Friday, April 01, 2005
Letter to Tom Delay
From Senator Lautenberg:
April 1, 2005
Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Majority Leader DeLay,
I was stunned to read the threatening comments you made yesterday against Federal judges and our nation’s courts of law in general. In reference to certain Federal judges, you stated: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
As you are surely aware, the family of Federal Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois was recently murdered in their home. And at the state level, Judge Rowland W. Barnes and others in his courtroom were gunned down in Georgia.
Our nation’s judges must be concerned for their safety and security when they are asked to make difficult decisions every day. That’s why comments like those you made are not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous. To make matters worse, is it appropriate to make threats directed at specific Federal and state judges?
You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:
“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”
Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.
Federal judges, as well as state and local judges in our nation, are honorable public servants who make difficult decisions every day. You owe them – and all Americans – an apology for your reckless statements.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Lautenberg
April 1, 2005
Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Majority Leader DeLay,
I was stunned to read the threatening comments you made yesterday against Federal judges and our nation’s courts of law in general. In reference to certain Federal judges, you stated: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
As you are surely aware, the family of Federal Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois was recently murdered in their home. And at the state level, Judge Rowland W. Barnes and others in his courtroom were gunned down in Georgia.
Our nation’s judges must be concerned for their safety and security when they are asked to make difficult decisions every day. That’s why comments like those you made are not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous. To make matters worse, is it appropriate to make threats directed at specific Federal and state judges?
You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:
“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”
Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.
Federal judges, as well as state and local judges in our nation, are honorable public servants who make difficult decisions every day. You owe them – and all Americans – an apology for your reckless statements.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Lautenberg
# posted by scorpiorising : 9:04 AM |
How to Save Education
I'll let the words speak for themselves.
Saving Public Education - Saving Democracy
E. Wayne Ross, Kathleen Kesson, David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, & Kevin D. Vinson
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced "reporting" to "regurgitating" the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
That elements of the broader public have grown more sensitized to these issues should not surprise us, given just how brazenly and consistently the Bush administration has lied. Even after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in his flight suit on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, when Paul Wolfowitz smugly told Vanity Fair that the administration had used Weapons of Mass Destruction as the "bureaucratic reason" for invading Iraq, the mainstream media scarcely reported his statement. Understanding the standards of American journalism, Washington BBC correspondent Ian Pannell correctly predicted that Wolfowitz's remarks would not likely have any political consequences in the US.
The public, of course, has good reasons to be concerned about the press and the role it plays in a democratic society. Though the enforced, two-party system of "representation" goes a long way toward making democracy meaningless, access to information and ideas remains crucial to the public's capacity to organize and resist. The internet, along with the boost it has given to a resurgent independent media, has greatly expanded that access. Hence, the level of popular dissidence may be greater now than at any other time in US history. The growing influence of the internet and independent media may also be responsible for what limited questioning of official power we've seen in the mainstream news rrganizations.
As Thomas Jefferson observed, the health of democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. While the internet and independent media sources deserve much credit for helping to mobilize significant levels of organized popular protest in recent years, we should recognize that these outlets are essentially reactive. That is, they respond to issues and events in the immediate present. In this regard, they differ little from the mainstream media or even their right-wing counterparts. There is, however, an institution that plays a more formative role in shaping the public mind - our system of public schools. Though children today grow-up in a media-saturated world, we should not underestimate the potential of schools to help young people grow into adulthood with a discerning mind that will enable them to more critically evaluate the messages they receive from whatever news outlet. And yet, with so much media attention focused on the horrors of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and the surrounding scandals, the press - including progressive groups - has virtually ignored how the state and private power have colluded over the past twenty years to strip public schools of their democratizing potential. In the twenty-one years since the Reagan administration's National Commission for Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk, no high-minded bastion of journalist integrity in the mainstream press has recanted its parroting reportage of the Commission's claims. Numerous books and professional articles have appeared in the interim to discredit those claims, but none of them have received any serious or sustained attention from the media. Neither has the media reported the miserable failure of educational privatization pioneers such as Christopher Whittle (CEO of the Edison Project) to rescue troubled schools through the wondrous powers of the business model of management.
The strongly bi-partisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has similarly received no scrutiny that would alert the public to its insidious policy implications. In the first place, this legislation set ridiculously high standards that simply defied common sense. NCLB requires schools and teachers to insure that all students perform at or above grade level within a three year-period. This outrageous requirement includes children with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders no matter how profound. By definition, then - getting these kids to perform at grade level, NCLB holds teachers accountable for doing what medical science has never accomplished; namely, curing mental retardation.
NCLB also holds teachers accountable for bringing the performance of children from the most poverty-stricken homes up to grade level. While Rod Paige, Bush's homebred (former superintendent of Houston's public schools) Secretary of Education, chastises anyone who dares to criticize these "high expectations" and "rigorous standards" as "racists," one must pause to wonder when policy makers discovered their new faith in the remedial powers of schools. After all, the prison industry has long used third-grade reading scores to project how many new cells they will have to construct over the next twenty-year period.
While the policies of NCLB never receive any attention in the press, there has been some considerable recent outcry by Democrats and others because of the Bush administration's refusal to fund this legislation at its originally planned levels. No one stops; however, to examine the policies themselves, or to listen to teachers' complaints concerning how this high-stakes-testing model of school/teacher accountability pressures teachers to adopt the most intellectually stultifying (drill and kill) teaching methods that remove the joy of teaching from them and any potential joy of learning from their students.
Beyond the fact, as revealed for us by Michael Moore's treatment of the Patriot Act in Fahrenheit 9-11, that the vast majority of our representatives in Congress
never bother reading the legislation that they sign into law (What does this imply in terms of accountability?), the truth about NCLB goes beyond any ineptitude on the part of its architects. NCLB sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 70s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves. The current reform environment creates conditions where public schools can only fail, thus providing "statistical evidence" for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of "freedom of choice." In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent. In the end, as evidenced by Secretary of Education Rod Paige's recent characterization of the National Education Association, anyone who contests state-corporatism will be labeled a "terrorist" or, in more Orwellian terms, a "thought-criminal."
While the progressive press and media are perfectly legitimate in pushing their corporate counterparts for greater integrity in their coverage of issues and events, we believe that progressive news and cultural organizations of all varieties owe the public an even greater responsibility to report on the corporate and state assault to privatize public education. We ground this belief in recognition of one very important distinction between the corporate-owned media that progressives have grown so fond of critiquing and public schools. While both the media and schools function as major institutions in the dissemination of knowledge, information, and ideas, the mainstream media will continue to be privately owned and operated. Therefore, the public will always find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to influence their editorial policies. Public schools, on the other hand, are public. That is, insofar as they continue to be operated under public control, the public can wield considerably more influence over the policies that impact the educational practices within public education than it can ever hope to wield over the corporate media. This, in our view, offers the best explanation for the growing movement to privatize schools. Privatization would effectively transfer the control of schools from public hands to corporate hands.
We want to believe that public schools serve us, the public, "We, the people." We want to believe that schools strengthen our democracy, our ability to meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that impact our communities and our lives. Educational resources need to be directed towards increasing people's awareness of the relevant facts about their lives, and to increase people's abilities to act upon these facts in their own true interests. For the past twenty years, however, significant efforts have been made to resurrect a statist view of schools that treats teachers as mere appendages to the machinery of the state and seeks to hold them accountable to serving the interests of state and corporate power. Linked as it is to the interests of private wealth, this view defines children's value in life as human resources and future consumers. In order to combat this movement, progressive media outlets must begin doing more to alert the public to the disastrous consequences it holds for our schools, our children, and our democracy. Progressives everywhere must begin doing more to demand that our institutions of public education foster critical citizenship skills to advance a more viable and vibrant democratic society. They must push for schools to become organized around preparing young people for active, democratic citizenship through engagement with real-world issues, problem-solving, and critical thinking, and through active participation in civic and political processes. Informed citizenship in a broad-based, grassroots democracy must be based on principles of cooperation with others, non-violent conflict resolution, dialogue, inquiry and rational debate, environmental activism, and the preservation and expansion of human rights. These skills, capacities, and dispositions need to be taught and practiced in our nation's schools.
Progressives must also push harder to ensure that all schools are funded equally and fully, eliminating the dependence on private corporate funds and on the property tax, which creates a two-tiered educational system by distributing educational monies inequitably. Promoting greater equality in educational opportunity must also include demands for universal pre-k and tuition-free higher education for all qualified students in state universities. The past two decades have witnessed the increasing involvement of corporations in education in terms of supplementing public spending in exchange for school-based marketing (including advertising space in schools and textbooks, junk fast food and vending machines, and commercial-laden "free" TV). We believe that students should not be thought of as a potential market or as consumers, but as future citizens. We must call for the elimination of advertising in schools and curricula and of the marketing of unhealthy products on school grounds.
As suggested above, the current system uses "carrots and sticks" to coerce compliance with an alienating system of schooling aimed at inducing conformity among teachers and students through high stakes testing and accountability. This system alienates teachers from their work by stripping it of all creative endeavor and reduces it to following scripted lesson plans. We believe that teaching is a matter of the heart, that place where intellect meets up with emotion and spirit in constant dialogue with the world around us. Advancing a more democratic vision of education requires us to work toward the elimination of high stakes standardized tests, and the institution of more fair, equitable, and meaningful systems of accountability and assessment of both students and schools.
The current system also alienates students by stripping learning from its engagement with the world in all of its complexity. It reduces learning to test preparation as part of a larger rat race where students are situated within a larger economic competition for dwindling numbers of jobs. We believe that excellence needs to be defined in terms of teachers' abilities to inspire children to engage the world, for it is through such critical engagement that true learning (as opposed to rote memorization) actually occurs. Students living in the 21st century are going to have to deal with a host of problems created by their predecessors: global warming and other ecological disasters, global conflicts, human rights abuses, loss of civil liberties, etc. The curriculum needs to address what students need to know and be able to do in the 21st century to tackle these problems- and it needs to be relevant to students' current interests and concerns.
Progressives must also work diligently to enlist broader and deeper levels of public support for teachers. Teachers matter. Teaching is a public act that bears directly on our collective future. A broader movement in support of democratic and egalitarian reforms in education must include a commitment to ensure that teachers begin receiving salaries commensurate with other professions. At the same time, we must restore and expand teachers' control, in collaboration with students and communities, over decision-making about issues of curriculum and instruction in the classroom - no more scripted teaching, no more mandated outcomes, no more "teacher-proof" curricula. Local control of education rests at the heart of democracy; state and nationally mandated curriculum and assessment are a prescription for totalitarianism.
Children of immigrants make up approximately 20 percent of the children in the United States, bringing linguistic and cultural differences to many classrooms. Added to this are 2.4 million children who speak a language other than English at home. Those of us struggling to defend the public's welfare in public schools need the support of the wider progressive movement to ensure that the learning needs of English language learners are met through caring, multicultural, multi-lingual education. Citizens in a pluralistic democracy, after all, need to value difference and interact with people of differing abilities, orientations, ethnicities, cultures, and dispositions. Our nation as a whole needs to discard outmoded notions of a hypothetical norm, and either describe ALL students as different, or none of them. All classrooms should be inclusive, meeting the needs of all students, together, in a way that is just, caring, challenging, and meaningful.
Because they do not increase the market value of children, arts programs have never been funded at sufficient levels. Under pressure to increase student achievement rates (test scores), school districts in many areas of the country have eliminated art and music classes from their curricula to give students more time to spend preparing for standardized tests. Progressive elements in our society have always supported these programs. We must, however, do more in order to reverse these economically-driven assaults on the arts in schools, hopefully expanding students' opportunities to learn and excel in the fine and performing arts, physical education and sports, and extra-curricular clubs and activities, in order to develop the skills of interaction and responsibility necessary for participation in a robust civil society.
In the end, whether the savage inequalities of neoliberalism--which define current social and national relations as well as approaches to school reform-- will be overcome depends on how people organize, respond, learn, and teach in schools. With the help of the progressive press and other media outlets, those engaged in the larger struggle for social, political, and environmental justice can, and must, renew their commitment to educational justice and a democratic vision to guide the functioning of our nation's schools. Concurrently, teachers and educational leaders need to link their own interests in the improvement of teaching and learning to a broad-based movement for social, political, and economic justice, and work together for the democratic renewal of public life and public education in America. Collectively, we must make these commitments and act upon them soon, while public control still exists over the public schools. That control will not last unless we do.
E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia), Kathleen Kesson (Long Island University), David Gabbard (East Carolina University), Sandra Mathison (University of British Columbia), and Kevin D, Vinson (University of Arizona) are co-editors of Defending Public Schools (published by Praeger).
Saving Public Education - Saving Democracy
E. Wayne Ross, Kathleen Kesson, David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, & Kevin D. Vinson
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced "reporting" to "regurgitating" the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
That elements of the broader public have grown more sensitized to these issues should not surprise us, given just how brazenly and consistently the Bush administration has lied. Even after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in his flight suit on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, when Paul Wolfowitz smugly told Vanity Fair that the administration had used Weapons of Mass Destruction as the "bureaucratic reason" for invading Iraq, the mainstream media scarcely reported his statement. Understanding the standards of American journalism, Washington BBC correspondent Ian Pannell correctly predicted that Wolfowitz's remarks would not likely have any political consequences in the US.
The public, of course, has good reasons to be concerned about the press and the role it plays in a democratic society. Though the enforced, two-party system of "representation" goes a long way toward making democracy meaningless, access to information and ideas remains crucial to the public's capacity to organize and resist. The internet, along with the boost it has given to a resurgent independent media, has greatly expanded that access. Hence, the level of popular dissidence may be greater now than at any other time in US history. The growing influence of the internet and independent media may also be responsible for what limited questioning of official power we've seen in the mainstream news rrganizations.
As Thomas Jefferson observed, the health of democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. While the internet and independent media sources deserve much credit for helping to mobilize significant levels of organized popular protest in recent years, we should recognize that these outlets are essentially reactive. That is, they respond to issues and events in the immediate present. In this regard, they differ little from the mainstream media or even their right-wing counterparts. There is, however, an institution that plays a more formative role in shaping the public mind - our system of public schools. Though children today grow-up in a media-saturated world, we should not underestimate the potential of schools to help young people grow into adulthood with a discerning mind that will enable them to more critically evaluate the messages they receive from whatever news outlet. And yet, with so much media attention focused on the horrors of the Bush administration's "war on terror" and the surrounding scandals, the press - including progressive groups - has virtually ignored how the state and private power have colluded over the past twenty years to strip public schools of their democratizing potential. In the twenty-one years since the Reagan administration's National Commission for Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk, no high-minded bastion of journalist integrity in the mainstream press has recanted its parroting reportage of the Commission's claims. Numerous books and professional articles have appeared in the interim to discredit those claims, but none of them have received any serious or sustained attention from the media. Neither has the media reported the miserable failure of educational privatization pioneers such as Christopher Whittle (CEO of the Edison Project) to rescue troubled schools through the wondrous powers of the business model of management.
The strongly bi-partisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has similarly received no scrutiny that would alert the public to its insidious policy implications. In the first place, this legislation set ridiculously high standards that simply defied common sense. NCLB requires schools and teachers to insure that all students perform at or above grade level within a three year-period. This outrageous requirement includes children with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders no matter how profound. By definition, then - getting these kids to perform at grade level, NCLB holds teachers accountable for doing what medical science has never accomplished; namely, curing mental retardation.
NCLB also holds teachers accountable for bringing the performance of children from the most poverty-stricken homes up to grade level. While Rod Paige, Bush's homebred (former superintendent of Houston's public schools) Secretary of Education, chastises anyone who dares to criticize these "high expectations" and "rigorous standards" as "racists," one must pause to wonder when policy makers discovered their new faith in the remedial powers of schools. After all, the prison industry has long used third-grade reading scores to project how many new cells they will have to construct over the next twenty-year period.
While the policies of NCLB never receive any attention in the press, there has been some considerable recent outcry by Democrats and others because of the Bush administration's refusal to fund this legislation at its originally planned levels. No one stops; however, to examine the policies themselves, or to listen to teachers' complaints concerning how this high-stakes-testing model of school/teacher accountability pressures teachers to adopt the most intellectually stultifying (drill and kill) teaching methods that remove the joy of teaching from them and any potential joy of learning from their students.
Beyond the fact, as revealed for us by Michael Moore's treatment of the Patriot Act in Fahrenheit 9-11, that the vast majority of our representatives in Congress
never bother reading the legislation that they sign into law (What does this imply in terms of accountability?), the truth about NCLB goes beyond any ineptitude on the part of its architects. NCLB sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 70s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves. The current reform environment creates conditions where public schools can only fail, thus providing "statistical evidence" for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of "freedom of choice." In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent. In the end, as evidenced by Secretary of Education Rod Paige's recent characterization of the National Education Association, anyone who contests state-corporatism will be labeled a "terrorist" or, in more Orwellian terms, a "thought-criminal."
While the progressive press and media are perfectly legitimate in pushing their corporate counterparts for greater integrity in their coverage of issues and events, we believe that progressive news and cultural organizations of all varieties owe the public an even greater responsibility to report on the corporate and state assault to privatize public education. We ground this belief in recognition of one very important distinction between the corporate-owned media that progressives have grown so fond of critiquing and public schools. While both the media and schools function as major institutions in the dissemination of knowledge, information, and ideas, the mainstream media will continue to be privately owned and operated. Therefore, the public will always find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to influence their editorial policies. Public schools, on the other hand, are public. That is, insofar as they continue to be operated under public control, the public can wield considerably more influence over the policies that impact the educational practices within public education than it can ever hope to wield over the corporate media. This, in our view, offers the best explanation for the growing movement to privatize schools. Privatization would effectively transfer the control of schools from public hands to corporate hands.
We want to believe that public schools serve us, the public, "We, the people." We want to believe that schools strengthen our democracy, our ability to meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that impact our communities and our lives. Educational resources need to be directed towards increasing people's awareness of the relevant facts about their lives, and to increase people's abilities to act upon these facts in their own true interests. For the past twenty years, however, significant efforts have been made to resurrect a statist view of schools that treats teachers as mere appendages to the machinery of the state and seeks to hold them accountable to serving the interests of state and corporate power. Linked as it is to the interests of private wealth, this view defines children's value in life as human resources and future consumers. In order to combat this movement, progressive media outlets must begin doing more to alert the public to the disastrous consequences it holds for our schools, our children, and our democracy. Progressives everywhere must begin doing more to demand that our institutions of public education foster critical citizenship skills to advance a more viable and vibrant democratic society. They must push for schools to become organized around preparing young people for active, democratic citizenship through engagement with real-world issues, problem-solving, and critical thinking, and through active participation in civic and political processes. Informed citizenship in a broad-based, grassroots democracy must be based on principles of cooperation with others, non-violent conflict resolution, dialogue, inquiry and rational debate, environmental activism, and the preservation and expansion of human rights. These skills, capacities, and dispositions need to be taught and practiced in our nation's schools.
Progressives must also push harder to ensure that all schools are funded equally and fully, eliminating the dependence on private corporate funds and on the property tax, which creates a two-tiered educational system by distributing educational monies inequitably. Promoting greater equality in educational opportunity must also include demands for universal pre-k and tuition-free higher education for all qualified students in state universities. The past two decades have witnessed the increasing involvement of corporations in education in terms of supplementing public spending in exchange for school-based marketing (including advertising space in schools and textbooks, junk fast food and vending machines, and commercial-laden "free" TV). We believe that students should not be thought of as a potential market or as consumers, but as future citizens. We must call for the elimination of advertising in schools and curricula and of the marketing of unhealthy products on school grounds.
As suggested above, the current system uses "carrots and sticks" to coerce compliance with an alienating system of schooling aimed at inducing conformity among teachers and students through high stakes testing and accountability. This system alienates teachers from their work by stripping it of all creative endeavor and reduces it to following scripted lesson plans. We believe that teaching is a matter of the heart, that place where intellect meets up with emotion and spirit in constant dialogue with the world around us. Advancing a more democratic vision of education requires us to work toward the elimination of high stakes standardized tests, and the institution of more fair, equitable, and meaningful systems of accountability and assessment of both students and schools.
The current system also alienates students by stripping learning from its engagement with the world in all of its complexity. It reduces learning to test preparation as part of a larger rat race where students are situated within a larger economic competition for dwindling numbers of jobs. We believe that excellence needs to be defined in terms of teachers' abilities to inspire children to engage the world, for it is through such critical engagement that true learning (as opposed to rote memorization) actually occurs. Students living in the 21st century are going to have to deal with a host of problems created by their predecessors: global warming and other ecological disasters, global conflicts, human rights abuses, loss of civil liberties, etc. The curriculum needs to address what students need to know and be able to do in the 21st century to tackle these problems- and it needs to be relevant to students' current interests and concerns.
Progressives must also work diligently to enlist broader and deeper levels of public support for teachers. Teachers matter. Teaching is a public act that bears directly on our collective future. A broader movement in support of democratic and egalitarian reforms in education must include a commitment to ensure that teachers begin receiving salaries commensurate with other professions. At the same time, we must restore and expand teachers' control, in collaboration with students and communities, over decision-making about issues of curriculum and instruction in the classroom - no more scripted teaching, no more mandated outcomes, no more "teacher-proof" curricula. Local control of education rests at the heart of democracy; state and nationally mandated curriculum and assessment are a prescription for totalitarianism.
Children of immigrants make up approximately 20 percent of the children in the United States, bringing linguistic and cultural differences to many classrooms. Added to this are 2.4 million children who speak a language other than English at home. Those of us struggling to defend the public's welfare in public schools need the support of the wider progressive movement to ensure that the learning needs of English language learners are met through caring, multicultural, multi-lingual education. Citizens in a pluralistic democracy, after all, need to value difference and interact with people of differing abilities, orientations, ethnicities, cultures, and dispositions. Our nation as a whole needs to discard outmoded notions of a hypothetical norm, and either describe ALL students as different, or none of them. All classrooms should be inclusive, meeting the needs of all students, together, in a way that is just, caring, challenging, and meaningful.
Because they do not increase the market value of children, arts programs have never been funded at sufficient levels. Under pressure to increase student achievement rates (test scores), school districts in many areas of the country have eliminated art and music classes from their curricula to give students more time to spend preparing for standardized tests. Progressive elements in our society have always supported these programs. We must, however, do more in order to reverse these economically-driven assaults on the arts in schools, hopefully expanding students' opportunities to learn and excel in the fine and performing arts, physical education and sports, and extra-curricular clubs and activities, in order to develop the skills of interaction and responsibility necessary for participation in a robust civil society.
In the end, whether the savage inequalities of neoliberalism--which define current social and national relations as well as approaches to school reform-- will be overcome depends on how people organize, respond, learn, and teach in schools. With the help of the progressive press and other media outlets, those engaged in the larger struggle for social, political, and environmental justice can, and must, renew their commitment to educational justice and a democratic vision to guide the functioning of our nation's schools. Concurrently, teachers and educational leaders need to link their own interests in the improvement of teaching and learning to a broad-based movement for social, political, and economic justice, and work together for the democratic renewal of public life and public education in America. Collectively, we must make these commitments and act upon them soon, while public control still exists over the public schools. That control will not last unless we do.
E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia), Kathleen Kesson (Long Island University), David Gabbard (East Carolina University), Sandra Mathison (University of British Columbia), and Kevin D, Vinson (University of Arizona) are co-editors of Defending Public Schools (published by Praeger).
# posted by scorpiorising : 8:19 AM |
This about sums it up.
A tale told by an idiot:
Wildly overplaying the Schiavo protesters, ignoring facts and giving Bush a free ride, the press was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Wildly overplaying the Schiavo protesters, ignoring facts and giving Bush a free ride, the press was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
# posted by scorpiorising : 1:00 AM |
The Brink of Disaster
I'll let the article speak for itself, and for our children's children:
The State of the World? It is on the Brink of Disaster
An Authoritative Study of the Biological Relationships Vital to Maintaining Life has Found Disturbing Evidence of Man-made Degradation
by Steve Connor
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
The dryland regions of the world, which account for 41 per cent of the earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.
Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.
Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.
The State of the World? It is on the Brink of Disaster
An Authoritative Study of the Biological Relationships Vital to Maintaining Life has Found Disturbing Evidence of Man-made Degradation
by Steve Connor
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.
The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
The dryland regions of the world, which account for 41 per cent of the earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.
Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another. The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse, with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.
Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:36 AM |
James Baker the third, you are full of shit...
full of shit, that is, to think that your cynical presence on the Voting Reform Commission has gone down without being noticed by true patriots everywhere. We know of your anti-democratic efforts and attitude in 2000, and we wonder what role you played in the stolen election of 2004. We know that you work for the Bushies, hence, you do not work for democracy. It is all or nothing for your kind. Your greed and hypermanic egos may destroy this country, indeed, this world, for the sake of power, money, and imagined prestige. We will do everything in our power to expose you, for the walking threat to democracy that you are...
From Daily kos:
Coordinated attack on your voting rights happening NOW!
by bejammin075
[Subscribe]
Thu Mar 31st, 2005 at 08:50:39 PST
It is no accident that James A. Baker III is the co-chair of the new blue ribbon commission on voting issues. Baker helped ensure that the votes in Florida 2000 were not counted. How did Baker get on the commission? We don't know yet. The commission was created in secret.
Then there's the Gannon/Talon-like ACVR. The American Center for against Voting Rights. The "non-partisan" ACVR sprang into existance 3 business days before a 3/21/05 House Administrative Committee on voting issues of Ohio 2004. ACVR submitted a 31-page report to the Committee. The report, authored by Mark F. Hearne (General Counsel to Bush/Cheney '04), entirely blames ALL potential vote fraud on Democrats. Presently, the ACVR report is being circulated far and wide to every nook and crany of Freeper Land.
The Baker-tainted blue ribbon commission and the Gannon-like ACVR are both part of a coordinated attack on the right to vote. This is known because of a very peculiar detail reported by the BradBlog:
The Commission was seated in secret, announced on Thursday at 2pm, and lauded in a Press Release published by ACVR just 24 minutes later!
Diaries :: bejammin075's diary :: ::
Reported at the BradBlog:
RNC Political Director Cites Report by RNC 'Voting Rights' Front Group to RNC Email List!
Those words in the grey box above are some freaky shit when you consider what it means. Is it a conspriacy? Is that possible? Is this crazy? Well, it IS a conspiracy. The recent activities of these high-level Republicans can't be reasonably explained any other way. To get a press release out 24 minutes after the created-in-secret-by-secret-people blue ribbon commission means you already had the press release typed up BEFORE the announcement, when none from the established voting rights groups knew about it.
We know James A. Baker III is on the commission PRECISELY because he will thwart any true vote reform.
We can see for ourselves that ACVR and their shitty report are also there PRECISELY to thwart true vote reform.
ACVR fake report on Democratic-only vote fraud
(Warning: If you take blood pressure medication, double it!)
These people have unbelievably big balls. The quote below is from page 20 of the ACVR report, under Intimidation and Voter Harassment:
Unfortunately, on November 2, 2004, activists from these third party organizations violated this voter protection law and harassed Ohio citizens seeking to exercise their right to vote. Many of the individuals engaged in this harassment of voters were representatives of "independent" third party organizations such as MoveOn.org. Some of these individuals - including individuals associated with political campaigns - misrepresented themselves as "nonpartisan" resources for voters. These individuals were cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," the "Ohio Election Protection Project," and other similar pseudonyms.
"cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," ?!?! Look who's talking!
And now we can see from the timing of their actions that they are coordinated. We are going to have to work our asses off to put a stop to this. They are working hard to ensure that no reform takes place, while our voting continues to become more controlled by secret voting software. Are we working hard enough to counter their actions? Are you fired up? After the 2004 election, there was a lot of intense blogging about what went down in Ohio and elsewhere, and the DKos community had a bit of a split as to how to approach believing and/or exposing this crap. But there was one thing we were all in 100% agreement on - we really need some voting reform. This voting reform isn't going to be easy, and it's for high stakes. At a minimum, this high-level GOP effort is perpetrated for control of the world's most powerful military and for increased corporate power. The innappropriate use of our military so far has resulted in well over 100,000 innocent civilian deaths. War profiteering is out of control with 9 billion missing and counting, and our leaders don't care enough.
Velvet Revolution, an umbrella group with over 100 member groups concerned about voting rights, calls it like it is:
Velvet Revolution Condems Baker's Presence on the Voting Reform Commission
Also check out (if you missed it) lapin's excellent recent diary on ACVR
Need a reminder why electronic voting is totally screwed? When Diebold central vote tabulators are set up exactly like they were on 11/2/04, they are proven on 3/8/05 to be easily hacked without a trace.
I only started realizing the truth about the voting situation around the time of the 11/2/04 election. Since then it sinks in more and more each day how bad things really are. And just when I think I understand the full extent of it, it gets even worse. And in reality, it's even worse than how I understand it to be.
From Daily kos:
Coordinated attack on your voting rights happening NOW!
by bejammin075
[Subscribe]
Thu Mar 31st, 2005 at 08:50:39 PST
It is no accident that James A. Baker III is the co-chair of the new blue ribbon commission on voting issues. Baker helped ensure that the votes in Florida 2000 were not counted. How did Baker get on the commission? We don't know yet. The commission was created in secret.
Then there's the Gannon/Talon-like ACVR. The American Center for against Voting Rights. The "non-partisan" ACVR sprang into existance 3 business days before a 3/21/05 House Administrative Committee on voting issues of Ohio 2004. ACVR submitted a 31-page report to the Committee. The report, authored by Mark F. Hearne (General Counsel to Bush/Cheney '04), entirely blames ALL potential vote fraud on Democrats. Presently, the ACVR report is being circulated far and wide to every nook and crany of Freeper Land.
The Baker-tainted blue ribbon commission and the Gannon-like ACVR are both part of a coordinated attack on the right to vote. This is known because of a very peculiar detail reported by the BradBlog:
The Commission was seated in secret, announced on Thursday at 2pm, and lauded in a Press Release published by ACVR just 24 minutes later!
Diaries :: bejammin075's diary :: ::
Reported at the BradBlog:
RNC Political Director Cites Report by RNC 'Voting Rights' Front Group to RNC Email List!
Those words in the grey box above are some freaky shit when you consider what it means. Is it a conspriacy? Is that possible? Is this crazy? Well, it IS a conspiracy. The recent activities of these high-level Republicans can't be reasonably explained any other way. To get a press release out 24 minutes after the created-in-secret-by-secret-people blue ribbon commission means you already had the press release typed up BEFORE the announcement, when none from the established voting rights groups knew about it.
We know James A. Baker III is on the commission PRECISELY because he will thwart any true vote reform.
We can see for ourselves that ACVR and their shitty report are also there PRECISELY to thwart true vote reform.
ACVR fake report on Democratic-only vote fraud
(Warning: If you take blood pressure medication, double it!)
These people have unbelievably big balls. The quote below is from page 20 of the ACVR report, under Intimidation and Voter Harassment:
Unfortunately, on November 2, 2004, activists from these third party organizations violated this voter protection law and harassed Ohio citizens seeking to exercise their right to vote. Many of the individuals engaged in this harassment of voters were representatives of "independent" third party organizations such as MoveOn.org. Some of these individuals - including individuals associated with political campaigns - misrepresented themselves as "nonpartisan" resources for voters. These individuals were cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," the "Ohio Election Protection Project," and other similar pseudonyms.
"cloaked under innocent sounding names such as the "Voter Protection Project," ?!?! Look who's talking!
And now we can see from the timing of their actions that they are coordinated. We are going to have to work our asses off to put a stop to this. They are working hard to ensure that no reform takes place, while our voting continues to become more controlled by secret voting software. Are we working hard enough to counter their actions? Are you fired up? After the 2004 election, there was a lot of intense blogging about what went down in Ohio and elsewhere, and the DKos community had a bit of a split as to how to approach believing and/or exposing this crap. But there was one thing we were all in 100% agreement on - we really need some voting reform. This voting reform isn't going to be easy, and it's for high stakes. At a minimum, this high-level GOP effort is perpetrated for control of the world's most powerful military and for increased corporate power. The innappropriate use of our military so far has resulted in well over 100,000 innocent civilian deaths. War profiteering is out of control with 9 billion missing and counting, and our leaders don't care enough.
Velvet Revolution, an umbrella group with over 100 member groups concerned about voting rights, calls it like it is:
Velvet Revolution Condems Baker's Presence on the Voting Reform Commission
Also check out (if you missed it) lapin's excellent recent diary on ACVR
Need a reminder why electronic voting is totally screwed? When Diebold central vote tabulators are set up exactly like they were on 11/2/04, they are proven on 3/8/05 to be easily hacked without a trace.
I only started realizing the truth about the voting situation around the time of the 11/2/04 election. Since then it sinks in more and more each day how bad things really are. And just when I think I understand the full extent of it, it gets even worse. And in reality, it's even worse than how I understand it to be.
# posted by scorpiorising : 12:08 AM |
Links
- Google News
- HOME
- Contact Me
- WAR CASUALTIES(MY OTHER BLOG)
- BAGHDAD BURNING
- UNQUALIFIED OFFERINGS
- JUAN COLE*INFORMED COMMENT*
- BRAD DELONG
- TOMPAINE.COM
- THE DAILY HOWLER
- DISSENT MAGAZINE
- CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY
- BLAH3.COM
- BLACK SUNDAE
- WAMPUM
- ESCHATON
- ARMS AND THE MAN
- MILL ON LIBERTY
- GERMANY IN WORLD WAR 2
- VEILED 4 ALLAH
- BUSY, BUSY, BUSY
- UNENVIABLE SITUATION
- HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD
- MATTHEW GROSS
- WHISKEY BAR
- WAR AND PIECE
- DAILY KOS
- GREG PALAST
- BLACK COMMENTATOR
- SURPRISING PATTERN OF FLORIDA'S ELECTION RESULTS
- THE BRAD BLOG
- THE OPEN VOTING CONSORTIUM
- BLACK BOX VOTING
- THE FREE PRESS
- VOTERGATE.TV
- STOLEN ELECTION. AMERICA HIJACKED
- An examination of the Florida election
- blueflu.us
- U.S. Election Controversies and Irregularities
- MY DD
- SEEING THE FOREST
- THERE IS NO CRISIS
- VELVET REVOLUTION
- 02/02/2003 - 02/09/2003
- 02/09/2003 - 02/16/2003
- 02/16/2003 - 02/23/2003
- 02/23/2003 - 03/02/2003
- 03/02/2003 - 03/09/2003
- 03/09/2003 - 03/16/2003
- 03/16/2003 - 03/23/2003
- 03/23/2003 - 03/30/2003
- 03/30/2003 - 04/06/2003
- 04/06/2003 - 04/13/2003
- 04/13/2003 - 04/20/2003
- 04/20/2003 - 04/27/2003
- 04/27/2003 - 05/04/2003
- 05/04/2003 - 05/11/2003
- 05/11/2003 - 05/18/2003
- 05/18/2003 - 05/25/2003
- 05/25/2003 - 06/01/2003
- 06/01/2003 - 06/08/2003
- 06/08/2003 - 06/15/2003
- 06/15/2003 - 06/22/2003
- 06/22/2003 - 06/29/2003
- 06/29/2003 - 07/06/2003
- 07/06/2003 - 07/13/2003
- 07/13/2003 - 07/20/2003
- 07/20/2003 - 07/27/2003
- 07/27/2003 - 08/03/2003
- 08/03/2003 - 08/10/2003
- 08/10/2003 - 08/17/2003
- 08/17/2003 - 08/24/2003
- 09/07/2003 - 09/14/2003
- 09/14/2003 - 09/21/2003
- 09/21/2003 - 09/28/2003
- 09/28/2003 - 10/05/2003
- 10/05/2003 - 10/12/2003
- 10/12/2003 - 10/19/2003
- 10/19/2003 - 10/26/2003
- 10/26/2003 - 11/02/2003
- 11/02/2003 - 11/09/2003
- 11/09/2003 - 11/16/2003
- 11/16/2003 - 11/23/2003
- 11/23/2003 - 11/30/2003
- 11/30/2003 - 12/07/2003
- 12/14/2003 - 12/21/2003
- 01/11/2004 - 01/18/2004
- 01/18/2004 - 01/25/2004
- 01/25/2004 - 02/01/2004
- 02/01/2004 - 02/08/2004
- 02/08/2004 - 02/15/2004
- 02/22/2004 - 02/29/2004
- 05/23/2004 - 05/30/2004
- 09/26/2004 - 10/03/2004
- 10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004
- 10/10/2004 - 10/17/2004
- 10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004
- 10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004
- 10/31/2004 - 11/07/2004
- 11/07/2004 - 11/14/2004
- 11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004
- 11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004
- 11/28/2004 - 12/05/2004
- 12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004
- 12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004
- 12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005
- 01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005
- 01/09/2005 - 01/16/2005
- 01/23/2005 - 01/30/2005
- 01/30/2005 - 02/06/2005
- 02/06/2005 - 02/13/2005
- 02/13/2005 - 02/20/2005
- 02/20/2005 - 02/27/2005
- 02/27/2005 - 03/06/2005
- 03/06/2005 - 03/13/2005
- 03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005
- 03/20/2005 - 03/27/2005
- 03/27/2005 - 04/03/2005
- 04/03/2005 - 04/10/2005
- 04/24/2005 - 05/01/2005
- 06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005
- 06/26/2005 - 07/03/2005
- 07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005
- 08/07/2005 - 08/14/2005
![](http://www.haloscan.com/halolink.gif)