that certain human rights are (genuinely) unalienable for all.
Ironically, what was once very much the "Party of Lincoln" now enlists an army of conquest by rekindling and manipulating identification with the Confederacy.
stopped being the "party of Lincoln" decades ago, tho Rs like to claim that false legacy.
There would brand much of what Lincoln said and did as "communist" or Un-American if they thought they could get away with it.
In 2007, I visited Mississippi with a group of high school students and another teacher to do volunteer work.. We met a 54-year-old Black man there who told us that until he was a senior in high school, he and his fellow Black students were dismissed at noon to go work in the fields. He would have been a senior @1971.
He said, “They want to keep us uneducated, keep us poor, keep us laboring in their fields.”
I'm crying
I was astounded. My husband was 54 at that time. I couldn’t believe that was legal in America in the 1960s. We have never been the country I imagined we were. Now, the soulless party of Trump wants to take us backwards.
This group here gives me hope.
The republicans have been planning this for 40+ years. Ronnie had a monkey and trump is merely the gross reincarnation of his dancing monkey groping our flagpole.
My understanding is that after Brown v. Board of Ed... 1954(?) is when people like Roy Crohn and maybe Kochs(?) recognized that an organized, concerted project of destroying public education was needed for Rs to maintain any power since they already knew they were outnumbered. So that's when it began in earnest. Long term, well-orchestrated and systematic. Bearing fruit many decades later... as in... now. Has anyone else learned this version of history?
And then they installed...DeVos as the head of education. That was the clear moment they succeeded in total control of so many dismantlers of America paid for by whom? US!
I should have written, "Ronnie had a monkey and Donnie was the reincarnation...."
With you.
He was a very wise man about their goals for maintaining a a free but still enslaved workforce—if that is possible to be actually be free and enslaved at the same time.
On August 17, the president of the American Historical Association, James H. Sweet, published his letter, “ IS HISTORY HISTORY? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present” and handed the enemies of public education a stick to beat us with. On August 19 he published an apology, which may console his membership, but will not stop white supremacists from using his words at every future school board meeting.
I do find some hope in this SCOTUS ruling from 1982, but it will likely meet the same fate as Roe if it comes before the current court:
“ In the Supreme Court case Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982), the Court held that the First Amendment limits the power of junior high and high school officials to remove books from school libraries because of their content.” https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/island-trees-school-district-v-pico-1982
Thank you, Suzanne! Never heard of this.
Retired librarian, researching for democracy and the greater good. 😊
Deep bow to all librarians and archivists and honest historians.. Much gratitude!
At the entrance of a university in South Africa, the following message was posted for contemplation.
"Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the the use of long range missiles...It only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in the examinations by students..."
"Patients die at the hands of such doctors...
Buildings collapse at the hands of such engineers...
Money is lost at the hands of such economists and accountants...
Humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars...
Justice is lost at the hands of such judges...
The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation."
-Anon.
This is where the Republicans are leading. Generations lost for the sake of a few years of power.
Excellent post. I could add “Goverments die at the hands of unqualified bureaucrats “.
The corollary to that being of course, that governments with qualified, dedicated bureaucrats are the people who make a functional democratic republic possible. We are still functioning because there are so many still doing their jobs. I am grateful for that.
Thank you for posting this message! It captures the role of a quality education.
I am going to save that. Thank you.
This piece brings new urgency to efforts to stem this tide of propagandists & power obsessed cultists!
I posted this comment the other day about education. It bears repeating in light of Heather's Letter today.
Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC)
Aug 20
I watched one of Beto O'Rourke's rallies in a very "red" town in Texas. He converted many voters who were interviewed for the video. One converted voter who was a teacher was inspired by Beto's remarks about education. In the video he said these words about teachers: "We want to be seen as the profession that creates all others..." He also spoke of his wish that teachers be trusted and get respect. I suspect he meant trust that teachers will educate, not indoctrinate. Respect? Oh, my. Yes, indeed!
The key word in public education is - Public - meaning for all.
Public Education is not just for the children of parents that are against teaching thorough US History embracing all of its ills as well as its successes. Or, teaching lessons to embrace diversity and by that meaning kindness and compassion. Sadly, these loud news grabbing parents and there equally obnoxious representatives fail to remember that their views are not supportive of Public Education.
My view of a thoroughly informed student learning all our history and the diversity in its citizens has equal weight in the public discourse surrounding what will be taught in our Public schools.
Our voices must be heard and that will only happen through participation in voting and attending your local school board meetings and making your wishes known.
Additionally, I believe Public Education is also to be fought for by those that do not have children as well. Why? Because our Public Education system is supposed to help provide for an educated citizenry. A citizenry that will grow up to be our future voices in all things that matter.
"Sadly, these loud news grabbing parents and there equally obnoxious representatives fail to remember that their views are not supportive of Public Education."
Love your post, Karen! High quality public education for all Americans, regardless of their zip code. Yes! My only exception is this sentence above.
I don't believe it's an oversight at all. I think it is exactly what they intend. Seems to me like we have at least two generations of Americans who've now been intentionally failed by this effort to defund and otherwise sabotage public education for all. (Classism and racism at work to divide us.) Fear of empowering everyone is truly dangerous in our country.
I agree with you. Their intention is purposeful destruction rather than cooperation and diplomacy.
Beto. Private school boy from Woodbury Forest. “I suspect he meant trust that teachers will educate, not indoctrinate. “
Yes—and wishing his own quality of education was accessible to all. As it should be.
I agree. Choice.
Is teaching real history, indoctrination?
Of course not. That said, telling parents they have no input is political Suicide.
Letting ignorant parents run or harass a school board is probably not going to get us where we need to go. Input, yes. Intimidation of professionals, no.
Giving parents veto power over curriculum is a lot different than your hyperbolic “no input” claim above
Many factors are contributing to the dumbing-down of Americans. In addition to poor education there is a poor diet of highly processed foods, lack of exercise and serious pollution including air, water and lead, and a steady diet of strategic misinformation. It's easy to see in people's bad choices and behaviors. Unfortunately, the Civil War of the mid 1800s was not successful in rooting this out of our system and "the South has risen again" indeed. What will it take to change the USA (and so many other places on Earth) to truly civil and just societies for all, finally?
It has long been suspected that TV and it's equivalents makes us less thoughtful. That would seem hard to prove, but passively absorbing content that is entirely managed by an outside party, as much as we now do, could be expected to condition passive thinking while self-governance requires engagement. Even reading from this screen is not as passive because you have to actively reconstitute meaning from the code on a page; and you control the pace, lingering here, skimming there. If I recall correctly, Emerson talked about "creative reading" which I think can be done, and done more easily with print than with tele-viewing; the latter more aggressively occupying available mental space. I love visual communication, and used to work in it, but any media has its strength and weakness, as well as application bearing varying intents .
As for education; while learning a trade/profession is certainly a central part of it, I have sense a 40 year push to make preparation for employment virtually the sole focus; which may suit employers, but will likely not be the wisest course for the individual or for society.
I see this in the TANF evolution. It was originally meant to allow one parent—the mother—stay home with young children during very formative years. Men often could not access the same benefit to stay at home. Reagan hyped the ‘welfare queen’ nonsense and, perhaps as a gender equality issue, turned it to ‘workfare.’ Now the (ridiculously inadequate and barely updated amount since the 70’s) benefit is so encumbered with conditions to get parents back to work despite the huge barriers in infrastructure such as affordable childcare, educational inaccessibility and simple transportation problems, that it can cost more than the payout offers. This is the poverty these unwanted babies being welcomed into. Until the quality of childcare and early educational infrastructure are addressed and poverty reduced for growing young minds, workplaces become more family friendly, and primary education is less tied to property values and the workarounds of these vouchers, inequity and elitism in our society will persist. We will be educating minimally to maintain a worker or welfare class and squandering the ingenuity of our human resource.
And yes it was Clinton who pushed the ‘workfare.’
Well said.
J L — that word. Engagement. Democracy fails without that verb. This is our Democracy's crisis call to the apathetic to do exactly that—despite the intense manipulation and propaganda against it by a smaller percentage. What we learn and discuss in this forum is what is needed in the larger sphere...but then you get the irritating mosquitos of propaganda invading. Voting must save us enough to begin to make the drastic changes we need for these times—of planting new seeds of democracy.
If we are really thinking of 'government of the people, by the people, for the people" as anything more that a pleasing arrangement of words, then obviously democracy hands us a share of responsibility for outcomes as well as choice. The ultimate buck is supposed to stop with us, and channel-surfing does not fit the job description. We are supposed to be selecting "representatives", not "only I can fix it" types. As we might engage an attorney, we hire a "president" not anoint a short-term king, nor a court of celebrity royals. Somehow a yearning for the latter keeps creeping in.
Read "Four arguments for the elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. He advocates that the medium is not reformable. Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever.
Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns."
Yet I remember a time and a place, Britain in the 1960s, when penicillin was not misused and BBC television was lively, stimulating, creative, well worth watching.
Now, I have a tv but haven't watched it for years. Apart from disgusting snippets of January 6th, Agent Orange doing his all-in wrestler's act circling round Mrs Clinton, and a single occasion a few years ago when I saw a prominent far right French politician debating, lost my cool and... suffered from high blood pressure for a fortnight... (Not my thing. I was a 125:65 guy at the time... But I do conclude from the experience that, in combination with tv, the first amendment can be nearly as or as dangerous as today's criminally lunatic interpretation of the second...)
Yes, I fear that the 1st and 2nd Amendments need to be amended for endangering our freedoms.. (hah!).
Jerry Mander!!!!
Right??? Read that and just started laughing!! Is that his real name?? Okay... back to the message ... probably excellent!
You know, after many hours have gone by since I read this comment, I cannot for my life remember what Jerry Mander wrote because the name just had me upside in stitches and I could never take whatever it was seriously. Might re-visit tomorrow... Or perhaps someone can provide the short cliff notes.
Hi Jody! Now that i got past the humor of the author's name, :D ... i do have some recollection of learning about this work when i was in college. Today, it seems to me that TV is being replaced by the internet. We don't own a TV, and haven't for decades. Most people i know are online, not watching TV. Not that being online doesn't have its own issues and challenges for us... like the social media dilemma being discussed here. They're just different.
Must completely agree on the concept that just because technology exists doesn't mean it's benign. Eliminating these things is not likely to happen... genie out of the bottle. Educating ourselves to use these things wisely seems the only option... and that could take years...IF we could even recognize the value of doing that. You raised some valid concerns here... thanks!
Thanks for your comments. I found it hard to get past the author's name. I, too, have not watched TV for a long time although, once in a while, I stream something. I can't help but feel that the new technology is like TV on steroids. At the same time, I get lots of my news on line (Love HCR) and would have gone crazy these past several years without my discoveries that, even though I live in Trump country, I am not as alone as I sometimes feel. The problem is that in my area, a huge amount of the populace has been drugged by FOX. It's on at the garages, auto parts stores, doctors' offices, hospitals, etc. Rush Limbaugh was being broadcast at a local clothing store. A small meat market where I used to shop has a picture of an AR-15 on the front door.
I didn't know. Gads!
Thanks for this reference.
Thank you, J.L. Graham, for this thoughtful, well-balanced contribution and its insights into heavy conditioning.
For fundamental thinking about the alienating influence of both telescreens and, above all, literacy, one can go to the work of David Abram...
Brilliantly put! Thank you for this post!
I gather that we tend to teach "science" today as "technical training" but I'll risk saying that under the hood is an epistemology; what can we do to expand our understanding of the world as it is and be confident, in practical terms, that our maps accurately jibe with the territory? I think that under it's methodology is a commitment to intellectual integrity. And that is not just relevant to official "STEM" subject matter. I suppose you could crank through the scientific method and produce supportable results in a robotic way, probably such algorithms already exist, but wonder and fealty to accuracy can super-charge the process of discovery as it did for Einstein; the recursive asking an re-asking, "Did I get that right"?, What did I miss? Is there a better way to look at it". Anyone can profit from such an exercise, who may care about the "subject" of science or not. That said, science explains a lot, on an ongoing day to day basis.
Yes!! I must agree on all you said. What was missing was the HUMANITY.
And, in the end, we are human.
A Second Enlightenment.
The American democratic experiment- never thought in this lifetime that one would be seeing its decline. The children of today and those who shall follow will need every ounce of courage to change this downward spiral. It is difficult to accept that today’s adults are spineless.
And what happens when they decide finally to revolt against the “olds”? Our demographic bulge will reach the age of inability and need massive help. How willing are today’s young people going to be to help out a generation that f*cked it all up for them?
Ruthless, in a very bad, fascist way, from what I see, from my educated view point.
This “Letter” from Heather is essential reading. The dissolution of the public school setting has been going on for quite a long time. I am a retired public school teacher and in about 1997, we noticed changes in our district’s curriculum and pedagogy. Our district supervisors asked us not to use traditional grammar books. (I kept mine on the lowest shelves of the bookcases). I proceeded to close my classroom door and use those books when possible. During the George W. Bush years along came “No Child Left Behind” although teachers referred to that as “No Teacher Left Standing.” As those years progressed, in September other 8th grade teachers and I noticed the same thing. By 2002, students came to us with a deficient base of knowledge. No Child Left Behind meant that months were devoted to teaching them how to perform on state mandated tests. If you add the influx of more screen time, and “smart phone” use, here we are. I have to wonder if the Marjorie Taylor Green/Lauren Boehberts of today were products of this slow circling of the drain of public education. They certainly do plumb the depths of ignorance. Republicans continue to target public school education in the worst possible way. Public schools are vital to the health of the democracy yet here we are. The current state of public schools is demoralizing and requires that we give it emergency care.
I worked in public schools in 80’s and 90’s. Hard enough then, I can’t imagine after the W Bush years; the “tea party” types were just getting revved up.
As an OT in the schools @ the same time, my experience & listening to teachers, it was the same.
And in 1959, Jim Johnson, an Arkansas Supreme Court Justice, told thousands at a pro- segregation rally to "do what needs to be done" to stop integration of public schools. The history is long is this continuing attempt to limit what our children can learn, and in what way, and with what sources. These letters become ever more valuable.