[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Democracy Now 101130
E. Wayne Johnson
ewj at pigs.ag
Fri Dec 10 10:51:47 CST 2010
How is it that students are able to arrive at the 7th grade with a
3rd-4th grade reading level?
That seems like a serious management problem to me. How is it that
students are able to advance
in the system without being able to meet the standard? How is it that
the system tolerates
such profound laziness of the students in not even learning how to
read? How does a student rise to the 7th
grade without mastering the 4th grade material? Herein lies some
fundamental problem.
I dont understand why there's any particular worry about meeting AYP.
Why not let the school fail
and allow the secondary and tertiary remediations to take place? That
seems to be a fundamental not a
punitive part of the program. Why not allow the restructuring to take
place, since the structure seems to be part
of the problem?
Synchronistically, this afternoon I was visiting with the head of a
medical school pathology department
today regarding a pig-related project he is helping me with and he
mentioned the OECD testing results
as published by the NYTimes. He was not surprised by the outcome but
was surprised at the large gap between
the China performance and that of the second place country. I compared
the result to the picture of
the finish of a horse race with only one horse visible in at the finish
line. He said that this result is the
result of hard work. No argument from me on that point.
Although we have several computers in our home, we don't find them to be
an exceptional
aid to learning. In fact we consider the computer to be a distraction
from useful learning activities
in much the same way that TV is a time waster. I don't find that
Newton, Thoreau, Franklin,
Leibniz, Copernicus, Nightingale, Kapetyn, or Locke or any of their
contemporaries had access
to the computer or the internet but somehow they managed.
The absence of wired connections to their domiciles is no evidence
that they had access to "wireless" in the conventional contemporary sense.
Poor nutrition could be a factor, but I am highly skeptical that
nutrition is that much of a factor among
the relatively well-fed population of the United States. Perhaps in
some extreme areas of the world
dietary deficiencies of essential minerals and fatty acids like 18:3n-3,
DHA, etc might be significant factor.
Doubtful in the USA. "Are the Cantonese smarter because they eat more
fish?"
Lead poisoning has been blamed for learning disabilities and violent
behaviour. It might affect memory,
because I can remember eating white and red and green paint chips off
of the front porch weatherboard as a small boy but
I can't quite remember that faintly sweet taste of lead...
Actually I think that the learning problem is with lead in the ass not
lead in the brain.
On 12/10/2010 9:59 PM, Corey Mattson wrote:
> Wayne, here is a partial list of the ways poverty affects education ---
> Parents who have to work two jobs or second shift in order to make a
> living don't have adequate time to help children with homework,
> structure at home etc.; poor nutrition, especially in early years, can
> affect health; people in poverty tend to move following jobs,
> disrupting the continuity of a child's education; people in poverty do
> have fewer resources, including access to computers; poorer families
> tend to live in districts, and within school boundaries within
> districts, that have fewer resources. .... and poverty does produce
> despair, especially when opportunities are nil, all of which affects
> motivation.
>
> All of the above, and more, have an obvious effect on curriculum. I
> worked in a junior high in St. Paul, MN. When students start in the
> 7th grade at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level (or lower), that fact
> will affect the curriculum. Teachers need to start with where children
> are at and not deliver a curriculum that will be of no use to them.
>
> I'm curious, why do you think urban schools are not making AYP under
> No Child Left Behind? It has nothing to do with the quality of schools
> and teachers (a huge myth, I've noticed, here in rural Illinois). When
> a school has 94% poverty, as mine did in St. Paul, and has to make AYP
> (pass) in 9 socioeconomic subcategories or else fail (my middle-class
> school in Bloomington, where I now teach, only has to make AYP in 2
> subcategories - white and all school), it's quite obvious that the
> school serving poor schools will fail. NCLB is actually proof positive
> that poverty is the determining factor; it certainly isn't
> discriminating between good and bad schools in urban areas.
>
> On the issue of "goofy" programs, I didn't consider any from the high
> school. I do think we have to be careful about calling programs goofy,
> though, without further clarification. The bigger issue is that
> programs, especially in the arts, are getting axed. And those such as
> special education, ESL, and speech are important as well...
>
> --- Corey
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:23 PM, E. Wayne Johnson<ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:
>
>> If poverty is the problem with education, what is the mechanism by which it
>> operates?
>>
>> Lack of Pencils? Paper? No lights at home for doing homework?
>> Please explain how poverty has diluted the curriculum.
>>
>> Or are you saying that the problem is Despair?
>>
>>
>> On 12/10/2010 6:02 AM, Corey Mattson wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>> <mailto: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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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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