Dear "E" Yes, your observation is right on. I wonder about something, though. Long ago, as in "really a long time ago," way back in my YPSL years, I launched an all out attack on common sense. The argument was that common sense, as it was commonly employed at the time, was superficial sense, so to speak, America's version of herd mentality ( I was reading Nietzsche then ), and had long before ceased to mean what it did in the era of Thomas Paine. What we needed, said myself, was "uncommon sense" This, in current idiom, translates loosely as "thinking outside the box." For much of a year , maybe two, this was a frequent theme in things I wrote, I believe ( although not 100 % sure) in articles as editor of a college newspaper and in a variety of private letters. Having established that position, I dropped the subject thereafter. What I am curious about is the afterlife of those efforts. Maybe nothing. That is quite possible. Who --outside of YPSLs in Chicago and students at Wright Jr College, would have known of the stuff I wrote ? Still, maybe there was an afterlife. Bernie Sanders --although I don't recall ever meeting him-- was a U of Chgo YPSL at about the same time, and other YPSLs worked their way up one hierarchy or another, later. Just might be that a 10th generation interpretation of my critique got into Leftist circulation and, voila, here it is again. Could also be that the critique was totally forgotten and what you pointed out is something "new," albeit a sort of re-invention of the wheel. But maybe a "delayed influence of ideas" is at work. But how to know one way or the other ? No idea how to do that. Billy ============================================= In a message dated 1/29/2010 1:39:09 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
The most fascinating thing is the way "common sense" appears to be a pejorative... E On Jan 29, 2010, at 1:35 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: I came across this curiosity to pass along to the group. Not sure what it means but a head's up seems to be in order. ABSTRACT Public schooling has been kidnapped. The author examines how this happened – since we all know very well who did it. How did public schooling become a hostage of world’s neo-rightist political processes? This article attempts to unveil some of those strategies that underpin the very core of the neo-rightist current triumphalistic posture. To understand the way neo-rightist political processes encompassed public schooling at such a frightening pace it is necessary to situate neoliberal policies based on what has been called the third hegemony of historical capitalism. Also it is necessary to be aware of (a) how particular key concepts and practices have been cleverly and gradually twisted and perverted, positively hijacked from the social sphere, and coined within an economic flavoured materiality, and (b) how the new rightist triumphalism is deeply enmeshed within the politics of the common sense and the role that the media plays in building a particular commonsensical framework. The article ends by taking the Portuguese reality as an example, not only denouncing the poor record of some of the graduate and teaching education courses within the universities and colleges, but stating the need to rescue democracy by reinventing it. _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) _http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com_ (http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com) Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/ = _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
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