[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Democracy Now 101130

[Corey Mattson]

I've worked in public schools, both in middle school and elementary, and
have reached the following conclusions ---

First, the problem with education in the U.S. is poverty. Most of the
countries cited below by Mr. Johnson don't have the disparity in wealth seen
in the U.S. In fact, a good number are more socialistic, with higher pay and
benefits, and access to political power, distributed more equally among the
citizenry. The more capitalistic U.S. resembles a banana republic.

The funding of schools, based upon local taxes, produces huge disparities in
funding. Some schools are grossly overfunded, the rich ones primarily. Urban
schools are mostly underfunded. I've taught in both poor and middle-class
schools. The schools serving poor students actually deserve much more
funding than schools serving rich students, since poor students have more
needs. We've got it backwards here.

On teacher pay, the teachers that make a respectable wage are in pro-union
states. A vast number, many in the South, make paltry amounts of money. For
the most part, teachers are underpaid. It seems that many conservatives here
in the U.S. think that you are overpaid if you've managed to collectively
win a little more than what are poverty wages. Sending teachers into poverty
aggravates the root problem of our maladies --- too many people in poverty.

Lastly, I'm curious what U.S. educational programs are "goofy"? Special
Education? Reading programs? English as a Second Language? P.E.? Art? Music?
Just curious, because I support all of them. As for aides, teachers with
oversized classes are clamoring for them.....

--- Corey


On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 7:54 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:

> "An evaluation of the 2003 results showed that the countries which spent
> more on education did not necessarily do better than those which spent less.
> Australia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia>, Belgium<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium>,
> Canada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada>, the Czech Republic<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic>,
> Finland <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland>, Japan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan>,
> Korea <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea>, New Zealand<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand>and the
> Netherlands <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands> spent less but did
> relatively well, whereas the United States spent much more but was below the
> OECD average. The Czech Republic, in the top ten, spent only one third as
> much per student as the United States did, for example, but the USA came
> 24th out of 29 countries compared."  - Wikipaedia.
>
>
>
> On 12/9/2010 9:19 PM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>
>  Americans don't want mass transit.  They dont want to be herded around on
> buses and trains like cattle.
> Americans are xenophobic.  They want to ride in private horseless carriages
> like princesses.
> Amtrak is Fubar'ed by design because the government wants to promote
> automobiles.
> Just compensation for the property that would be defiled to build high
> speed rail would outstrip
> military funding, and that simply would not do.
>
> *
> The problem with Education in America seems to have little to do with any
> lack of funding.
> I was a teacher and an academic at one time in the US and so was my sister,
> my mother and her brother and sister,
> her father, her grandmother and my mother's grandmother's sisters and
> brothers were
> schoolteachers and academics.  So was my wife a former academic and a
> schoolteacher,
> as was her father.  So I can speak with some authority if not with popular
> support.
> The US seems to spend too much money on education not too little,
> and a very large fraction of that is poorly spent.  There are too many
> aides and auxiliaries,
> too many goofy programs, teachers are overpaid for the most part,
> administrators are grossly overpaid, and
> the cost of the buildings is extravagantly high.
>
> Chomsky certainly is right about the outcome, though I really doubt that
> one can find a valid correlation
> with funding after it reaches some minimum level that the US probably
> passed more than 100 years ago.
> That old Rowan and Martin joke about distasteful American jokes sweeping
> Warsaw
> seems quite interesting.  I would have pointed out that the US Students are
> doing more poorly
> than the ones from Poland.  How many Americans does it take to change a dim
> bulb?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 12/9/2010 4:26 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> Noam Chomsky on the Economy, U.S. Midterm Elections, Climate Change, Haiti,
> and More
> [Noam Chomsky is a Professor Emeritus at MIT, where he taught for over half
> a century. He is author of dozens of books. His most recent is Hopes and
> Prospects.]
>
> AMY GOODMAN:Noam, you’re continuing your prescription, your advice that you
> would give to President Obama today.
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the economy is a disaster. There is 10 percent official
> unemployment, probably twice that much actual unemployment. Many people
> unemployed for years. This is a huge human tragedy, but it’s also an
> economic tragedy. These are unused resources, which could be producing to
> make the things that this country needs. I mean, the United States is
> becoming a kind of a third world country.
> You take a—the other day, I took a train from Boston to New York. That’s,
> you know, the star of the trains of Amtrak, train system. I mean, it took
> about maybe 20 minutes less than the train that my wife and I took 60 years
> ago from Boston to New York. In any European country, any industrial
> country, it would have taken half the time. Plenty of non-industrial
> countries. Spain is not a super-rich country. It’s just introducing a
> 200-mile-an-hour new railway. And this is just one example.
> The United States desperately needs many things: decent infrastructure, a
> decent educational system, much more pay and support for teachers, all kinds
> of things. And the policies that are being carried out are designed to
> enrich primarily financial institutions. And remember that many of the major
> corporations like, say, GE and GM are also financial institutions. It’s a
> large part of their activity. It’s very unclear that these financial
> shenanigans do anything for the economy. There are some economists finally,
> mainstream ones, finally beginning to raise this question. They may harm it,
> in fact. But what they do is enrich rich people, and that’s where policies
> are directed to.
> An alternative would be to stimulate the economy. There is no—demand is
> very low. Business—the corporations have money coming out of their ears,
> their huge profits. But they don’t want to spend it, don’t want to invest
> it. They’d rather profit from it. Financial institutions don’t produce
> anything. They just shift money around and make money from various deals.
> The public is some consumer demand, but it’s very slight. We have to
> remember that there was an $8 trillion housing bubble that burst, destroying
> the assets for most people. They’re desperately trying to keep a little to
> save themselves. The only source of demand right now would be government
> spending. It doesn’t even have to affect the deficit, can be carried out by
> borrowing by the Fed, which sends interest right back to the Treasury. If
> anyone cares about the deficit, which is actually a minor issue, I think,
> that should be the major issue.
> There should be massive infrastructure spending. There should be spending
> on things—simple things like weatherization. I mean, we should have a
> substantial program to reduce the very severe threat of global warming.
> That’s unfortunately unlikely with the new Republican legislators and with
> the effects of the massive corporate propaganda to try to convince people
> that it’s a liberal hoax. The latest polls show about maybe a third of
> Americans think that—believe in anthropogenic global warming, you know,
> human contribution to global warming. I mean, that’s almost a death knell
> for the species. If the U.S. doesn’t do anything, nobody else will. We now
> have chairs going into the—
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam, what do you think of the U.N. climate change summit
> that’s taking place in Cancún?
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the Copenhagen summit was a disaster. Nothing happened.
> This one, Cancún, has set its sights much lower, in the hope of at least
> achieving something. But let’s say they achieve all their goals, which is
> very unlikely. It’ll still be a toothpick on a mountain. There are much more
> serious problems behind it.
> We’re now facing a situation where the House, relevant House
> committees—science, technology, energy and so on—are being taken over by
> climate change deniers. In fact, one of them recently said, "We don’t have
> to worry about it, because God will take care of it." Well, you know, this
> is—it’s unbelievable that this is happening in the richest, most powerful
> country in the world. That’s one major area where there should be
> substantial changes and improvements. If not, there’s not going to be
> anything much more to talk about in a generation or two.
> Others include just reconstructing the economy here so that people get back
> to work, that they can produce things that the country needs, that they can
> live decent lives. All of that can be done. The resources are there; the
> policies aren’t.
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you know, when you look at the new Congress—I’m reading
> from The New Yorker, "Darrell Issa, a Republican representative from
> California, is one of the richest men in Congress. He made his money selling
> car alarms, which is interesting, because he has twice been accused of auto
> theft. ([Issa has] said that he had a 'colorful youth.') Now, with the
> Republicans about to take control of the House, Issa is poised to become
> [the chairman] of the Oversight Committee. The post comes with wide-ranging
> subpoena powers, and Issa has already indicated how he plans to wield them.
> He is not, he assured a group of Pennsylvania Republicans over the summer,
> interested in digging around for the sort of information that might
> embarrass his fellow-zillionaires: [he said,] 'I won't use it to have
> corporate America live in fear.’ Instead, he wants to go where he sees the
> real malfeasance. He wants to investigate climate scientists. At the top of
> his list are the long-suffering researchers whose e-mails were hacked last
> year from the computer system of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Though
> their work has been the subject of three separate 'Climategate'
> inquiries—all of which found that allegations of data manipulation were
> unfounded—Issa isn’t satisfied. [He said recently,] ’We’re going to want to
> have a do-over.’"
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. That’s part of the massive offensive, basically a
> corporate offensive. And they haven’t been quiet about it, like the Chamber
> of Commerce, biggest business lobby, American Petroleum Institute and others
> have said quite publicly that they’re carrying out a massive, what they call
> "educational campaign" to convince the population that global warming isn’t
> real. And it’s having an effect. You can see it even in the way the media
> present it. So you read, say, a New York Times discussion of climate change.
> They have to be objective, present both sides, so one side is 98 percent of
> qualified scientists, and the other side is Issa and Senator Inhofe and a
> couple of climate change skeptics. There, notice, also missing is a third
> side, namely, a very substantial number of leading scientists who say that
> the consensus is nowhere near alarmist enough, that in fact the situation is
> much worse. Well, you know, the United States is now—it has been dragging
> its feet on this for a long time, and it’s now much worse.
> I mean, there was just recently—a couple days ago, there was a report of an
> analysis of green technology production. It turns out China is in the lead,
> Germany is next, Spain is high up there. The United States is one of the
> lowest. In fact, investment from the United States in green technology is
> higher in China—I think twice as high in China—than in the United
> States—than it is in the United States and Europe combined. I mean, these
> are real social pathologies, exacerbated by the latest election, but just
> one aspect of where policy is going totally in the wrong direction, where
> there are significant alternatives, and if they’re not pursued, there could
> be real disaster, and maybe not too far off.
> AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to switch gears for a minute, Noam Chomsky, and talk
> about the elections in Haiti that just took place.
> NOAM CHOMSKY: "Elections," you should put in quotation marks. If we had
> elections in the United States in which the Democratic and Republican
> parties were barred and their political leaders were exiled to South Africa
> and not allowed to return to the United States, we wouldn’t consider them
> serious elections. But that’s exactly what happened in Haiti. The major
> political party is barred. As we know, the United States and France
> essentially invaded Haiti in 2004, kidnapped the president, sent him off to
> Central Africa. His party is now banned. Most analysts assume that, as in
> the past, if it was allowed to run, it would probably win the election.
> President—or former President Aristide is, by all information available, the
> most popular political figure in Haiti. Not only is he not allowed to run,
> by essentially the U.S., but not allowed to return. They’ve been trying to
> keep him out of the hemisphere. Can’t go back to Haiti, but the U.S. has
> been trying to keep him out of the hemisphere altogether. What’s taken place
> is a kind of a charade. I mean, it’s not nothing. You know, Haitians are
> trying to express themselves. We should respect that. But the major choices
> that they might have are barred by foreign power, U.S. power, and France,
> which is the second of the two historic torturers of Haiti.
> AMY GOODMAN: Honduras. Actually, interestingly, in these cables that have
> come out through the WikiLeaks release is a U.S. diplomatic cable from 2008
> that says exactly what the U.S. government would not say publicly, that the
> coup against Manuel Zelaya was outright illegal. Your response, Noam
> Chomsky?
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s right. This is an analysis by the embassy in
> Honduras, Tegucigalpa, saying that they’ve done a careful analysis of the
> legal and constitutional backgrounds and conclude—you can read their
> summary, which is a conclusion—that there is no doubt that the coup was
> illegal and unconstitutional. The government of Washington, as you point
> out, wouldn’t say that. And in fact, after some dithering, Obama finally
> essentially recognized the legitimacy of the coup. He supported the election
> taking place under the coup regime, which most of Latin America and Europe
> refused to recognize at all. But the U.S. did it. In fact, the U.S.
> ambassador publicly accused the Latin Americans who wouldn’t go along as
> being seduced by magic realism, you know, García Márquez’s novels or
> something, just a statement of contempt. They should go along with us and
> support the military coup, which is illegal and unconstitutional. And has
> many effects. One effect was that it preserves for the United States a major
> air base, the Palmerola Air Base, one of the last ones remaining in Latin
> America. We’ve been kicked out of all the others.
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I have two questions, and we only have two minutes left.
> One is about North Korea. The WikiLeaks documents show Chinese diplomats
> saying that Chinese officials increasingly doubt the usefulness of
> neighboring North Korea and would support reunification. The significance of
> this?
> NOAM CHOMSKY: I’m very skeptical about that statement. There is no
> indication that China would be willing to have U.S. troops on its border,
> and that’s the very likely outcome of a reunified Korea. They’ve been
> bitterly objecting to U.S. naval maneuvers in the Yellow Sea, not far from
> their coast, what they call their economic territorial waters, and expanding
> U.S. military forces near their borders is the last thing they want. They
> may feel—I don’t know—that North Korea simply is unviable, and it will have
> to collapse, and that’s a terrible problem for them from many points of
> view. That I don’t know. But I’m pretty skeptical about that leak.
> AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Noam, your latest book, Hopes and Prospects, what
> gives you hope?
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the "hopes" part of that book is mostly about South
> America, where there really have been significant, dramatic changes in the
> past decade. For the first time in 500 years, the South American countries
> have been moving towards integration, which is a prerequisite for
> independence, and have begun to face some of their really desperate internal
> problems. A huge disparity between islands of extreme wealth and massive
> poverty—a number of the countries, including the leading one, Brazil, have
> chipped away at that.
> AMY GOODMAN: We have ten seconds.
> NOAM CHOMSKY: And Bolivia has been quite dramatic with the takeover by the
> indigenous population in a major democratic election. These are important
> facts.
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, thanks so much for being with us. Oh, by the
> way, happy birthday, pre-birthday.
> NOAM CHOMSKY: Thanks.
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT, Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books, his latest called
> Hopes and Prospects.
>
> Source:
> http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_on_the_economy_us_midterm_elections_climate_change_haiti_and_more
>
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