[Krimel] You are my hero, Arlo. Such incredible patience! Over the years I have watched you wade through this crap tirelessly. I have always had this Pollyanna belief that people are not really stupid they just need to have things explained better or maybe they just have not been presented with the right information.
[Arlo] Well, I don't know about being patient. You should see me banging my head against the computer sometimes. Luckily, I don't have to deal with the deceptive and distortive rhetoric of xenophobic wing-nuts often. In fact, only here really. The whole "bash the Academy" crowd, which pretty much defines right-wing politics, uses the same rhetoric generation in and generation out. They labeled Pirsig a "radical professor" fifty years ago, and still use that tired phrase with each new round of nonsense. "Dumbing down our schools" is just another old, worn-out cliche, and every time you hear it you are justified to roll your eyes and tread with caution. More often than not, it is used to masquerade attacks against non-white, non-European cultural information. Its the damned liberals and foreigners who are ruining the country, destroying the schools, blah blah blah. Now, this is not to say "everything is fine". There are problems in the current system that should be addressed. As I said, I think the fundamental is deriving from our lack of true comprehension as to why we are publically educating in the first place. I've spoken to many people over the years, in and out of the Academy, and the most common answer I get is "because its the right thing to do". Okay, but WHY? What are our purposes? If our goal is an informed citizenry for voting, then we should certainly foreground history (American and World), political theory and economics. But why fund art, music and vocational tracks then? Why fund "literature"? Why fund "math"? If our goal is to meet the demands of labor, why fund (again) literature and art? Why not turn all public education into vocational learning? Most likely, education serves a mixed goal set. And it should. In a complex society, the outcomes of a public education are broad; vocational as well as informed citizenry. But how do we determine who gets what and when? How do we integrate "what" with something meaningful? Why should Janey find reading "Catcher in the Rye" valuable? Why should Johnny find learning long division valuable? Because it will "get them good jobs"? Make them "better people"? I have this conversation with my daughter all the time. On a closing note, David Granger recommended a book to me a while back that I am just now opening up and starting. "The manufactured crisis : myths, fraud, and the attack on America's public schools" by David Berliner. It looks like a good read. You may want to check it out (I know we all have book lists that are impossibly long). moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
