A Teacher's View

Guest Post by Valerie Long Tweedie

People who buy into the idea of Charter Schools think they will be getting a private school education on the government's dime. They believe that their children will be in a school where the school will pick and choose the students and only the best students will get in - the riff-raff will have to go somewhere else. (Where they don’t specify – but it is the old “not in my backyard scenario.”) The problem of how to educate children with special needs will not be addressed. These are the expensive children to educate so no charter school will want them. I think anyone can see where this is going – “My kid is the only one who is important and to hell with the rest of you.”

This selfish, amoral attitude is the problem with our youth today – and it is equally a problem with the adults. As a nation, we have lost our compassion and our generosity; that belief that I am willing to have a little bit less so that someone else, less fortunate than I, can have a little more.  THAT is what is wrong with our world today - no empathy, no ability to try to walk in someone else’s shoes, no appreciation for the advantages that have been afforded us and a recognition that others are not always equally advantaged. When I talk to conservatives complaining about the welfare state, saying charity is not the government’s job, I always ask them, “How much did you give to charity last year?” They always sputter about sponsoring some child in Mexico and giving to their church. The truth is, there isn’t much “Christian Charity” to be found these days and that is not the fault of the public schools.

I was a teacher in public school in Washington State until five years ago. In days gone by if there was a fight on the playground, we would have a class meeting about it. We would discuss how it happened and look at the situation from all sides. We would discuss what was fair and what was right and sometimes, we would acknowledge that someone behaved badly because (s)he was frustrated and hurt. We would talk about whether letting someone play as opposed to excluding that child was really such a terrible price to pay for having a good learning environment where everyone felt valued. I valorised children who were kind and patient and inclusive. Those kids got leadership positions – because they WERE leaders. These class meetings took time, but educators realised that schools were microcosms of society and the parents, teachers and society as a whole accepted that one of the tenets of public education was to socialise children as preparation for them being contributing members of American society. Looking back, I realise how important these lessons were to instilling democratic values in our students. 

 But in the years leading up to my leaving the States, school was about one thing and one thing only – test scores. Teachers were told on a daily basis how the “schools were failing our students” and what a crappy job teachers were doing. As if all teachers had to do was open up their students' heads and pour in the knowledge. Time for class meetings and “morality” lessons had to be stolen from the curriculum and weren’t considered a good use of class time. Morality and socialising were seen as being in the domain of parents (only) – great if you were blessed with great parents, not so great if you had a dysfunctional family. 

I have taught in high socioeconomic public schools in both the U.S. and Germany and in low socioeconomic public schools in the U.S. And I have taught in private schools all over the world as well - some of them prestigious, some of them low fee parochial. The truth is this: how well children learn and how well they get along with others is heavily influenced by their home environment. If kids are less moral today – more selfish, more inconsiderate, more disrespectful and more focussed on material possessions than they are on their fellow man – that is more a reflection of their families and the values they are being taught at home than it is of the schools they attend. I can tell you, as a teacher, I love having kids in class who are taught to consider someone else and not just themselves. But in our world today, parents are focussed on wanting to make their child feel wonderful and unique, but unfortunately have neglected to teach these same children that others matter just as much as they do.

Saving Adolescent Degenerates, Conservative Style

It is of course pure coincidence that right before the House Republicans bring up a bill to help fund profiteering "charter schools" with taxpayer dollars, David Brooks writes a column about a three-year-old sociological study purporting to find that today's youth are degenerate, selfish and stupid. This sad state of affairs, he insinuates, results from those inept, unionized public schools falling down on the job. He conveniently fails to mention that the study and resulting book he so glowingly shills were funded by a major right-wing conservative "philanthropist."  He conveniently fails to mention the charter schools legislation coming up for a vote today.


The study Brooks touts was led by Christian Smith, professor of Notre Dame University, chronic and grateful recipient of much largesse from the Lilly Foundation, the charitable trust begun by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.  This foundation is a major funder of such right-wing think tanks as the Hudson Institute and The Manhattan Institute.  According to Right Wing Watch, the latter entity has among its many goals the funding and promotion of .... charter schools!  Entities embracing free market capitalism and evangelical Christianity are magnets for Lilly money. 


In his column, Brooks writes of the sociologists' brain-picking of 230 anonymous slackers:

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.

Translation: today's youths are totally laid-back and just too cool with everything... gay rights, women's rights, immigrant rights, civil rights.  The public schools are simply not teaching them to be judgmental idealogues like David Brooks.  The callow young people must be carefully taught to develop prejudices and reactionary thought processes.  And their parents are just a bunch of lazy hippies to have raised such a generation of free thinkers.


Which brings us to H.R. 2218, The Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act.  This bill, coming up for a vote in the House today, will make it easier for the privatized, non-union Charter Schools to set up shop.  How it empowers parents is anybody's guess, but I think empowerment in GOP-speak means profits for charter schools.  Because without charter schools, the parents of David Brooks's addled imagination are a bunch of wet noodles, and his conservative friends cannot profit.


So when the Republicans bitch and moan that we have too much debt to fix up our crumbling schools and hire back all those laid-off teachers, it beggars belief that they would be willing to fund construction and renovation of charter schools.  Well, no. It doesn't.


Isaiah Poole of Campaign for America's Future explains it this way: 

It would give federal funding priority to states that repeal limits on the number of charter schools that can be chartered or the percentage of the state's school-age population attending charters. It would also give priority funding to states that finance charter schools at a level comparable to public school funding. And it contains assistance to charter schools to help with construction or repair costs.

We've had 20 years of experience in charter schools since the concept was born in Minnesota in the early 1990s, and what we've learned in that time is that charter schools are not a panacea. "The media regularly covers great charter schools, and news stories about low-performing public schools abound," notes the Education Justice website. "It would be easy to conclude that charter schools are, on average, better than public schools. It would also be wrong." 

Which brings us back to the David Brooks screed.  In his inimitable passive-aggressive oblique fashion, he is cheerleading the destruction of the public education system without coming right out and saying so.  He instead pretends to care about the angst of a new Lost Generation which needs to be brought out of its amoral darkness and into the bright light of capitalism, and taught how to be part of the greater society.  He just doesn't mention it's the Society of Elites and that their saviors are out to make a fast buck educating them the conservative way. Because greed is so damned good.



More Academic Fanfare for the Uncommon Man



Saluting Generation 911

Our elected officials have taken a solemn vow not to politicize the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.  Apparently, they meant on 9/11 itself, when they will show up and allegedly shut up.  But I guess Nine Eleven Eve doesn't count, because  President Obama unashamedly chose to politicize the event in his weekly radio address on Saturday morning. 

Slick product of an award-winning marketing campaign that he is, Obama couldn't resist coining a new phrase to mark our national day of celebratory paranoia.  He calls those who serve in the military and homeland security "our extraordinary 9/11 generation."

That sounds even more patriotic-trendy than The Greatest Generation, who are dying off at alarming rates and are just so World War Two.  And then there's the "Me Generation" of selfish draft dodging baby boomers  who want to cut their own grandkids off at the knees in their gluttonous consumption of Medicare.  Gen X is just too anonymous and conspiracy theory-sounding and let's face it, closing in on middle age. Millennials  conjure up visions of unemployed slackers living in parental basements.... and the unemployment crisis in general.  We can't have that during a re-election campaign, can we?

The 9/11 Generation of Obama's imagination is youthful, virile, bellicose and nationalistic.  Maybe he and his PR flacks got the idea from the old "Pepsi Generation" ad campaigns, whose creator said:

  "For us to name and claim a whole generation after our product was a rather courageous thing that we weren't sure would take off." The Pepsi Generation was one of the first and best known instances of what came to be known as "lifestyle marketing". It focused on portraying Pepsi drinkers as possessing desirable qualities such as youth, rather than on the characteristics of the product itself. ... "Pepsi was young, spirited, people doing active things—playing volleyball on the beach.... but younger we said in mind, in attitude, in feeling. Young in spirit. Young in heart."

And since Obama's own young, hip campaign logo bears some resemblance to the Pepsi symbol, the Nine Eleven Generation gizmo can't be far behind:




Be All That You Can Be, Nine Eleveners!



Here are a few choice excerpts from the president's remarks today, along with some totally gratuitous and and unpatriotic interpretations. ( His words speak volumes all by themselves, but who can resist this fish-in-a-barrel opportunity).

At the same time, even as we reflect on a difficult decade, we must look forward, to the future we will build together.  That includes staying strong and confident in the face of any threat.  And thanks to the tireless efforts of our military personnel and our intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security professionals—there should be no doubt.  Today, America is stronger and al Qaeda is on the path to defeat.

It's been a whole decade, yet all two dozen members of al Qaeda are merely "on the path to defeat."  We are in Endless Wartimes and have spent ourselves into  the ground in a Military Industrial Complex boondoggle.  We look forward, not backward, by choosing not to prosecute the Bush War Crimes.

We’ve taken the fight to al Qaeda like never before.  Over the past two and a half years, more senior al Qaeda leaders have been eliminated than at any time since 9/11.  And thanks to the remarkable courage and precision of our forces, we finally delivered justice to Osama bin Laden.

I killed Osama, I killed Osama, I killed Osama. Justice is for courtrooms and Judge Judy.

We’ve strengthened the partnerships and tools we need to prevail in this war against al Qaeda—working closer with allies and partners; reforming intelligence to better detect and disrupt plots; investing in our Special Forces so terrorists have no safe haven.

We poured billions into the coffers of defense contractors.  I am best buddies and allied with my partners, the CEOs of G.E. and Honeywell.  We redefined "intelligence" to mean mediocrity, and warrantless wiretapping, and spying on American citizens.  The government definition of "reforming", as you all know, is slashing -- as in, "reforming" Medicare. 

We have disrupted plots orchestrated by FBI operatives themselves in order to entrap citizens.  Real plots have been thwarted by airplane passengers jumping the Underpants Bomber and a couple of street vendors spotting a smoking car in Times Square. But the system worked. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano justified her job by saying so.  A whole bunch of those Special Forces we invested in got shot down in a helicopter after they performed a "night raid" in an Afghan village.  Their dog died too. No word on civilian casualties in that night raid.

We’re constantly working to improve the security of our homeland as well—at our airports, ports and borders; enhancing aviation security and screening; increasing support for our first responders; and working closer than ever with states, cities and communities.

We just ordered a few more million dollars' worth of rapi-scanners for Airport Security Theater.  We will continue groping down nonagenarians and removing their Depends to make you safe. We are forcing cities to participate in our "Secure Communities " program, resulting in the deportation of more Dream Act candidates than in any previous administration.  New York, Chicago and Boston may not opt out.  Their police officers must ethnically profile and send information on all likely suspects and innocent bystanders directly to Homeland Security.

A decade after 9/11, it’s clear for all the world to see—the terrorists who attacked us that September morning are no match for the character of our people, the resilience of our nation, or the endurance of our values. They wanted to terrorize us, but, as Americans, we refuse to live in fear...... They wanted to draw us into endless wars, sapping out strength and confidence as a nation....

And they pretty much succeeded.  Actually, the ruling elites of America succeeded in capitalizing on an act of mass murder/blowback by drawing us into endless wars and making the Security State a very lucrative proposition.  The strength and confidence of a nation has been sapped by the Wall Street psychopaths who still roam free.  They are the real terrorists.

I feel like Matt Taibbi -- who, stuck in a Florida airport last weekend, had the choice between sitting before a blaring TV speech by the president, or joining a group of screaming, plastic weapon-wielding Disneyworld kids high on sugar in a crowded lounge. He chose the latter.

They Make a Difference

If you thought people-hater and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor looked a wee bit wan and chastened as he listened to the president's speech Thursday night, it was probably because he was still smarting from the whipping he got at Recess.  

Of course, he'd  not held any public town halls in August, and made sure to call the cops whenever constituents came to ask him a question.  He even has hired thugs at Holiday Inns for the sole purpose of ejecting activists. (see "Eric the Dread").

But he more than met his match when a busload of National Nurses United (NNU) members converged on his Richmond office last week to demand that he pay attention to the suffering people in his district and in the whole country for a change.

 A friend who blogs under the name DreamsAmelia was part of the contingent bused in from Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. and confronted not by the congressman -- but by the usual squadron of police officers.  But this time, Cantor's chief of staff relented and met with the group rather than run the risk of appearing foolish by handcuffing a bunch of nurses rallying in behalf of poor people. The Cantor Squad is, it seems, capable of feeling shame.  Actually, since the nurses were actually blockading the office, it was probably more that the "Can'tOrWon'ts" were simply protecting their own skins. Bullies are invariably cowards.

The Cantor protest was just one of scores across the nation on September 1, as part of the nurses' ongoing campaign to tax Wall Street and save Main Street.  They're calling for a half-percent federal tax on Wall Street transactions, which the union says could generate up to $350 billion a year.  They set up soup kitchens outside congressional offices, including those of Michele Bachmann and Nancy Pelosi, to highlight the devastation wrought by Wall Street greed and malfeasance.



Trouble Comes to Cantorville (photo by "DreamsAmelia", R.N.)



DreamsAmelia sends the following published account of the Cantor extravaganza:

In Richmond, VA, 120 RNs and allies descended on the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and were greeted by a squadron of police. The RNs responded with singing and a large picket line.  Cantor's office invited a delegation to meet with his chief of staff.  Fifteen constituents lead by NNU nurses held the meeting.. Cantor's staff heard moving testimony and said the congressman would "respond." The local CBS and NBC stations filmed outside, as they were not allowed in.  A "Lady Liberty" character greeted the delegation on Cantor's office lawn as it exited the meeting, and heard stories of the pain caused on Main Street by Wall Street.

"America's nurses every day see broad declines in health and living standards that are a direct result of patients and families struggling with lack of jobs, un-payable medical bills, hunger and homelessness. We know where to find the resources to bring them hope and real solutions," said NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN, outside Cantor's office. (PR Wire).

 DreamsAmelia explains why activism works:

I think the thing to remember when we study history is that most of the movements and people we study are small in number relative to the societies they lived in.  How pathetic did the seamstresses union feel before the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?  The wealthy matrons of Manhattan joined their cause, and the seamstresses sold copies of The New York Times to make ends meet while on strike.  But they resumed work under grueling conditions, doors and stairways and exits locked, despite the full approval of the NYC fire marshall at the time, who had declared it  a "fireproof" building.  That is, when the exit doors weren't locked. 

Only 3 days of New Yorkers gawking at the unrecognizable bodies lined up in coffins on the fisherman's wharves finally goaded the community and politicians into action, aided by the still relatively newly minted technology of newspaper photography, which helped produce the concept of the front-page sensationalized news story.  But I don't think the response would have been as strong had they not previously been out protesting the conditions and demanding better ones in their supposedly "failed" strikes.  (Really great to see all these stories  in the archived Times, which I get through my local library free online with my library card).

Catch An Exploding Star

If it's not cloudy or rainy where you live, go outside tonight with a pair of good binoculars or a cheap telescope and take a gander at the biggest supernova to be visible in decades.  You will witness the vestiges of an exploding star just above the Big Dipper constellation.

 
Why do scientists think this SuperduperNova is so important?  Well, for one thing, it will measure the fun fact of just how fast the universe is disintegrating out from under us.  Astronomers will be able to take measurements to determine if some mysterious dark energy force is literally pushing galaxies apart.  Although they say they don't quite know what this force is, they have determined it constitutes almost three-quarters of the universe itself.

This week's sky show is actually the remnants of what is called a white dwarf star that exploded 21 million years ago in the Pinwheel Galaxy, and is just now becoming visible to earthlings.

Think of SuperNovas as politicians. They shine brightly for awhile, and quickly fade away, because in reality they've been empty shells for eons. The Michele Bachman star actually sputtered and imploded right before our very eyes last night. Rick Perry is a vestige waiting to happen. Barack Obama lost his star power long ago, and his jobs plan coupled his safety net-cutting Grand Plan may well be an astronomical disaster. (read Dave Dayen). Watch Obama's warm-up act for the debut of football season tonight if you dare -- and then gaze skyward, pondering the inponderable: how can such a passionate voice be the smokescreen for such destructively tepid ideas? 


(Reuters)



Know-Nothings Skulk Back to Do Nothing

They're b-a-a-ck.  With polls showing only about 12 or 13 percent of the American population that think they're doing even a halfway decent job, members of Congress are returning to Washington. They will raise the money for their campaigns they didn't finish raising while they were on vacation not holding town halls.  They will continue doing what they do best: taking up space and oxygen pretending to represent their constituents and writing legislation crafted by corporate interests.  They will be either passing bad laws or blocking good ones. They will be jockeying for position in front of cable TV cameras.


 What I would like to know is this: just who are these people in the Twelve Percent Congressional Fan Club? The pollsters won't say, except that they're a cross-section of "likely voters".  In other words, anonymous, allegedly breathing humans over the age of 18.  But I am willing to bet they include members of Congress, their families, the lobbying industry and the Forbes 400 List of the Wealthiest Americans, along with pranksters who get their kicks spoofing the pollsters who call during the dinner hour.  Even this 12 percent approval rating is overly generous:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just six percent (6%) of Likely U.S. Voters rate Congress' performance as good or excellent - for the second straight month. Sixty-six percent (66%) say Congress is doing a poor job, up five points from July and the highest negative rating since March 2010. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Only nine percent (9%) of voters believe this Congress has passed any legislation during the past year that will significantly improve life in America, the lowest finding in nearly five years of surveys. Prior to the latest finding, this number ranged from 11% to 29% since November 2006.

Among the first items on the Congressional agenda is the Senate Banking Committee's confirmation hearing for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee Richard Cordray.  A five time "Jeopardy" champion, Cordray has already proven his ability to rapidly respond to vacuous questions.  In this case, though, the result is a foregone conclusion.  Republicans have already vowed to block any nominee because the big banks which own them hate consumers.  President Obama could have recess-appointed Elizabeth Warren long ago.  But Majority Leader Harry "Give 'Em Hell Whatever They Want" Reid feebly allowed pro-forma sessions throughout Recess Time, thus giving the president whatever it is he really wants.  (Which appears to be holding on until Election Day and playing along with the play-acting which passes for a functional government.)

But back to Rasmussen -- it doesn't look good for either Congress or the generic human being, from the point of view of the telephone pollees.  A majority think the average Tea Party member is smarter than the average member of Congress!  Voters are evenly divided between those who think Rick Perry's desire to make Washington inconsequential in our lives is a fine idea and those who think he's nuts.  Most voters think it's better to be labeled a liberal than a conservative -- but think politicians labeled conservative are the absolute best!

In other words, either the people who don't hang up on pollsters are complete dorks, or the polling methodology itself is fatally flawed. Either way, we are so screwed. Politicians look at this stuff and try to find meaning in it, even though they claim not to. Results like these go a long way in explaining the bipartisanship addiction of Barack Obama, for one thing. He is like the Pushmi Pullyu in "Doctor Dolittle".  Two opposing points of view add up to one weird character pleasing nobody.

Taking Stock This Labor Day Weekend

Guest Post by Jay -- Ottawa

What can I say?  Obama’s long list of betrayals and our repeated howls – yes, both his stuff and our stuff, two halves forming one absurdity -- are getting tiresome.  

Here we go again with this week’s reversal of EPA standards on air quality, the latest item to be appended to the “Obama Scandals List” (see Blog Roll to your right).  And the Administration’s rationale for such perfidy?  Clean air kills jobs.  Yeah, right.  

Obama negotiates another raw deal for the people in time for Labor Day.  Piecemeal give-backs by Labor in return for Management concessions: such is the way in labor-management negotiations today.  In order to get more jobs from corporate world we have to “give back” our lungs to the corporate world.  Akin to belt-tightening, so Karen calls it – what else -- bronchiole-tightening.

The human psyche can absorb just so much Beckettian tragicomedy before everything seems unrelentingly absurd.  Words and civic action to restore reason end in futility.  We lately discover all the levers available to us are connected to nothing.  Unless you choose to go down the road of barking madness or culpable ignorance, the only reasonable attitude in face of Obama’s Act I is cynicism.  I can’t wait to vote for him again in 2012 for Act II as the lesser of two evils.  That’s what the stronger souls who are still operating on the plains of reason and pragmatism are advising us to do week after week, despite betrayal after betrayal.  Four more years for the Man Who Turned Himself (and the country) Inside Out!  We’ll find out in January 2013 which word comes after cynicism.

At first – that is, shortly after January 20, 2009 – we were merely confused.  Was Obama up to something clever?  A deep game?  Some kind of political jujitsu?  Why on earth was he choosing a hawk for Secretary of State?  Why Wall Street enablers like Summers and Geithner to help Main Street back on its feet?  Why a senator in the pay of the private health insurance industry to lead a reform away from the profiteering of private health insurance?  Why Obama’s expansion of war while basking in the glow of the Nobel Peace Prize?  Why the stretch-out of Guantanamo and the shrinkage of the Fourth Amendment?

 Obama Doctrine?  It boils down to surveillance and assassination by drones, complemented by routine violations of sovereignty by crack teams with the right stuff.  Some of those drones cruise day and night over the Homeland itself.  More I cannot say because it’s so secret. 

Most of us who tune in to this blog are no longer confused.  As a few analysts have insisted, Obama is not incompetent.  He has not been duped, “turned” or cowed.  The 2008 Democratic champion for reform was always a man from the enemy camp.  In 2008 the military-industrial-financial-security complex maneuvered a Trojan Horse into view with the help of its media complex, and we fell for it.  To do what Obama has done repeatedly tells us he lacks integrity and decency at his core.  We now realize we’ve been had.  Obama is most comfortable ingratiating himself before moneymen.  As long as they have his back he can ignore the polls.

It’s come to this: Most of the people in power today ignore “we the people,” whether we vote for them or vote against them, whether we tune in or tune away, whether we petition, campaign and demonstrate en masse or remain docile and stay home.  What social contract? 

We are in for a long season of pain.  For a few years we were like the patient who refuses to accept the diagnosis from the insistent doctor.  Why can’t we do or not do the political equivalents of smoking, devouring sugar and fat and never exercising and yet not get away with it?  The national myth tells us it’s impossible for America to stroke out like other empires.  There was only one Dark Age in history, right?  Some of us, like the Tea Party faithful, have turned to quacks.  Chris Hedges on the other end of opinion advises us to hide away in small self-sufficient communities of like-minded people well apart from the corporate-dependent, corporate-supporting majorities unwilling to give up the insupportable life style that’s killing us and the planet itself.  Take an Amish or Mennonite or Shaker friend to lunch to learn more.

 Finally, after a season of denial, we are – quite supinely, considering the viciousness of the assault against us in the class war -- reaching the point of accepting decline, deprivation and pain as constants, the new normals, companions on the long grey road ahead.  If an American fruit vendor, Tunisia style, were to immolate himself before the gates of the White House or on the steps of the Capitol or the Court, nothing would happen.  Hundreds of tragedies unfold every day in this country.  This year almost as many soldiers have died by suicide as were killed by the enemy.  Thousands of Americans who once lived in houses are gravitating south better to endure their new life under the stars.  We tolerate these trends because we ourselves have not been bankrupted – yet -- by unemployment, the theft of retirement savings in Wall Street accounts, a tricky mortgage or the hospital bill of a spouse.  Solidarity is a strictly Polish thing; individualism is the American thing. 

As for the “American Exception,” that turned out to be nothing more than a blip in history, the short years from around 1945 to 1980.  Is it too late to salute those years of middle class advancement on this Labor Day?  Anyway, it’s over.  Hang up your dignity.  We are being herded back to the old imperatives.  Oligarchy, the default mode of political organization since the beginning of time, is once again back in place just about everywhere.   

Yes, yes: Frailty, thy name is Obama.   

But, to be fair: Frailty, thy name is the electorate, whole and entire. 

Happy Labor Day.