Newpapers often don't archive the articles I want either. I would be happy to receive it as an attachment for my files. As for your comments I enjoyed them as always. I think you probably suffer from some of the same feelings that some the readers of my posts do. Namely that I do have an agenda and that is to make sure that the future of work is not a gray field of factories run by gray workers who never leave their homes except to work in the future. I challenge the whole concept of utility as defined by the post J.S. Mill folks since it only creates beauty and grace for the elite unless things are so absolutely fabulous for them that they can share a little with the other 95%.
Since the Aristocrats paid for theater for their peasants in Europe prior to the democratic revolution i.e. the pit for the peasants under the dripping candles was what is now the most expensive seats in the house in the "orchestra", and since the "wretched refuse of their teeming shores" (description of immigrants on the Statue of Liberty) knew more Shakespeare and Verdi than our modern elite and demanded it in the thousands of opera houses across (remember the 1,300 in Iowa?) America prior to the 20th century we could assume that today's grayness is not the result of an Aristocratic system but of Henry Ford's factory processes instead, along with a dollop of Taylorism. (Sorry for the long sentence.)
EDUCATION
So I'm not sure how technocracy would change all of that. Now for EDUCATION, and Brad and Keith. 1. Anecdotally I don't find the kids in our public schools less proficient in the three Rs as I have often stated in the past. Where we got Algebra and Geometry they have logic and theoretical physics.
Where I read Salinger at the University of Tulsa as a freshman my daughter read Catcher in the Rye in the 8th grade and had the same geology course that I took as a non-science major in college but she had it in middle school.
They didn't memorize tables like we did but I have problems with logic that my daughter simply intuits the correct answer. As for reading, she publishes her own poetry journal outside of school and gives it away for free on the streets of NYCity. She has gotten a tremendous response from the community and the professional writing community as well.
She has had mono-nucleosis and a nightmare medical story with hospitals taking out organs that were OK and then prescribing medicine with inadequate instructions causing psycho tropic effects with resultant subsidiary bills plus missing two years of school. During that time she has taught herself and used her classmates to keep up assignments and passed the difficult NYCity Regents exams in Math, Science, Global Studies and English. She also passed her SATs but was dissatisfied with her grade and will retake those at the end of this year.
My point is that the classes that you complain about are low discipline, short term, non sequential classes that a self directed teenager and with friends can almost self teach. She is in the Laguardia School of the Performing Arts and the classes she can't self teach are the Drama and performance classes that require teamwork and sequential discipline, i.e. you have to practice it daily and in an Order under the supervision of a live teacher. Stopping that practice will result in the inability to maintain skill. So I think most of this education stuff is just hoopla by people who don't understand pedagogy or the relationship between the various learning modalities. Admittedly there is a huge gap amongst academic teachers in the knowledge of what the late Donald Schoen called Reflective Learning and what Peter Senge calls Learning Organizations i.e. ensemble development in music. Also the future of work is predicated on the ability for virtual companies to practice these kinds of disciplines that are built around successful functioning teams that come together for a project (like a movie company has always done, again check my archives at FW) and then disband once the project is finished.
I find that my company has a big problem with the total education system but it relates to poor teaching of the performance and reflective modes and a kind of arrogance in the students who only know the academic. What other option do they have when they are so inadequate? It makes us give scholarships totaling over $130,000 on a regular basis to train the people that we will then hire to do the work. Amongst organizations that are so disadvantaged by the current economic/productivity rhetoric this amounts to almost a company busting situation. Well I have to go and this situation makes me mad thinking about it. Not good for the heart or blood pressure. So I have no sympathy for the individual academic types who have bled the system dry with their complaints about not being able to make good rocket scientists. If the truth be known it is that those Rocket Scientists, Doctors and Computer Technicians have a very large number of musicians and artists in their ranks who couldn't make a living in this sick world at their talent and so tried something easier and more financially secure.
I realize guys, that you can find these same stories in my archive on this list but so can I find yours. I was trained for five years in a very tough pedagogy program and was an educational researcher for the Francis Clark Piano Library as well as having very specifically supervised instruction of students from the age of six through professional during that time. I also developed graded choral programs in churches from age four to adult using the same instrumental principles in the choral realm as I developed amateur singers to fill the choirs for their weekly services in church. Our trained amateurs competed comfortably with the professional choirs hired by other organizations. I now believe that was a type of "union busting" and consider it ethical only in the sense that it was in my self-interest to learn how at the time. I like what Keith is doing because it develops performance and reflective musical programs but I find myself at odds with his pre-musical side most of the time and I do love and believe that modern music is not dead as he has claimed on several occasions. All this is to say that I think most educational civilians have no idea of the complexities involved in teaching and should learn about it. Before college, I grew up in a household with two successful teachers/ administrators and my sister, cousins, and Aunts & Uncles were and are all teachers on the various levels and in the various systems. I have taught in public, private, k-graduate school in schools from the Community College to the Ivy League and major music conservatories. As I said, most people don't have a prayer of knowing the systems that they are dealing with and only make it worse when they try. The time has come to realize that Plato and Aristotle were both amateurs at education in spite of some good ideas and that there is no substitute for knowledge of the processes and experience in the field. A good Shamanic attitude would help or failing that try Shamanism's child: science. Got to go. I apologize for such a cursory, over simple post on these very complicated and important issues.
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Working for a resident chamber opera center in every city of America
of
100,000 or more"
"Johnny Holiday/John A. Taube" wrote:
Hi There,I have the article right in front of me. The date is correct 6/6/00. If you
can not get from their web site, I can easily make a phf file out of ii and
send to you as an attachment. Or if you give me your address, I can make a
copy of it and send it my U.S. mail.By the way, what did you think of my comments?
Sincerely,
John
"Ray E. Harrell" wrote:
> Well, I looked on the LA Times archive for this post but couldn't find it.
> Could you give me info as to where you got it. I would like to send it to
> another list but I have to be clear about the source.
>
> REH
>
> "Johnny Holiday/John A. Taube" wrote:
>
> > The Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2000
> > BULLS RUN RIOT OVER THE UNEMPLOYED
> >
> > The economy: We need the jobless to make our profits off the stock
> > market. Let's
> > throw them a few lousy crumbs.
> >
> > ROBERT SCHEER, Times contributing editor.
> >
> > What great news last week-116,000 people, mostly black, Latino and poor,
> > lost their jobs. The stock market boomed in appreciation, and a few new
> > NASDAQ billionaires and many more millionaires were anointed.
> >
> > The NASDAQ had its best week ever because, with unemployment edging up,
> > the Federal Reserve might not feel compelled to once again increase
> > interest rates to slow down an "overheated" economy. A tight labor
> > market-meaning that workers' wages, which have barely risen despite
> > years of unprecedented prosperity, might slightly increase-is feared as
> > inflationary.
> >
> > Poverty and prosperity evidently go hand in hand, according to Fed
> > Chairman Alan Greenspan, the non-elected but most powerful figure in the
> > American economy. Although unemployment plays havoc with the family life
> > of those struggling to pay the rent, it's bullish good news for those
> > making a killing off the stock market.
> >
> > But here's a question for you as you're toting up your profits on your
> > 401k: If the health of the economy requires a permanent pool of the
> > underpaid and unemployed, should the well-off not return the favor by
> > letting a few more crumbs fall off the table?
> >
> > Why not show the working poor how much we value their role in keeping
> > the economy healthy by throwing them a few fringe benefits?
> >
> > Sounds wildly socialistic I know, although it does seem to be happening
> > in a few enlightened places, such as San Jose, Calif., and the state of
> > Minnesota. Perhaps for some people, the gap between those who have made
> > out like bandits in the run-up of the stock market and those who haven't
> > made it past working-stiff status has become just too morally
> > disconcerting. Also, given that many of the new millionaires are
> > rewarded handsomely for failing to produce a profit, or even a product,
> > can charity for the truly destitute be so far out of line?
> >
> > Not in the city of San Jose, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where
> > the local government is considering providing health insurance for all
> > children not covered by private plans. Why not insure all working adults
> > as well? The social cost of not providing adequate health care to those
> > who handle our food or care for our children is obvious. Better to
> > detect and treat a communicable disease among the working poor before
> > they spread it to those wealthier people whose salads they toss. Even a
> > self-made Internet entrepreneur ought to appreciate the win-win beauty
> > of that proposal.
> >
> > In larger urban areas in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, the
> > failure of private employers to provide health care has reached epidemic
> > proportions. Fully 2.8 million people in Los Angeles County-one out of
> > three workers and 40% of public school children-lack such coverage.
> > County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is merely being practical when he
> > states: "It's a national shame that the richest country in the world has
> > yet to come to the conclusion that health care is a basic human right."
> >
> > Yaroslavsky warns that a downturn in the economy, which Greenspan so
> > desperately wants, will wipe out whatever gains have been made in
> > getting people off welfare and into the work force. But here, too, we
> > have an opportunity to reward the working poor for accepting low,
> > noninflationary wages.
> > Follow the example of Minnesota, the one state that has produced
> > measurable evidence that "welfare reform" might actually reduce poverty.
> > A good thing, since 70% of those on welfare are children, and
> > unfortunately in most states the standard of success for welfare reform
> > is getting those kids and their mothers off the rolls without any
> > serious concern for the families' well-being.
> >
> > Minnesota has advanced the oft-forgotten but originally stated goal of
> > welfare reform-to leave the poor less poor-but it only accomplished this
> > worthy goal by sharing a wee bit of the wealth. The state now spends
> > more money on its poor by supplementing the wages of their low-income
> > jobs than it did when those
> > were simply on welfare. The results has been good: Domestic abuse is
> > down, self-esteem is up, families stay together and children perform
> > better in school.
> >
> > Nor should the social Darwinians be concerned that the poor are being
> > corrupted by too much state-supported largess. The average income earned
> > by the working poor in the Minnesota program is $8,000 a year, which,
> > after the state supplement, rises to $10,800 annually. That would hardly
> > make a dent in the annual wine bill for most of those new stock market
> > millionaires. Or in the income of the elite media folk who cover the
> > rise and fall of the stock market with the frenzied preoccupation of
> > those whose fattened stock portfolios are basic to their sense of
> > well-being.
> >
> > For the winners, the mantra is "keep those stock prices up," and if the
> > working poor have to be sacrificed, it's best not to notice.
> >
> > COMMENTS
> >
> > This is an interesting article, but while it has numerous important and
> > intriguing points, everything in it has been covered elsewhere. However,
> > nowhere is there an article that says it so concisely.
> >
> > Even the title is worth some thought �Bulls Run Riot Over The
> > Unemployed.� It�s worth some thought because it is so accurate. However,
> > in a sense, it could be misleading. One might draw the conclusion that
> > the �bulls� are extremely bad people. They are not. We live in a
> > socioeconomic structure, a �Price System,� and this system is a dog eat
> > dog system: Get as much as you can and get it as soon as you can. These
> > �bulls� are a good example for the rest of us to follow. And as Truman
> > said �If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.� In other
> > words, don�t be a cry-baby.
> >
> > Do you remember the slogan �We�re going to change welfare as we know
> > it.� Good enough. It�s quite obvious that the slogan didn�t mean We�re
> > going to rearrange welfare so that people who live in poverty will be in
> > a high income bracket. Giving them �a few more crumbs� (or even a few
> > less) really is what �We�re going to change welfare as we know it� has
> > accomplished.
> >
> > So what�s the �beef?� Really nothing. Or maybe we should say everything.
> > The fact of the matter is that our social problems are being �plastered
> > over;� they are not being solved.
> >
> > Can they be solved? No, not as long as we continue trying to solve them
> > and keep intact our socioeconomic structure, our �Price System.� Case
> > closed.
> >
> > Solution will only come when we dump our Price System. We have carried
> > over this system from the past primitive agrarian age. In modern times,
> > our scientific-technological age, it�s bring us to a point of disaster.
> > So that we can avoid disaster, we need a system that is laid out to be
> > compatible with our age. With this in mind, Technocracy proposes its
> > Technological Social Design. By no means is it �perfect.� However, in
> > that humans did the designing, it�s remarkable how close it comes to
> > being perfect. Your time will be well spent checking it out. Ample
> > literature is available.
