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notes from Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
points of emphasis, they note the boredom, the mindless
competition, the enforced social and economic stratifica-
tion, the lack of any real engagement — academic or
otherwise — the brutality and violence, the “soul-less-
ness” that characterizes what passes for education these
days.
xx- Central to this understanding is the fact that schools are not failing. On the
contrary, they are spectacularly successful in doing pre-
cisely what they are intended to do, and what they have
been intended to do since their inception...the system...was
explicitly set up to ensure a docile, malleable workforce to
meet the growing, changing demands of corporate capi-
talism — “to meet the new demands of the 20th
century,” they would have said back then. The Combine
(whoops, slipped again!) ensures a workforce that will not
rebel — the greatest fear at the turn of the 20th century
— that will be physically, intellectually, and emotionally
dependent upon corporate institutions for their incomes,
self-esteem, and stimulation, and that will learn to find
social meaning in their lives solely in the production and
consumption of material goods. We all grew up in these
institutions and we know they work.
As society rapidly changes, individuals will have to
be able to function comfortably in a world that is
always in flux. Knowledge will continue to increase
at a dizzying rate. This means that a content-based
curriculum, with a set body of information to be
imparted to students, is entirely inappropriate as a
means of preparing children for their adult roles.
Let’s put it plainly: in Gatto’s view, the Combine
needs dumb adults, and so it ensures the supply by mak-
ing the kids dumb. From this perspective it is clear that
Dan Greenberg is wrong. While there is always a need
for a highly circumscribed number of technocrats to
replace themselves, the Combine has only limited use for
hundreds of millions of self-reliant, critically thinking
individuals who engage in conversation and who deter-
mine their own needs as individuals and communities
free of the Combine’s enticements and commands. In
fact, when such individuals exist, the Combine fears
them. It may occasionally pay lip-service to their value,
but it ultimately has no real use for artists, dancers,
poets, self-sufficient farmers, tree lovers, devoted follow-
ers of what it views as non-materialist cults — Christian
or otherwise — handicraft workers, makers of their own
beer, or, for that matter, stay-at-home moms and dads,
all of whom, when they endure at all, do so at the mar-
gins and on the periphery of the social economy.
- T HE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER Hannah Arendt once
wrote that, “The aim of totalitarian education has
never been to instill conviction but to destroy the capac-
ity to form any.”* - In the context of our culture, it is easy to see that
critical thinking is a threat. As parents, we all want what
is “best” for our children. Yet, by our own actions and
lifestyles, and through the demands that we place on our
educational institutions, it is clear that by “best” we all
too often mean “most.” This shift from the qualitative
to the quantitative, from thinking about what is best or
the holistic development of the individual human being to thinking about what resources should be available to
semi-monopoly governmental educational institutions
certainly does not bear close scrutiny.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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Friday, August 7, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Top 10 Cash for Clunkers cars :: Chicago Sun-Times :: Photo Gallery
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Notice all 10 of the traded in cars are American...3 of the 10 new cars purchased were from America...hmm..
`Cash for clunkers' effect on pollution? A blip : 24 Hour Breaking News : The Buffalo News
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"As a carbon dioxide policy, this is a terribly wasteful thing to do," said Henry Jacoby, a professor of management and co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. "The amount of carbon you are saving per federal expenditure is very, very small."
It seems climate experts are unimpressed.
Good for economy...not great for the environment for all the money spent.
Fraud no reason to bail on fed-run health care :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Letters to the Editor
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Republican Rep. Peter Roskam's interesting article titled "Medicare fraud proves fed-run health care won't work" seems to be a red herring, designed to distract from the serious discussion of health care reform taking place in Washington.
Egregious as Medicare fraud may be, it doesn't explain why many European countries, with their government-operated systems, can provide better health care outcomes (longer lives, lower infant mortality, etc.) at lower overall cost than the American system.
As Mr. Roskam himself notes, there seem to be technical and law-enforcement solutions to those problem. One hopes the new administration pursues them more energetically than did the people who were in charge over the last eight years.
Going for the goal: Safest city by 2016 :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Mark Brown
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"Ruiz's family insists he wasn't involved in gangs. A little birdie told me otherwise, and I haven't been able to reconcile the two.
But the answer is not entirely important to me. Gang-bangers killing gangbangers may be easier for the public to accept than when the victim is an innocent bystander, but every life counts, and every shooting only adds to the cycle of violence."Obama is a socialist??
Full Article Here
Excerpt:
Why so ssssssssserious?
Posters showing President Obama as the Joker from "The Dark Knight" have been popping up around Los Angeles.
Under the jarring image is a one-word caption: "socialism."
To date, no one has taken credit (blame?) for the guerrilla artwork, which is admittedly provocative and effective, at least in terms of attracting media interest.
Of course, anyone who understands the definition of socialism can't possibly believe Obama is a socialist. (Just a few ways in which Obama's policies differ from a socialist agenda: socialism would mean no health insurance companies; decriminalization of drugs and prostitution; immediate withdrawal of all troops on foreign soil; a certain cap on all salaries in any situation and public funding for the media. I don't see the White House calling for such measures, do you?)
As for the comparison to the Joker: socialist? I don't think so. Wasn't he more of an anarchist, or maybe a nihilist?I am sick and tired of people calling Obama a socialist. As I said to a girl a few months back:
Don't talk about things of which you have no knowledge of!
Thank You Sun Times!
Obama & Gates commentary by Christopher Hitchens
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There are the things you can try when confronted by a cop, and there are the things that you can't -- or had better not. Last Memorial Day, I was riding in a taxi in Washington when a police car cut across the traffic and slammed everything to a halt. Opening the window and asking what the problem was and how long it might last, I was screeched at by a stringy-haired, rat-faced blond beast, who acted as if she had been waiting all year for the chance to hurt someone. (She was wearing a uniform that I had helped pay for.)
I often have a hard time keeping my trap shut, but I saw at once that this damaged creature was aching for trouble and that it would cost me days rather than hours if I supplied her with any back chat. (I think it was the mad way she yelled, "Because I can!" and "Because I say so!") The whole thing, especially my own ignoble passivity, gnaws at me still when I reflect upon it. But it didn't, if you understand me, reinforce any humiliating folk memory.
More recently, I was walking at night in the wooded California suburb where I spend the summer, trying to think about an essay I was writing. Suddenly, a police cruiser was growling quietly next to me and shining a light.
"What are you doing?" I don't know quite what it was, but I abruptly decided that I was in no mood, so I responded, "Who wants to know?" and continued walking. "Where do you live?" said the voice. "None of your business," said I. "What's under your jacket?" "What's your probable cause for asking?" I was now almost intoxicated by my mere possession of constitutional rights. There was a pause, and then the cop asked almost pleadingly how he was to know if I was an intruder or burglar, or not. "You can't know that," I said. "It's for me to know and for you to find out. I hope you can come up with probable cause." The car gurgled alongside me for a bit and then pulled away. No doubt the driver then ran some sort of check, but he didn't come back.
In the first instance, I found again what everyone knows, which is that there are a lot of warped misfits and inadequates who are somehow allowed to join the police force. In the second instance, I found that a good cop even at dead of night can and will use his judgment, even if the "suspect" is being a slight pain in the ass. But seriously, do you think I could have pulled the second act, or would even have tried it, or been given the chance to try it, if I had been black?
The "Skip" Gates question is determined just as much by what can't and doesn't happen as it is by what regularly does.
I can easily see how a black neighbor could have called the police when seeing Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. trying to push open the front door of his own house. And I can equally easily visualize a thuggish or oversensitive black cop answering the call. And I can also see how long it might take the misunderstanding to dawn on both parties. But Gates has a limp and is slight and modest in demeanor. Whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that he should in that home be handcuffed, and then taken downtown, after it had been plainly established that he was indeed the householder. President Obama should certainly have kept his mouth closed about the whole business -- he is a senior law officer with a duty of impartiality, not the micro-manager of our domestic disputes -- but once he had said that the police conduct was "stupid," he ought to have stuck to it.
It is the U.S. Constitution, and not some agglomeration of communities or constituencies, that makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right. And such rights cannot be negotiated away over beer.
Race or color are second-order considerations in this, if they are considerations at all.
New York Times Syndicate"The constitution makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home. There's no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right..."
Gates was in his own home. Anyone, white, black, male, or female would be justifiably upset if being threatened and/or arrested for being in your own home.
He correctly concludes...
"Race or color are second-order considerations in this, if they are considerations at all."
