Message-Id: <10661.120370@fatcity.com> From: "Eric D. Pierce" Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 17:19:22 -0700 Subject: Re: hmmm..... 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 From: Dennis Taylor 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@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 social- engineering 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 pseudo- scientific "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." - The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog http://reason.com/Bio/postrel.html ] 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:)