[Peace-discuss] DG in the NG

Sun Apr 17 19:13:48 CDT 2011

Thus "free market" rather than free market in the article.

There's a lot to be said about how education might be improved, including even 
in areas related to vocational skills. There's a lot to be said about how 
schools have to "plan" for many students to "fail", for obvious reasons, from 
prisons to minimum wage jobs, due to "competitive" reforms. But in a short 
column, I'm limited to basic debunking, rather than either extended critique or 
vision. Teachers don't deserve a microbe of blame for 30 years of neoliberal 
policies, any more than the vast majority of working stiffs.

DG

________________________________
From: E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森 <ewj at pigs.ag>
To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
Cc: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>; Peace Discuss 
<peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Sun, April 17, 2011 7:01:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] DG in the NG

David makes some excellent points.

I perceive the neoliberal landscape as a rigged market not a free market, 
though.
I agree that the Owners should not be free to abuse the people, and the 
people ought to rise up.  Unfortunately the people are still much too
comfortable to lay down the 'mot俄 control.

Teachers want a portion of the credit when things are going well.  
They might as well have their fair share 
of the calumny when the economy is maelstroming in the ma tong.

The education system seems to be rigged toward dumbing down the pupil, 
rendering him incapable of critical thinking, and rewarding conformity.

The failure of sociology classes to offer the intellectual equivalent
of improvised explosive devices and the failure of the churches to 
truly rip the veil and enlighten seems to be a worthy target.

I like the scene from Tommy where they get fed up with pinball and 
tear off the blinders, the earplugs, and pull out the cork.  Some
need to pull the cob as well.

On 2011-4-18 3:24, David Green wrote: 
Misguided critics of public schools ignore fundamental economic realities
>David Green
>It is conventional wisdom that good schools are essential to a healthy economy. 
>It’s true that schools are responsible for the basic literacy, skills, and 
>educability of those entering the workforce. But it does not follow that schools 
>are in any significant way to blame for the dismal economic outlook for most 
>Americans. 
>
>Misguided perspectives on the relationship between economy and education lead 
>critics to focus on daily activities and outcomes of teachers, parents, and 
>students. These critics avoid the fundamental nature of growing economic 
>inequality and its evolution over the past 35 years. This inequality has 
>absolutely nothing to do with the incremental successes and failures of teachers 
>and students, individually or collectively.
>The Pew Charitable Trusts’  “Economic Mobility Project,” available online, 
>clarifies the evolving historical relationship between productivity and wages. 
>Since 1945, the American worker has increased productivity by at least 2% per 
>year, relatively consistently throughout. This means that efficiency—output per 
>person-hour in the production and provision of goods and services—has 
>approximately doubled twice (quadrupled) during this 65-year period, both before 
>and after the advent of computers and a high-tech-based economy.
>This historical and structural increase in productivity—and hence both national 
>and per capita wealth—has depended on innovation, skill, and effort by 
>scientists, technicians, managers, business owners, and workers, both in 
>manufacturing and service sectors, public and private. About no sector of the 
>workforce can it be fairly said that its employees, from “top” to “bottom,” have 
>not significantly contributed to these increases by both the quality of their 
>minds and the sweat of their brows. 
>
>From 1945 to the mid-1970s, the median real wage for the American worker 
>increased commensurate with productivity—that is, doubling during that period. 
>Between 1974 and 2004, while productivity increased by 80%, the median wage 
>increased by 20%. From 2000 to 2005, productivity increased by 15%, while the 
>median wage fell 2%; obviously that trend continues to this day. This trend has 
>been completely determined by national politics and policies, and by neoliberal 
>"free market" economic ideology--not at all by schools.
>Almost all of the increases in wealth that are generated by the labor of all 
>workers have accrued to the benefit of the upper 20% of the population. Again, 
>none of this, in any critic’s wildest imagination, can be attributed to the 
>failures of schools to educate our children, whatever the debatable extent of 
>such alleged failures.
>This well-documented appropriation of wealth has little fundamentally to do with 
>computer technology per se, but with policies promoted by elites during the 
>transition from a manufacturing to a service economy. These policies determined 
>that private-sector unions would be effectively destroyed, and that 
>non-professional workers would be placed into competition with low-wage foreign 
>(and immigrant) workers. These efforts, most identified with the Reagan era but 
>supported by all administrations since Carter, were well under way before the 
>digital transformation, although they have subsequently been abetted by this 
>phenomenon, as well as by the depredations of financial and bubble capitalism.
>While American workers have adapted to technological change, their 
>organizational and political capacities to materially benefit from their labor 
>have not adapted to the onslaught of neoliberal, “free market” ideology and 
>practice among those who rule our country, especially those in the financial 
>and speculative sectors. This leaves workers vulnerable not only to the chronic 
>appropriation of their wealth, but to the acute misery caused by speculative 
>bubbles generated by financiers that result in the massive disappearance of 
>housing wealth, increased unemployment, Wall Street bailouts and profits, huge 
>federal deficits, and attacks on public employees and on the social safety net.
>Again, it is misguided for public school critics, including educators 
>themselves, to focus on the “accountability” of teachers and the “personal 
>responsibility” of students. Many parents and children are acutely aware of the 
>dire nature of their economic circumstances and future prospects—whatever their 
>educational efforts and achievements—in an economy with high unemployment and 
>the most extreme inequality among the developed nations. In relation to the 
>poorest among us, such criticism is accurately described as "blaming the 
>victim." Such criticism, whether from educators, university administrators, or 
>pontificating pundits, is ignorant and reprehensible.
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>Sent: Sun, April 17, 2011 2:00:02 PM
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] DG in the NG
>
>AWAREist David Green has an excellent piece in the News-Gazette today.
>
>Unfortunately it's not online, as the N-G tries to recapture pre-modern 
>journalism...
>
>But our moles at the NG have cleverly managed to get David's piece into the 
>space normally reserved for the bloviations of the publisher - and it's paired 
>with an excellent editorial cartoon.  Don't miss them.
>
>(David: post it to this list.)
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