Friday, July 31, 2009

Is It Time To Stop Drinking Coke? *

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New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 30 -- August 4, 2009


All photos: click to enlarge

This week in New World Notes, radio program #75, August 4 & 7:

It's a Capitalist's dream come true! Get rid of those pesky union organizers with your own death squad! Coca-Cola's bottlers in Colombia have been doing this for years. Eat your heart out, Wal-Mart!

Here's the story in prose (by The Guardian's Julian Borger) and song (by David Rovics).


If you'd rather die more slowly, try drinking a whole lot of Diet Coke--or consuming any other food sweetened with aspartame (NutraSweet). James Corbett explains why this chemical is the worst food additive since DDT--and how it managed to get approved by the FDA.

Fun Fact:

Q: What do the introduction of aspartame and the invasion of Iraq have in common?
A: Donald Rumsfeld! (Hear the show to learn how.)


Song played: David Rovics, "Drink of the Death Squads"

Coming soon (dates of WWUH Tuesday broadcast shown):

  • August 11 & 18 --The Thinking (Wo)Man's Guide to 9-11 (2 parts)

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For more commentary by James Corbett, see http://www.corbettreport.com/


* Coke and Coca-Cola are registered trademarks of The Coca-Cola Company .

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Education Becomes Social Control (J.T. Gatto, pt. 2)

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New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 30 -- July 28, 2009


This week in New World Notes, radio program #74, July 28 & 31:

New York City's (three-time) and New York State's "Teacher of the Year" continues his explanation of why U.S. public schools intentionally "dumb down" and infantilize students (Answer: To mold young people into obedient workers, obedient citizens, & manipulable consumers), and who benefits ( = Big Business, Big Finance, & centralized government). And Gatto has the documents to prove it! -- or at least to make a very strong case.

For John Taylor Gatto, America's public schools are not "failing." Rather, they're succeeding all-too-well in doing exactly what they were designed to do. That includes--in addition to training all their children in docility, childishness, and obedience--dispensing only the education necessary for each student's anticipated place in the social and economic order.

American schools have always stressed critical analysis of U.S. foreign
policy. Well, maybe at Groton and Andover. Public schools tend more
towards inculcating "patriotism." The standard form of salute has varied
through time, as this 1899 photo shows. All photos: Click to enlarge.

Gatto doesn't say the following explicity: this is my application of his theses to the world as I've seen it. The previous paragraph explains why many suburban schools are good academically, and far too many urban public school systems produce about equal numbers of (a) dropouts and (b) young adults far less equipped to succeed than their suburban peers. And it explains why urban schools will not be allowed to improve anytime soon:

Now that America's economic "leaders" have closed down most of the factories and family farms in the country--and replaced jobs with machines everywhere possible--America has more adult citizens than The System needs. Several times, Gatto quotes Lee Iacocca's remarks that educating people beyond their likely station in The System is just asking for trouble . . . just inviting "rebellion." At the moment, the ruling elite needs poor persons of color mainly as consumers, hamburger-flippers, cannon-fodder, raw materials for the prison-industrial complex, and handy targets for working-class White rage.

Obviously, little education is required for these roles; and teaching such people to think critically, understand history, and appreciate Dostoevsky and Thomas Paine would only be helping them to fight back more effectively!

Gatto's talk is fascinating, brilliant, and laced with an engaging dry wit.

Homeschooling propaganda.
(But could they have a point?)

Program notes:

This installment begins with a good summary of Gatto's main points in Part One (NWN #72). If you missed Part One, you could still start here at Part Two.

Gatto has written a short, profusely illustrated article that nicely summarizes his overall main ideas & main arguments--the "American Education History Tour." www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm

Song played: James McMurtry, "Just Us Kids"

Coming soon (dates of WWUH Tuesday broadcast shown):

  • August 4--Is It Time To Stop Drinking Coke?
  • August 11--The Thinking (Wo)Man's Guide to 9-11

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


Friday, July 10, 2009

Are Our Schools Bad On Purpose? (J.T. Gatto, part 1)

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New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 28 -- July 14, 2009

This week in New World Notes, radio program #72, July 14 & 17:

Executive Summary: In educating students, U.S. public schools range from mediocre down to soul-destroying, John Taylor Gatto suggests. Other scholars and critics of public education--such as Jonathan Kozol, George Carlin, and Aldous Huxley--have argued the same. But Gatto gives a detailed account of WHY things are as they are.

Why? The ruling elite wanted a nation of obedient factory workers and easily-manipulated, childlike consumers, Gatto argues. The public education system of Prussia (now a region of Germany) provided a working model to imitate. There, public schools molded students to fit the current needs of the state. What the Prussian state usually needed was loyal, obedient soldiers.

John Taylor Gatto

The American elite had the inspired idea of molding children instead to fit the needs of business and manufacturing.

Compulsory public schooling has done this well for nearly a century, Gatto argues. The real founders of our public secondary schools were not reformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey. They were Captains of Industry and of Finance--Robber Barons--including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan, all ably assisted by powerful educational theorists such as James Bryant Conant, of Harvard.

In this recording, Gatto delivers a powerful, brilliant, well-researched, and very witty speech (originally presented in October 2003); and I'm delighted to be able to make his work a little better known. Today's program presents my condensation of roughly the first third of this long speech.

Two of the books by Gatto

But who is this guy?

No crackpot Lefty idealist, Gatto was a master high-school teacher with three "Teacher of the Year" awards from New York City and one from New York State. Since quitting the profession, he has written books and given lectures, attempting to show Americans that their system of compulsory public schooling is designed to produce social control, not education.

Gatto's web site is http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/. In it you'll find a short, profusely illustrated article that nicely summarizes his overall main ideas and main arguments--the "American Education History Tour." Here's a link to it: www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm.

Song: The Foremen, California Couldn't Pay Our Education

"School Sucks" by Liese Lotta

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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Palast & Pilger on Neocolonialism & Democracy

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This week in New World Notes, radio program #71, July 7 & 10:


Axis of evil or champion neocolonialism-busters? (L to R:) Hugo
Chavez (Venezuela), Fidel Castro (Cuba), Evo Morales (Bolivia).
All other photos: Click to enlarge.

Palast & Pilger on
Neocolonialism & Democracy


Or: Andes, Schmandes, Let's Have Some in Muncie, Indiandes!

Two dispatches from South America show progress from (1) colonialism to (2) neocolonialism to (3) neocolonialism disguised as democracy to (4) democracy. Greg Palast reports from Ecuador (Stage 3), ruthlessly exploited by & practically a colony of the World Bank and global financial institutions. John Pilger reports from Bolivia, which has recently and tentatively arrived at Stage 4. The US should be so fortunate!

Top: American writer & BBC reporter Greg Palast.
Bottom: Australian filmmaker, essayist, & correspondent John Pilger.

Credit where due:

We play selections (on Bolivia) from John Pilger's film, War on Democracy, adapted to radio by Lyn Gerry for the Unwelcome Guests Collective (www.unwelcomeguests.org). Many thanks thereunto. KD reads passages on Ecuador from Greg Palast's recent book, Armed Madhouse.

New World Notes is produced by Kenneth Dowst for WWUH-FM, "Public Alternative Radio," at The University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail dot com.

Songs--

  • Chumbawamba, "The Bad Squire"
  • Sam Cooke, "A Change Is Gonna Come" (Pilger film theme-song)

Coming soon (dates of WWUH Tuesday broadcast shown):

  • July 14--Are Our Schools Bad on Purpose? (John Taylor Gatto, Part 1)
  • July 21--The Art of the Rant, Part 1

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Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), 1904-1991

The Art of Poetry--Lessons 1 & 1.5:

Happy birthday to me!
I'm 59, not 43.
I look like a mon-key,
And I don't watch TV!

[Segue:]

God . . . bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
Pill . . . that is good!
Stand beside it . . . and guide it . . .
[insert some words here] . . . whole neighborhood!
From [more words needed]
To . . . "
To Norwegians, white as foam!
God bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
Where-e're you roam!
God bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
[Last line needed. Suggestions?]

Astrodome? weighty tome? ev'ry home? Kookie, lend me your comb?, fertile loam?, genome? metronome? to frosty Nome? this here poem? old-age home? when in Rome? microtome? from her womb [sight-rhyme]? rhizome? Hillary, then you too would moan?

. . . Blue-dress Spot:
It may never come out, Monica, it may not! (???)

Aw, the hell with it--and apologies to Connecticut's own T.S. Geisel ("Dr. Seuss")--one of the few people I've heard of who died after having made the world a better place--along with another former neighbor of mine, the Rev. Fred Rogers, of Pittsburgh--whom I never had the courtesy to thank. And yes, I am a little old to be having another Midlife Crisis, but my first one didn't go well!

Happy Independence Day!

Ken


"Fredosaurus Rex", on the grounds of public TV station
WQED, in Pittsburgh, honors Fred Rogers.