Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Controlling the People (2): Schooling and Scapegoating


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 10 -- March 5, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #157, March 8, 2011

Controlling the People (2):
Schooling and Scapegoating

Sometimes prejudiced people's logic is pretty hard to refute.
Most photos: Click to enlarge.

In brief

Our first program on the techniques of social control--#153, "On the Job"--proved very popular (judging from the number of Internet downloads). I expect the second will prove the same. Most of the installment--like all of #153--is adapted from the video documentary, Human Resources.

This week we explore two other mechanisms of social control: schooling and scapegoating.

Also hard to argue with!

(1) In our first segment this week, award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto and Education professor Alfie Kohn each argue, in different ways, that education is at best a very minor goal of public schooling. The main goal of public schools seems to be training young people to be docile and efficient cogs in a corporate-controlled economic system and state.

Kohn--at his best in this recording--lucidly shows that if the noble professed goals of Education were taken seriously, in many cases schools would be doing the opposite of what they're doing. For one, they'd be encouraging cooperation (which leads to excellent performance) instead of competition (which does not). And schools would scrap grading and--especially--standardized testing.

(2) Then I briefly elaborate on some of Gatto's and Kohn's points with a comic-ironic story of my trying to teach English composition (without grading papers) to college students who care about grades more than about learning anything.

(3) Last, we examine the media-assisted scapegoating of minorities. "Divide and conquer" in action! (Listener Advisory: this segment rebroadcasts strong language--anti-minority "hate speech"--and graphic news reports of anti-minority violence.)

Notes, credits, & links

Thanks to radio producer Robin Upton ( http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/ ) for bringing the documentary Human Resources to light. Wish I knew who sang that great version of "Born in Bethlehem" in the J.T. Gatto section!

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "Yum-Yum Tree") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Top: Alfie Kohn. Bottom: Is it an old prison? an old factory? an old state mental hospital? Answer: All of the above: it's my old high school! Don't believe the postcard's lies: Glen-Nor (later Interboro) High School was in Glenolden, not Norwood.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)

  • March 15 -- Who are the REAL Pirates? Who are the REAL Mass-Murderers? If you hated #155--"Who are the REAL Gangsters?"--you probably won't like this one either. {wink}
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Saturday, June 5, 2010

Paul Siegel: Gay Rights as a Free-Speech Issue



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 23 -- June 5, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #118, June 8:

Paul Siegel:
Gay Rights as a
Free-Speech Issue

In brief

Civil-liberties activist Paul Siegel has advice for people--particularly gay people--considering challenging discrimination in court. Base your challenge on the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech, right to assemble), not on the 14th (equal protection, privacy).

This sounds technical & legalistic, but in fact this intelligent and often funny talk should have wide appeal.

Highlights include a funny account of what Pacific Telephone & Telegraph would & wouldn't allow into that compendium of decency and good taste, the Yellow Pages, . . . stories of clueless high-school administrators who think the 1st Amendment does not protect students wearing T-shirts that say, "I Support My Gay Friends," . . . and a sad story of a gay student suspended and "outed" to her parents by the school principal for the crime of kissing her girlfriend on school grounds.

Paul Siegel will often go weeks or months without reminding anyone
of Benito Mussolini. Still, every once in awhile . . . . Photos by K.D.
All photos: Click to enlarge.

Notes, credits, & links

Recorded live (by moi) at the University of Hartford, on April 27, 2010.

Paul Siegel is a longtime civil-liberties activist. His day job is Professor of Communication at the University of Hartford.

http://www.aclu.org/

http://www.aclu-ct.org/

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "East-of-the-River satellite studio and skunk works") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. "East-of-the-River" is Hartford-ese for "Podunk."

New World Notes' main audio archive is at radio4all.net. Installments beginning with #90 are archived also at The Internet Archive, in a variety of file formats. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series Overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Bottom: The talk's concluding slide

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut date shown:

  • June 15 -- Is It Time to Impeach Obama? Racist, right-wing crackpots are loudly denouncing the President. That shouldn't stop Progressives from doing the same--though on different grounds.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Public Education: Failure or All-Too-Successful?

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This week in New World Notes, radio program #78, August 25:

Schoolchildren salute the flag: early 20th century. Be afraid.

One of my favorite mental images comes from Eric Klinenberg's talk on Media Oligopoly, from the 9th installment of New World Notes (April 2008). Klinenberg told how a Christian anti-smut organization and Move On (I think it was) and the National Rifle Association and Code Pink for Peace all joined together to fight some horrific rule-change or other that the Bush-era Federal Communications Commission was proposing.

Can’t you just picture the table? . . . with (the late) Charleton Heston, for the NRA, in leather boots, jeans, and cowboy-plaid shirt, sitting next to Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, in a pink Tee and (just to unsettle her right-wing opponents) pearl necklace?

I can picture Medea and Charlton--between rounds of plotting tactics to stop the government from “privatizing” all the airwaves--chatting and discovering they’re both fans of, say, singer Iris Dement and the Green Bay Packers. And, more importantly, discovering that they share more political beliefs than they had imagined. And discovering that they and the organizations they represent can work together effectively on matters of common concern.

Medea Benjamin, being ejected from a joint session of Congress
after giving advice to Iraq PM Nouri al-Malaki, July 30, 2006.

Every bit as much as those we refer to as “right-wing crazies” do, we left-of-center types demonize those we see as our opponents and then turn them into cartoon stereotypes. Not even real demons but cartoon demons!

We disdain Limbaugh "dittoheads" who--cartoonishly--imagine Palestinians as only evil bomb-throwers, . . . who imagine homosexuals as warped pedophiles, . . . who imagine Obama and H. Clinton as “dangerous socialists.” (If only!)

Yet how about our own imaginations of people it’s PC for liberals to despise? What do we picture when we think of “hard-hat construction worker“? What do we picture when we think of “NRA member”?

So I like the image of Medea and Charlton getting to know and respect each other--and the grassroots organization that the other heads or headed. Some day I’m going to do a show on gun-control and the NRA that--in the unlikely event that all goes according to plan--will get listeners to question which side has the sane, sensible people and which has the wild-eyed crazies.

Jonathan Kozol in 2006

For now, though, let’s look at an even stranger set of bedfellows than Chuck and Medea. Teachers / scholars of education / educational theorists John Taylor Gatto and Jonathan Kozol are (apart from their life’s work!) two peas from very different pods.

Kozol is a child of privilege with a resume’ to prove it: prep school; Harvard BA summa cum laude (English major, let it be noted); Rhodes Scholarship to one of the most prestigious colleges at Oxford, Magdalen; quit to move to Paris and write a novel; numerous fellowships including two Guggenheims; and so on and so forth.

Gatto was brought up in a steel-and-mining town near Pittsburgh, educated (or “schooled,” as he would say) in small-town public schools in the region and one Catholic boarding school, served in the army, attended graduate schools, and eventually became a schoolteacher in New York City.

Class conflict, anyone?

Interboro High School Brain Trust, ca. 1968. Note handsome young
man in the polka-dot tie. "Scott's Hi-Q" was an interscholastic quiz-team
tournament similar to GE College Bowl on national TV. ("Scott" was the
Scott Paper Company.) Standing: Bruce Shaw (team alternate), Kenneth
Mobley (faculty advisor). This photo surfaced just a few days ago on
Facebook.

That Gatto and Kozol disagree on several points is hardly surprising. More surprising is how much they agree on. Here’s a quick comparison-and-contrast:

Born in . . .
Gatto: 1935
Kozol: 1936

Grew up in . . .
Gatto: blue-collar small town near Pittsburgh (Monongahela, PA)
Kozol: "previleged" environment in affluent Boston suburb (Newton, MA)

Apparent political leanings:
Gatto: ("paleo-") conservative / Libertarian
Kozol: Left-Liberal

Most teaching experience:
Gatto: public secondary schools
Kozol: public elementary schools

Honors from educational Establishment?
Gatto: Yes
Kozol: Yes

Public persona (after Gatto):
Gatto: adult
Kozol: child-like (= praise, of a sort) but not child-ish

Purpose of standardized testing = ?
Gatto: to sort & destroy children
Kozol: to sort & destroy children

Overall nature of his critique (after Parenti):
Gatto: a "radical analysis"
Kozol: a "liberal complaint"

Summary judgment of public schooling:
Gatto: all-too-successful at doing the evil things it was designed to do
Kozol: a failure at educating children & empowering citizens

Proposed solution to the problems of public education =
Gatto: destroy the system
Kozol: radically reform the system

John Taylor Gatto (seated) in 2009

Fascinating stuff. This week we present Part 3 (the conclusion) of the long talk John Taylor Gatto gave in late 2003, and we present an introduction to Jonathan Kozol through excerpts from a talk that he gave in, I believe, 2006. I hope you’ll find the similarities between the two as interesting as I did.

It wouldn’t hurt if you had heard the previous installments of Gatto’s speech (NWN #72 & 74). If you want to, and have an hour to spare, by all means help yourself! Just scroll down to the blog entries for July 10 (#72) and July 26 (#74). Each entry has a link or 2 to the sound files. But I think you can also begin with this week’s episode, which starts with a review of Gatto’s main ideas.

We’ll hear more from Kozol at a later date.

In solidarity,
Ken

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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

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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, April 21, 2009

The Things They Don't Tell You!



New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 16 -- April 28, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #61 -- April 28 & May 1:

As a school subject, American History is unique in one respect. The more you've studied it, the dumber you are--that is, the less about the subject you know correctly. So states James W. Loewen, a professor of sociology at UVM, citing a pile of published research studies. Even odder, UVM stands for University of VerMont (some say). The state university here in Connecticut tried something similar once, UCNIC--University of ConNectICut--but it didn't catch on. The NIC sounded too Soviet (cf. Sputnik, peacenik).

Some claim that the M in UVM stands for at Montpelier. As Daffy Duck used to say, this is a canard. Some (see first Comment to this blog entry) go so far as to claim UVM stands for
Universitas Viridis Montis. If my Latin serves, this means either "The most virile Mountie in the Universe"--obviously a Canadian TV contest-show for beefcake fans--or else "University of the Green Mountains." Take your pick. IMHO, one makes as much sense as the other.

But I digress.

Top: James W. Loewen. (All photos: click to enlarge.)
Bottom: Note contents of bucket.

A new edition of James Loewen's study of school American History courses and textbooks is out--Lies My Teacher Told Me--and in a radio interview Loewen tells funny, interesting, and occasionally depressing stories of what he discovered in researching the book.

American History courses present every character as a spotless hero (save possibly Lee Harvey Oswald); show Progress as always in action; say nothing negative about any public figure; take care not to offend any potential purchaser; won't touch sex, religion, or social class with a 10-foot pole; and seem more interested in turning students into flag-waving patriots than into well-informed, critical-thinking adults.

Think of the textbooks you once used. Which subject had textbooks with a grandiose title? Let's see. . . . There was Principles of Chemistry. Algebra I. Introduction to English Literature. Basic Spanish. And--with the red, white, & blue cover depicting the waving flag--Triumph of the American People. That would be the History textbook, right?

Loewen notes that no Chemistry textbook is named Triumph of the Molecule.


Michael Parenti (top), George Carlin (bottom)


Loewen's indictment of how we teach history is terrific. But he stops short of considering seriously why the books and courses are the way they are. In Michael Parenti’s useful terms, Loewen constructs a liberal complaint, not a radical analysis. So the installment supplements Loewen’s talk with a few recorded words by Parenti and by George Carlin. Each of this pair argues that mediocre, flag-waving public education serves the economic and political interests of certain powerful elites.

History Counts

The Loewen interview is snipped from a recent installment of a very interesting radio program, History Counts. It’s produced in Connecticut by Ken MacDermotRoe and broadcast twice a month by community alternative radio station WPKN, in Bridgeport. You can catch WPKN’s broadcasts on the Internet (http://www.wpkn.org/). Even more conveniently, you can listen to History Counts at any time online or download a free copy in .mp3 format. The blog you're now reading has a link to History Counts's Web page near the top of the gray sidebar.

Too sexually explicit for textbooks? Sex, religion, and
social class are the three taboo topics in American History
texts. (Photo: "V-J Day" by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945)


Song played: Chumbawamba, Her Majesty

Coming soon:

  • May 5 (Tuesday): Kent State Remembered
  • May 12: Energy Disaster Anniversaries: Three-Mile Island (1979), Exxon Valdez (1989)


NB: Lego photos by Balakov. More of them--plus the original photographs--here: http://www.yatzer.com/1083_classic_photographs_re-created_with_lego_bricks

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