Thursday, January 05, 2006
NSBA Responds to U. S. Chamber
Here is an audio clip from Marketplace on the U. S. Chamber's arrogant and morally-bankrupt plan to rank states by standardized test scores. I would say it is time to start ranking U. S. companies on how they avoid or acknowledge their civic responsibilities to support the public schools. Listen to Anne Bryant's response.
Privatize Higher Ed for the Good of the Poor?
By soon-to-be former President of Miami University, James Garland's stalking horse op-ed on January 3 makes one wonder what job he is looking for next. Will it be to oversee plans for the dismantling of the American public university system? His rhetoric is certainly perfect for the job of Chief Bamboozler for Higher Ed--just promise that all the tax money saved from the destruction of the public university will go to help the poor and the working class get a college education, while the wealthy are asked to pay more in tuition. Let market forces take care of the rest. Sounds perfect, right? No Coed Left Behind?
Here's Garland's lead:
Here's Garland's lead:
AS Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' new Commission on the Future of Higher Education gets to work, it might do well to begin by acknowledging this fact: The historical business model for public higher education is broken and cannot be fixed.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Corporate Welfare to Work
Peter Campbell passes on his latest humorfully-disturbing rip on helping the rich end their self-destructive dependency on government handouts.
U. S. Chamber of Commerce and Racial Profiling
On the same day that the Chamber takes a stand on supporting the continued exploitation of "guest workers" in order to enrich the bottom line of its members while driving down working wages, the Chamber also announces that it will begin profiling states based on standardized test scores. In what can only be seen as a heartless denunciation of the philosophy of enterprise zones as a way to help America's poor communties (where test scores are always the lowest), CEO Tom Donohue announced today that the ranking of states will help businesses decide where to locate.
Now if the Chamber decides to link directly to McGraw-Hill/Standard & Poor's School Matters, they can fine tune their exclusionary strategy so that every community in America can be economically red-lined without ever mentioning the word "race." We can, then, perhaps create our own desperate third-world work force in urban and rural America, thus allowing the Chamber to re-align itself once more with the racial purity advocates who prefer to close the borders on our brown brothers to the South.
Now if the Chamber decides to link directly to McGraw-Hill/Standard & Poor's School Matters, they can fine tune their exclusionary strategy so that every community in America can be economically red-lined without ever mentioning the word "race." We can, then, perhaps create our own desperate third-world work force in urban and rural America, thus allowing the Chamber to re-align itself once more with the racial purity advocates who prefer to close the borders on our brown brothers to the South.
The 65% Solution: First Class Fakery
The New York Times has a nice piece on the 2006 divide-and-conquer strategy being pumped by the education privatizers. What they planned as their signature feint of the year appears exposed as the fraud that it is. Here a a couple of clips:
"This is an absolutely phony sound bite," said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. "Schools have such a variety of needs, and they have very, very different spending habits. And there is no evidence that spending 65 percent of your budget on classroom spending will produce higher academic achievement.". . . .
Several independent experts said there was little evidence that increasing the proportion of money spent on classroom activities improved student achievement. Standard & Poor's, the bond rating agency, said in a recent report: "Student performance does not noticeably or consistently increase at 65 percent or any other percentage spent on instruction."
James W. Guthrie, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, dismissed the proposal as "hocus-pocus."
"This is well intended, but misguided," said Dr. Guthrie, who is president of the American Education Finance Association. "Actually, it would be harmful, because it would add to the overlay of regulatory apparatus with which districts have to comply. Why do we want to restrict what school people spend?"
The Big Easy's Big Experiment
Having been demoralized by five years of LEAP testing with tens of thousands of 4th and 8th grade failures recorded and lived by the children there, and lambasted by countless news stories and racist gossip on the hopelessness of the public schools in New Orleans, along came a hurricane to push the entire system over the edge.
Now they are starting over, hoping that no infrastructure and no experience in running schools will accomplish the achievement miracles that the State designed and mandated in an attempt to will itself out of the educational cellar. If these adventurous new charter schoolers are able to pretend hard enough that the grinding poverty and racism of a post-plantation society was not really the reason for the system's bad showing, then they will likely put off, for awhile anyway, a big surprise awaiting those whose fantasies must eventually crack under the weight of reality.
As one former principal noted in the Times article,
"It's like you're experimenting with kids who've already been traumatized," said City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a member of the council's education committee and a former public school principal. "The intricacies of running a successful school are a lot more difficult than anyone thinks."Ms. Morrell also worries about charter schools' adopting selective criteria that will exclude what she calls "the poor, average kid."
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Rotten Apple Awards
On the lighter and funnier side of things... The last one is my favorite, which one is your favorite?
They can also be found archived at the website of the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency.
The "Jimmy Carter Amphibious Killer Rabbit" Award: Margaret Spellings.
The "This Turntable for Hire" Award: Armstrong Williams and the U. S. Department of Education.
The "Co-Mingling of Science With Comparative Religion" Award: The Dover (PA) School Board and the Kansas State School Board.
The "Yes, You Really Can Gather Empirical Evidence to Support or Refute Intelligent Design" Award: Pat Robertson.
The "Chutzpah Only a New Yorker Could Love" Award: Joan Mahon-Powell.
The "Game the System? Moi?" Award: Jeb Bush.
The "Notes From a Distant Planet" Award: Human Events.
The "Big Brother Wants to Watch You Even More" Award: Walter Jones, Dennis Baxley.
The "I'm Not a Researcher" Award: Diane Ravitch.
The "The Enemy of My Enemy Might Still Not Be My Buddy" Award: United Federation of Teachers.
The "Delusions Die Hard" Award: Amy Wilkins.
The "Mike Cohen and Matt Gandal Memorial Confusion of Rates with Scores Award:" The Achievement Alliance.
The "George W. Bush-Style Accountability" Award: Chester E. "Checker" Finn, Jr.
The "Literacy is Vastly Overrated" Award: The State of California.
The "Arbeit Macht Frei" Award: Dan Doerhoff.
The "This is What's the Matter With Kansas" Award, or, "Prima Emienda Derecho? En Kansas, No" Award, Jennifer Watts.
The "Our Lousy Public Schools Really Do Turn Out People So Dumb We Can Skunk the Pubic With Any Story We Want" Award: The Bush Administration.
They can also be found archived at the website of the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency.
The "Jimmy Carter Amphibious Killer Rabbit" Award: Margaret Spellings.
The "This Turntable for Hire" Award: Armstrong Williams and the U. S. Department of Education.
The "Co-Mingling of Science With Comparative Religion" Award: The Dover (PA) School Board and the Kansas State School Board.
The "Yes, You Really Can Gather Empirical Evidence to Support or Refute Intelligent Design" Award: Pat Robertson.
The "Chutzpah Only a New Yorker Could Love" Award: Joan Mahon-Powell.
The "Game the System? Moi?" Award: Jeb Bush.
The "Notes From a Distant Planet" Award: Human Events.
The "Big Brother Wants to Watch You Even More" Award: Walter Jones, Dennis Baxley.
The "I'm Not a Researcher" Award: Diane Ravitch.
The "The Enemy of My Enemy Might Still Not Be My Buddy" Award: United Federation of Teachers.
The "Delusions Die Hard" Award: Amy Wilkins.
The "Mike Cohen and Matt Gandal Memorial Confusion of Rates with Scores Award:" The Achievement Alliance.
The "George W. Bush-Style Accountability" Award: Chester E. "Checker" Finn, Jr.
The "Literacy is Vastly Overrated" Award: The State of California.
The "Arbeit Macht Frei" Award: Dan Doerhoff.
The "This is What's the Matter With Kansas" Award, or, "Prima Emienda Derecho? En Kansas, No" Award, Jennifer Watts.
The "Our Lousy Public Schools Really Do Turn Out People So Dumb We Can Skunk the Pubic With Any Story We Want" Award: The Bush Administration.
A Student for Academic Freedom
This from a Dartmouth College Student:
McCarthyism Redux
By Morgan Cohen
The politics of fear-mongering have been given yet another target: education. Conservative activists who have long bemoaned the changing face of the university in U.S. society have mounted a campaign for education “reform” in college classrooms. Unfortunately for college students, this campaign is not driven by a concern over the quality of education in this country, but rather by nostalgia for a bygone era when the university was the exclusive domain of wealthy white men. As the demographic makeup of the student population has steadily become more diverse over the past several decades, so too has the content of college curricula. This move away from the canon of dead white men has prompted many conservatives to charge that institutions of higher learning are afflicted with a “liberal” bias so deep-seated as to undermine academic freedom and alienate conservative-minded students.
Indeed, it seems as if history is gearing up to repeat itself. In the days of the “red scare,” the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)—chaired by the infamous Joseph McCarthy—selectively targeted the country’s colleges and universities. The ivory tower was thought to be overflowing with Marxist professors and Soviet sympathizers. To many in America after World War II, the thought of communist agents masquerading within sectors of U.S. society was terrifying. The government used this paranoia to broaden its definition of communism and, by extension, the communist threat.
The public’s perception of the red menace gradually evolved from initial tolerance for dissent and hesitations about violating people’s basic civil liberties to the conviction that communists were so uniquely dangerous that their rights could be ignored. The weight of public opinion, along with considerable pressure from the government, forced the academic community to purge itself. In the name of national security, many left-leaning teachers were driven out of the school system amid charges that they were unfit to teach. University of Washington president Raymond B. Allen expressed the views of many in 1948 when he insisted that communists, by virtue of their party membership, were “incompetent, intellectually dishonest, and derelict in their duty to find and teach the truth.”
In a stunning display of hypocrisy, many of the nation’s leading educators completely ignored the research and teaching of supposed communist professors on their campuses. They claimed that because party members were, by definition, unable to speak and think independently, they could not be objective scholars and were thus, in the words of Harvard president James Bryant Conant, “out of bounds as members of the teaching profession.” In other words, they fell victim to the very same intellectual conformity that was the basis of their charge against communists in the first place.
Today, U.S. colleges and universities are once again the subject of an ideological witch-hunt. Under the guise of protecting academic freedom, conservative groups are pushing state governments to adopt what is being disingenuously referred to as the Academic Bill of Rights. The bill—which has also been introduced in the House of Representatives—is the brainchild of ultraconservative ideologue David Horowitz and his group, Students for Academic Freedom. Despite its seemingly democratic handle, the Academic Bill of Rights is nothing more than a transparent political attempt to silence the opinions of those with whom Horowitz and other conservatives disagree. Also outrageous is that this bill attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Horowitz’s mission, according to his website, is “to end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge.” This goal presupposes that there are two limitations on academic freedom—first, that universities discriminate against conservative professors in the hiring process; second, that liberal professors indoctrinate their students to the point where “conservative-minded students are intimidated into silence.” Neither of these claims is true and the “evidence” that supports them is so superficial that one must wonder how this bill continues to be debated at the highest levels of government.
In order to “prove” that conservative professors are treated unfairly in the hiring process, Horowitz surveyed professors’ political party affiliation. Because the number of registered Democrats was significantly higher than the number of registered Republicans, he made the dubious inference that liberal professors receive undue preference when being hired. But the only thing proved by a head count of Democrats and Republicans is that there are more Democrats than Republicans. This is hardly evidence of a massive liberal bias.
As for the second charge—that professors are brainwashing their students with radical liberal ideas like evolution and the minimum wage—Horowitz has compiled a list of anecdotes by students who have been upset by the conduct of their professors. These complaints indicate that some students aren’t too happy about hearing different viewpoints, but they do little to suggest indoctrination. However, the nature of this claim makes it harder to disprove. There is no objective standard for classifying non-offensive material and thus the only way to assess the validity of these allegations is by a case-bycase investigation. I have no doubt that the student’s interviewed by Horowitz were outraged by the conduct of their professors, but that does not mean that we must automatically recognize their complaints as legitimate.
This last point is especially important given Horowitz’s tendency to distort the truth in order to buoy his political crusade. This past March a well publicized complaint from a student at the University of Northern Colorado was found to be patently false. The circumstances surrounding this complaint are particularly important, as it formed the basis for a great many of Horowitz’s speeches promoting his bill. In his version, the student (who remains nameless) was asked on a test to “explain why George Bush is a war criminal” and when she submitted an essay on why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, she received an F. In reality, the test question was not the one Horowitz described and the grade was not an F. The professor who was held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics is a registered Republican.
Aside from being completely baseless, the Academic Bill of Rights undermines what it supposedly aims to protect: academic freedom. Although Horowitz would have us believe that pluralism is needed to enforce the American Association of University Professor’s neutrality principle—which states that “no political, ideological, or religious orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and researchers”—in truth, it’s a Trojan horse for his right-wing agenda. Under the cover of pluralism, the Academic Bill of Rights would force teachers by law to adopt political instead of scholarly standards when evaluating what does and doesn’t belong in the classroom.
According to the AAUP, “a fundamental premise of academic freedom is that decisions concerning the quality of scholarship and teaching are to be made by reference to the standards of the academic profession, as interpreted and applied by the community of scholars who are qualified…to establish such standards.” The Academic Bill of Rights on the other hand requires colleges and universities to appoint faculty “with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives” in order to ensure a diversity of ideas in the classroom.
The danger here is that diversity will be measured by the political standards of mainstream conservatism and not by the criteria of academia. For example, no department of political science should be obligated to establish a “plurality of methodologies and perspectives” by hiring a professor of Nazi political philosophy if that philosophy is not considered to be a reasonable option within the discipline of political theory. The only measure of diversity should be academic judgment guided by the relevant disciplinary standards of the day. The reason this wasn’t written into the bill (aside from the fact that it is already the established policy of the AAUP) is because Horowitz isn’t really interested in balance and even-handedness, he’s interested in silencing liberal professors. In order to do this, the Academic Bill of Rights would literally prevent faculty members from exercising their own judgment.
Currently, the line between pedagogy and indoctrination is determined by reference to scholarly and professional standards as interpreted by the professors themselves. In other words, we leave it up to a biology professor to decide whether or not, as President Bush has said, “the jury is still out on evolution.” By contrast, the Academic Bill of Rights proposes that such distinctions be made by the college and university administrations or by the courts.
The difference is fundamental. At its most basic level, the purpose of higher education is to teach students to exercise responsible judgment. This objective can only be fulfilled if the faculty has the authority to freely and independently guide and instruct students. Horowitz would deny professors this authority and thus prevent colleges and universities from achieving their fundamental purpose. When coupled with the skepticism of professional knowledge that is the central theme of the bill, we find ourselves in a situation where decisions that should be grounded in professional competence and expertise are being based on political criteria—like the number of Republicans on the faculty.
There is an ugly irony to all this. The problem, according to Students for Academic Freedom, is that “You can’t get an education if you’re only hearing half the story.” The solution, it seems, is to sacrifice the quality of everyone’s education in the name of an illegitimate and artificial diversity. Consider this passage from the bill: “Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints…. Academic disciplines should welcome a variety of approaches to unsettled questions.”
For many, evolution is an “unsettled question.” Should we then have biology professors teach creationism in a scientific setting? Some people no doubt believe that the Holocaust never occurred. Should we then teach Holocaust revisionism in our history classes out of allegiance to “the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge?” Balance is not the same as academic freedom. The best way to ensure academic freedom is not to restrict it. But the Academic Bill of Rights does just that. It introduces content-based restrictions that regulate what books professors can teach and what subjects they can discuss.
All this begs the question: if the Academic Bill of Rights undermines academic freedom, what is the real motive behind Horowitz’s campaign? Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as many of the bill’s opponents may think. The Academic Bill of Rights is not just the work of one person, but is the mantelpiece of a much broader conservative crusade to “reclaim” the university.
The social transformations of the last half-century—civil rights, women’s liberation, and the rise of multiculturalism—have legitimatized new disciplines of study and college curriculum has been reformed accordingly. As with most progressive cultural shifts, it was only a matter of time before a backlash developed. Horowitz is currently riding the wave of this reactionary movement, a movement that marks another battle in the seemingly endless culture wars. What remains certain is that the Academic Bill of Rights is this decade’s blacklist. Like Joseph McCarthy before him, Horowitz is prosecuting a witch-hunt. This time around, let’s make sure that history does not repeat itself. The education of America’s youth hangs in the balance.
Morgan Cohen is a student at Dartmouth College.
McCarthyism Redux
By Morgan Cohen
The politics of fear-mongering have been given yet another target: education. Conservative activists who have long bemoaned the changing face of the university in U.S. society have mounted a campaign for education “reform” in college classrooms. Unfortunately for college students, this campaign is not driven by a concern over the quality of education in this country, but rather by nostalgia for a bygone era when the university was the exclusive domain of wealthy white men. As the demographic makeup of the student population has steadily become more diverse over the past several decades, so too has the content of college curricula. This move away from the canon of dead white men has prompted many conservatives to charge that institutions of higher learning are afflicted with a “liberal” bias so deep-seated as to undermine academic freedom and alienate conservative-minded students.
Indeed, it seems as if history is gearing up to repeat itself. In the days of the “red scare,” the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)—chaired by the infamous Joseph McCarthy—selectively targeted the country’s colleges and universities. The ivory tower was thought to be overflowing with Marxist professors and Soviet sympathizers. To many in America after World War II, the thought of communist agents masquerading within sectors of U.S. society was terrifying. The government used this paranoia to broaden its definition of communism and, by extension, the communist threat.
The public’s perception of the red menace gradually evolved from initial tolerance for dissent and hesitations about violating people’s basic civil liberties to the conviction that communists were so uniquely dangerous that their rights could be ignored. The weight of public opinion, along with considerable pressure from the government, forced the academic community to purge itself. In the name of national security, many left-leaning teachers were driven out of the school system amid charges that they were unfit to teach. University of Washington president Raymond B. Allen expressed the views of many in 1948 when he insisted that communists, by virtue of their party membership, were “incompetent, intellectually dishonest, and derelict in their duty to find and teach the truth.”
In a stunning display of hypocrisy, many of the nation’s leading educators completely ignored the research and teaching of supposed communist professors on their campuses. They claimed that because party members were, by definition, unable to speak and think independently, they could not be objective scholars and were thus, in the words of Harvard president James Bryant Conant, “out of bounds as members of the teaching profession.” In other words, they fell victim to the very same intellectual conformity that was the basis of their charge against communists in the first place.
Today, U.S. colleges and universities are once again the subject of an ideological witch-hunt. Under the guise of protecting academic freedom, conservative groups are pushing state governments to adopt what is being disingenuously referred to as the Academic Bill of Rights. The bill—which has also been introduced in the House of Representatives—is the brainchild of ultraconservative ideologue David Horowitz and his group, Students for Academic Freedom. Despite its seemingly democratic handle, the Academic Bill of Rights is nothing more than a transparent political attempt to silence the opinions of those with whom Horowitz and other conservatives disagree. Also outrageous is that this bill attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Horowitz’s mission, according to his website, is “to end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge.” This goal presupposes that there are two limitations on academic freedom—first, that universities discriminate against conservative professors in the hiring process; second, that liberal professors indoctrinate their students to the point where “conservative-minded students are intimidated into silence.” Neither of these claims is true and the “evidence” that supports them is so superficial that one must wonder how this bill continues to be debated at the highest levels of government.
In order to “prove” that conservative professors are treated unfairly in the hiring process, Horowitz surveyed professors’ political party affiliation. Because the number of registered Democrats was significantly higher than the number of registered Republicans, he made the dubious inference that liberal professors receive undue preference when being hired. But the only thing proved by a head count of Democrats and Republicans is that there are more Democrats than Republicans. This is hardly evidence of a massive liberal bias.
As for the second charge—that professors are brainwashing their students with radical liberal ideas like evolution and the minimum wage—Horowitz has compiled a list of anecdotes by students who have been upset by the conduct of their professors. These complaints indicate that some students aren’t too happy about hearing different viewpoints, but they do little to suggest indoctrination. However, the nature of this claim makes it harder to disprove. There is no objective standard for classifying non-offensive material and thus the only way to assess the validity of these allegations is by a case-bycase investigation. I have no doubt that the student’s interviewed by Horowitz were outraged by the conduct of their professors, but that does not mean that we must automatically recognize their complaints as legitimate.
This last point is especially important given Horowitz’s tendency to distort the truth in order to buoy his political crusade. This past March a well publicized complaint from a student at the University of Northern Colorado was found to be patently false. The circumstances surrounding this complaint are particularly important, as it formed the basis for a great many of Horowitz’s speeches promoting his bill. In his version, the student (who remains nameless) was asked on a test to “explain why George Bush is a war criminal” and when she submitted an essay on why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, she received an F. In reality, the test question was not the one Horowitz described and the grade was not an F. The professor who was held up as an example of out-of-control liberal academics is a registered Republican.
Aside from being completely baseless, the Academic Bill of Rights undermines what it supposedly aims to protect: academic freedom. Although Horowitz would have us believe that pluralism is needed to enforce the American Association of University Professor’s neutrality principle—which states that “no political, ideological, or religious orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and researchers”—in truth, it’s a Trojan horse for his right-wing agenda. Under the cover of pluralism, the Academic Bill of Rights would force teachers by law to adopt political instead of scholarly standards when evaluating what does and doesn’t belong in the classroom.
According to the AAUP, “a fundamental premise of academic freedom is that decisions concerning the quality of scholarship and teaching are to be made by reference to the standards of the academic profession, as interpreted and applied by the community of scholars who are qualified…to establish such standards.” The Academic Bill of Rights on the other hand requires colleges and universities to appoint faculty “with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives” in order to ensure a diversity of ideas in the classroom.
The danger here is that diversity will be measured by the political standards of mainstream conservatism and not by the criteria of academia. For example, no department of political science should be obligated to establish a “plurality of methodologies and perspectives” by hiring a professor of Nazi political philosophy if that philosophy is not considered to be a reasonable option within the discipline of political theory. The only measure of diversity should be academic judgment guided by the relevant disciplinary standards of the day. The reason this wasn’t written into the bill (aside from the fact that it is already the established policy of the AAUP) is because Horowitz isn’t really interested in balance and even-handedness, he’s interested in silencing liberal professors. In order to do this, the Academic Bill of Rights would literally prevent faculty members from exercising their own judgment.
Currently, the line between pedagogy and indoctrination is determined by reference to scholarly and professional standards as interpreted by the professors themselves. In other words, we leave it up to a biology professor to decide whether or not, as President Bush has said, “the jury is still out on evolution.” By contrast, the Academic Bill of Rights proposes that such distinctions be made by the college and university administrations or by the courts.
The difference is fundamental. At its most basic level, the purpose of higher education is to teach students to exercise responsible judgment. This objective can only be fulfilled if the faculty has the authority to freely and independently guide and instruct students. Horowitz would deny professors this authority and thus prevent colleges and universities from achieving their fundamental purpose. When coupled with the skepticism of professional knowledge that is the central theme of the bill, we find ourselves in a situation where decisions that should be grounded in professional competence and expertise are being based on political criteria—like the number of Republicans on the faculty.
There is an ugly irony to all this. The problem, according to Students for Academic Freedom, is that “You can’t get an education if you’re only hearing half the story.” The solution, it seems, is to sacrifice the quality of everyone’s education in the name of an illegitimate and artificial diversity. Consider this passage from the bill: “Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints…. Academic disciplines should welcome a variety of approaches to unsettled questions.”
For many, evolution is an “unsettled question.” Should we then have biology professors teach creationism in a scientific setting? Some people no doubt believe that the Holocaust never occurred. Should we then teach Holocaust revisionism in our history classes out of allegiance to “the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge?” Balance is not the same as academic freedom. The best way to ensure academic freedom is not to restrict it. But the Academic Bill of Rights does just that. It introduces content-based restrictions that regulate what books professors can teach and what subjects they can discuss.
All this begs the question: if the Academic Bill of Rights undermines academic freedom, what is the real motive behind Horowitz’s campaign? Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as many of the bill’s opponents may think. The Academic Bill of Rights is not just the work of one person, but is the mantelpiece of a much broader conservative crusade to “reclaim” the university.
The social transformations of the last half-century—civil rights, women’s liberation, and the rise of multiculturalism—have legitimatized new disciplines of study and college curriculum has been reformed accordingly. As with most progressive cultural shifts, it was only a matter of time before a backlash developed. Horowitz is currently riding the wave of this reactionary movement, a movement that marks another battle in the seemingly endless culture wars. What remains certain is that the Academic Bill of Rights is this decade’s blacklist. Like Joseph McCarthy before him, Horowitz is prosecuting a witch-hunt. This time around, let’s make sure that history does not repeat itself. The education of America’s youth hangs in the balance.
Morgan Cohen is a student at Dartmouth College.
Monday, January 02, 2006
NCLB = No Teachers Left
A glimpse into the future as NCLB drives boom in outsourcing education:
"In the summer of 2005, chairman of Microsoft and the world’s richest man Bill Gates complained of not enough smart engineers in the US. Little did Mr Gates know how Indians are trying to lessen the movement of jobs to India by making US kids suitable for employment. Welcome to the world of e-tutoring! Here, the teacher sits 16,000 miles away from the student, yet communicating beautifully through technology.
According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), most teachers decide to leave teaching after a year or two—especially those employed in poor, urban schools. Most teachers will retire over the 2004-14 period creating further demand. States like California, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Utah, and New Mexico will experience the highest demand. All these factors will drive growth in the market."
Welcome to the Third World -- without leaving home.
"In the summer of 2005, chairman of Microsoft and the world’s richest man Bill Gates complained of not enough smart engineers in the US. Little did Mr Gates know how Indians are trying to lessen the movement of jobs to India by making US kids suitable for employment. Welcome to the world of e-tutoring! Here, the teacher sits 16,000 miles away from the student, yet communicating beautifully through technology.
According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), most teachers decide to leave teaching after a year or two—especially those employed in poor, urban schools. Most teachers will retire over the 2004-14 period creating further demand. States like California, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Utah, and New Mexico will experience the highest demand. All these factors will drive growth in the market."
Welcome to the Third World -- without leaving home.
Saving Private Jordan
For high school students who may no longer have access to student loans, thanks to the machete budget moving through Congress, there's lots of opportunity in the war industry. Here's a story from today's New York Times featuring 19-year-old Katherine Jordan of Lyndon, Kansas who is the latest casualty of the war on insurgents and the war on education.
After months of basic training, Private Jordan may not know all the facts but she knows her mission:
"I don't know all the facts as much as I should," said Private Jordan, of the First Armored Division, 501st Forward Support Battalion, as she sat in her childhood home here. "What I know is that we're protecting our country still. We're concentrating on keeping insurgents away from the United States."
It's a good thing our illustrious Secretary of Education and her hatchet men and women in Congress have convened a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to ensure that young high school students like Private Jordan are never subjected to the liberal views of academics who might actually teach her something. You see, the biggest cuts in the history of the federal student loan program will provide the U.S. government with the manpower to operate the new and improved weapons systems for a long time to come. And, cuts to universities for R&D on things like biological and physical science will help fund priorities like military weapons development and NASA.
________________________________________________________________
"The trend is part of a shift in which the federal government is expanding research funding for new hardware such as warships, battlefied robots, and a replacement for the aging Space Shuttle fleet. It comes at the expense of the general scientific research in the physical and life sciences that has been the traditional focus of the nation's research universtities, and a cornerstone of Boston's colleges, universities, and development laboratories."
"Government research and development grants have been credited with breakthroughs that improve everyday life. They have led to the Internet, for example, and cutting-edge medical procedures."
__________________________________________________________________
Private Jordan's parents say they won't be getting much sleep while their daughter is in Iraq but the rest of us can sleep well knowing our leaders are doing all they can and being all they can be while holding educators accountable for our economic future.
After months of basic training, Private Jordan may not know all the facts but she knows her mission:
"I don't know all the facts as much as I should," said Private Jordan, of the First Armored Division, 501st Forward Support Battalion, as she sat in her childhood home here. "What I know is that we're protecting our country still. We're concentrating on keeping insurgents away from the United States."
It's a good thing our illustrious Secretary of Education and her hatchet men and women in Congress have convened a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to ensure that young high school students like Private Jordan are never subjected to the liberal views of academics who might actually teach her something. You see, the biggest cuts in the history of the federal student loan program will provide the U.S. government with the manpower to operate the new and improved weapons systems for a long time to come. And, cuts to universities for R&D on things like biological and physical science will help fund priorities like military weapons development and NASA.
________________________________________________________________
"The trend is part of a shift in which the federal government is expanding research funding for new hardware such as warships, battlefied robots, and a replacement for the aging Space Shuttle fleet. It comes at the expense of the general scientific research in the physical and life sciences that has been the traditional focus of the nation's research universtities, and a cornerstone of Boston's colleges, universities, and development laboratories."
"Government research and development grants have been credited with breakthroughs that improve everyday life. They have led to the Internet, for example, and cutting-edge medical procedures."
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Private Jordan's parents say they won't be getting much sleep while their daughter is in Iraq but the rest of us can sleep well knowing our leaders are doing all they can and being all they can be while holding educators accountable for our economic future.
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