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Re: hmmm.....

From: Eric D. Pierce <PierceED_at_csus.edu>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 17:19:22 -0700
Message-Id: <10661.120370@fatcity.com> 





DT-


Great example of the elitist techno-engineer-purist mentality 
(as opposed to the populist mass-market mentality)!
thanks,


ep



On 26 Oct 2000, at 16:50, Dennis Taylor wrote:


Date sent:      	Thu, 26 Oct 2000 16:50:37 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.co=
m>
From:           	Dennis Taylor <ismgr_at_pctc.com>
Subject:        	hmmm.....

> A little rude, but it rings a bell....


> 


> http://www.jeigh.com/werk/admin/



---





Subject: Cleveland schools debate - liberalism's failure to extricate itse=
lf from "white privilege"


Date sent:      	Thu, 26 Oct 2000 17:05:15 -0700



totn_at_npr.org



Juan,



I've long enjoyed your public radio work, and especially enjoy it 
when you say "hold on a second", then use pithy questions to unravel the
illogic of a spinmeister, or deflate some bag of hot air that you are
interviewing.



Leftist establishmentarians, at least those wrapped in the hypnotic 
cocoon of their own lack of rational and spiritual self-examination, are
desperately frightened that the people (as in "of the, by the, for the")
are going to be liberated from the monopoly that the liberal cliques have
built within public education. The proverbial emperor is about to be seen
as having little or no clothing. 



(see http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/BIOS/lipset.html ,
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/002/lipset.html ,


---



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393040984 



excerpt:



   Book Description 



   Two of America's leading political sociologists explore a
   phenomenon of American political exceptionalism: the failure of
   the socialist movement in the United States. Parties calling
   themselves Socialist, Social-Democratic, Labor, or Communist have
   been major forces in every democratic country in the world, yet
   they have played a surprisingly insignificant role in American
   politics. Why the United States, the most developed capitalist
   industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for
   socialism, should constitute an exception has been a critical
   question of American history and political development. In this
   probing work the authors draw on rich contrasts with other 
   English-speaking countries and extensive comparisons within the
   United States at the state and city levels, eschewing conventional
   explanations of socialism's demise to present a fuller understanding of
   how multiple factors--political structure, American values, and the
   split between the Socialist party and mainstream unions--combined to
   seal socialism's fate. Further chapters examine the distinctive
   character of American trade unions, immigration and the fragmentation
   of the American working class, socialist strategies, and repression,
   concluding with a penetrating analysis of American political
   exceptionalism up to the present day. 



---



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/002/novak.html , 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465013708 )



My wife (a spanish national of the minority catalan ethnic group) 
recently pointed out to me that even though the spanish political 
system was dominated by socialism for over a decade, they have a very
effective school voucher program there.



As a progressive-populist from a liberal background, I've become 
rapidly disillusioned with the propaganda of (anti-religious) liberal
extremists as the educational testing & voucher debate unfolds.
Paradoxically, as a member of what is called the "religious left", I end
up having to support, on principle, the conservative elements of religious
life in american society due to the prejudices of leftists and liberals.



When one of your guests says that the voucher movement is dangerous 
because it is seeking a "beach head" for conservatism in the 
inner-city/minority communities that are the most dissatisfied with 
the performance of the public education system, I am amazed and 
disgusted by the liberal bias. As some of the public participants on your
program noted, the liberal academic on your panel seems to have come from
another planet than the one inhabited by actual parents and teachers.



In the "real world", the public education system has *long* been a 
"beach head", and more, for a failed, dysfunctional leftist-socialist
agenda. I seems extremely ironic that educational leftism has ended up as
a vestige of white privilege which is promoted primarily, but not
exclusively, by white suburbanites!



Inner cities are an unpleasant reminder of the failures of socialengineering
 programs that are based on leftist ideology. It is 
amazing how the (supposed) "academic" apologists for the elitist 
liberal public education "agenda" are incapable of taking 
responsibility for the moral, ethical, philosophical and practical 
failures of their ideology. The cynical political calculus they 
promote contains a subtext indicating that as long as the dominant 
culture in the suburbs can send its kids to public schools that are 
"good enough", we can let the "unworthy" people in inner cities rot 
under decrepit pubic education systems, while simultaneously 
overlooking the highly unprincipled exclusion of conservatives and 
religious perspectives from the democratic processes involving public
education. 



Liberal social engineering programs are premised on the idea that a 
liberal "elite" (which is really an atheist priesthood), supported by
public funding, will dictate an "enlightened" ideology to the masses. 



No wonder parents and community don't want to participate more in 
public education. Why would people want to conform to the 
dysfunctional power arrangements implied in the politics of public 
education?   



The arrogance of the "experts" (such as your guest), that come out of
liberal academia becomes all the more obvious when it becomes apparent
that they think the deception and lies that they have been long advocating
are going to be swallowed by the people for much longer. The assumption
that they can keep deceiving people about the glaring conflict of interest
they have in maintaining the bureaucracy by using specialized terminology
and "research" (frequently just obscurantist, fashionable nonsense) is
incredible.  



The supposedly "enlightened" liberal ideology contains a "dangerous" form
of quasi-atheism, at least to the extent that it is *silently* premised on
excluding religion from public life. 



The *real* "great danger" is that the bureaucratic dictatorship that
leftists and liberals have tried to establish in education and social work
for several generations may actually be scrutinized by the people in terms
of its moral, ethical and practical failures. *Of course* allowing more
families to take their own tax dollars back in order to participate in
private (or religious) schools is a giant threat to the liberal
establishment's power structure. 



Conservative perspectives uphold the need for ethical/spiritual 
values in *public* life. Leftist establishmentarian perspectives tend to
be hostile to the idea that "diversity" should include tolerance of even
the suggestion that religious values can play a creative, dynamic role in
*public* life.



A spiritually maturing society that seeks love, healing, 
transformation, atonement, redemption and enlightenment through 
nearness to "the sacred" doesn't need to be coddled by elitist pseudoscientific
 "experts" and all the incompetent bureaucrats and corrupt
politicians bobbing in their philosophical wake.



Its time to let *true* democracy work. If that means that the people will
have to be trusted with responsibility, and that the dictatorial liberal
bureaucrats will have to let the people find out if alternatives work or
not, so be it. I would much rather allow a diverse range of education
options and experiments (including those that are supportive of
educational perspectives framed in terms of conservative and religious
values), than see the corruption involved in liberal public education
continue, unexamined.



Warm regards,



Eric D. Pierce


Database Analyst


California State Univeristy, Sacramento






web references:



http://www.npr.org/programs/totn


-



http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/inside






http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/steele_1000.html



( http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/steele.html ) 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/finn_1000.html


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/peterson_1000.html 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/peterson_0500.html 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/moe_0900.html 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/finn_0400.html



-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/hoxby_0300.html


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/walberg_0200.html 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/hill_1299.html 


-



http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/hirsch_1199.html





http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/november97/patterson_11-13.html



excerpt:



...


ORLANDO PATTERSON: ...  the situation itself is one in which there is not
a simple movement, harmonious movement. There is a change-- positive
change is always accompanied by friction; however, our perception of
what=92s happening is also paradoxical in the sense that both the right an=
d


the left, as well as the Afro-American leadership, all have strong
interest in perceiving the situation as in negative terms.  



DAVID GERGEN: Tell me more about that. That=92s really-- 



ORLANDO PATTERSON: Well, for the right wants to castigate the 
government for the failures of its--all its programs on behalf of the
poor, the Afro-American poor. It makes sense they exaggerate the problem
to show how we=92re losing ground because of the horrendous government
interference in policies, so that welfare dependency and so on is
increasing and it=92s increasing because of rotten government policies. Fo=
r


the left, the liberal group, exaggerating the problem, emphasizing that
America is chronically racist seems--is mistakenly believed that this will
keep the pressure up for government to intervene even more. And the
criticism here is just the opposite of the right, which is that things are
bad because the government hasn=92t gone far enough, or there=92s still, t=
he


place is still chronically racist, so there=92s still a need for more
government intervention.  



And for Afro-American leadership emphasizing racism as being--America as
irredeemably racist--enhances their broker role, obviously, and again
mistakenly is based on the view that by presenting an image of almost no
progress, you will increase the possibility of greater intervention. And
it=92s also partly due to the tragic commitment to the ideology of the
victim, a very deterministic view, which I=92m afraid most Afro-American
leadership has adopted, which tends to assume that by perceiving of
Afro-Americans as victims you increase the chance of intervention on their
behalf. Now, unfortunately, this worked. This is the strategy of the 60's.
It=92s interesting that the great Supreme Court decision, which struck dow=
n


school segregation, was based on a determinist view, i.e., social
scientists were brought in to show that it created victims, rather than
the view that this is the right thing to do.  ...





http://www.meaning.org/fem/frame_who.html


-



http://www.tikkun.org/ 


-



(Robert Reich's web site:) 



http://www.epn.org/issues/vouchers.html


-



http://www.epn.org/links/edlinks.html



Robert Reich on "Progressive Vouchers":



  http://www.prospect.org/columns/reich/reich-r-000908.html
  -


  http://www.prospect.org/archives/V11-14/reich-r.html



=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D


  misc stuff:



  http://www.educationpolicy.org/files/neaftbk/book0003.htm#I13



  http://www.epn.org/index.html


  -


  http://www.epn.org/whatsnew/org/CURP-1.html
  -


  http://www.epn.org/whatsnew/subjects/education-1.html



  http://www.epn.org/whatsnew/full_cite/47.html
  -


  http://www.curp.neu.edu/viewwebcontent.asp?id=3D1132



  5-10-00



  In a city very familiar with the squabble that accompanies
  education policy, Boston is an appropriate setting for Judy
  Burnette, an 11-year veteran of the parent choice movement. As
  Program Development Coordinator for Northeastern University's
  Urban Law and Public Policy Institute (ULPPI), Burnette's voice
  joins a growing faction of minorities who support parent choice
  reforms like school vouchers, although the "face" of the voucher
  movement still tends to be white, upper-class, religious
  conservatives. "People will say to me, 'How can you be black and
  support vouchers?'" Burnette says. "But the real goal should be
  high-quality education, however it can happen." by Maggie Adams  



  (more info similar to the above):



  http://reason.com/opeds/ml030200.html



  [note: { http://reason.com/whatThey.html } "Reason magazine...makes 
   the best case for practical libertarianism. Well-written and -
   researched articles delve into the specifics of economics and 
   politics, offering alternatives and critiques." 





   and: http://www.curp.neu.edu/viewwebcontent.asp?id=3D1104



   (the list of below links is from: 


    http://www.curp.neu.edu/dcontent.asp?cat=3D4 )



    "City Schools and City Politics:

     Institutions and Leadership in
     Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis":

     http://www.curp.neu.edu/dcontent.asp?id=3D161





    "Savage Inequalities":



     http://www.curp.neu.edu/dcontent.asp?id=3D1117



     W.J. Wilson:



     http://www.curp.neu.edu/dcontent.asp?id=3D1110



=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D



http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=3D30


-



http://www.rethinkingschools.org/



-------(linked from EPN) anti-voucher stuff:




http://www.pfaw.org/issues/education/milwaukee.shtml


-



(black activist accuses white pro-voucher conservatives of hijacking the
issues:) 
Received on Thu Oct 26 2000 - 19:19:22 CDT












Original text of this message













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