02.10.12
Posted in Opinion at 8:05 am by Administrator
My hat is off to Frank Luntz. As a former long-time PR guy, I have to admit he is the master of the craft I attempted to practice for more than two decades. He’s the best linguistic propagandist I’ve ever seen.
Go to his Website and one of the first things you see is the slogan, “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” Luntz specializes in choosing the words that make your audience hear what you want them to hear.
Unfortunately, Luntz is practicing this craft with ruthless effectiveness for the plutocrats who run the once democracy-minded institution we call the Republican Party. His marketing-driven linguistic gifts are being used to prohibit critical thinking and stifle even minor opposition among Republicans. He has adopted the propaganda techniques of the former enemies of democracy, ironically the Republicans’ former favorite targets, in order to win the GOP’s hysterical war against any move that might allow more people to make economic gains. This is the war they declared only after they oversaw and failed to prevent the greatest worldwide financial calamity since the Great Depression.
Like any good propagandist, Luntz wraps everything his GOP overlords dread into a single target, the President of the United States who is, conveniently, black. This, of course, gives his overlords not only a right, but a duty, to ignore all the respect generally shown a President and attack him as viciously as they would any other wayward upstart from among the help.
Luntz reached way back into history—as far back as the 1950s—to dredge up the old “tax-and-spend” phraseology. How dare the government help people get back on their feet after we pulled the rug out from under them? That, of course, is “socialist.” If you suggest that the beneficiaries of the crash help pull the rest of us out of the crater they created, that becomes “class warfare.”
Don’t you dare suggest that we treat other nations with a little more deference than we once did. Not even after we betrayed their trust by sapping the dollar they all depended on with irresponsible shell games in the name of phony short-term profits. That makes you an “apologist” and a believer in “America last.”
Wealthy corporations that finance foreign students to crowd out Americans in our own universities, then send professional jobs overseas become “job creators.” Government programs that directly create jobs and restore aging infrastructure, on the other hand, become “job killers.”
The Affordable Health Care Act, which corrects the runaway inflation in health care costs and some of the unfairness in health care insurance practices, becomes known by the sneered pejorative “Obamacare,” for no particular reason. Most conservatives don’t even know why they oppose it, even though it was modeled after a Republican’s model in Massachusetts. The only real objection to it, of course, is the individual mandate, which, for reasons that only health insurers might hope to understand, becomes a “serious violation of constitutional rights,” when it actually could bring about liberation from health cost inflation.
If the President gives in on major points but holds the line on some smaller ones, he is “uncooperative.” The fact that it takes time for any economic policy to register results, especially when the economy has been dealt its worst blow since the Great Depression, which took a decade and a war to correct, becomes a “legacy of failed policies.” With exquisite timing for the Democrats, the economy is showing signs of turning around.
Since the GOP warrior terms that Luntz skillfully bandies about are simple, don’t require thought and are emotionally larded, you can use them to buy the souls of blue collar workers. Sow mistrust of the media that tries to be honest, and by golly, your victims will rush to your aid against their own self-interest.
In a land where even schools don’t encourage critical thinking because it can’t be taught by filling in circles on a standardized test, the art of creating simple-minded labels and making them stick becomes extremely effective in political campaigning. In the hands of a master like Frank Luntz, you can use language to eliminate debate altogether by relentlessly putting your labels in the mouths of the Limbaughs, Hannitys and Becks who dominate AM drive-time and Fox News, and then enforcing them by just shouting them louder when anyone objects.
Good job, Frank! I hope you can sleep at night.
Permalink
12.08.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:23 am by Administrator
Flip-flopping is considered one of a political candidate’s greatest sins, especially by Republicans. They want someone who sticks to principles.
Well, let’s see Hitler wasn’t a flip-flopper. He staunchly stood by his beliefs that the Aryan race was superior and that it must preside over a third empire, then murdered 6 million Jews to prove it. He stuck to his guns, by golly!
Ayatollah Khamenei is no flip-flopper either. Despite riots among his own people and the contempt of the rest of the world, including fellow Muslims, he rules with an uncompromising, iron, Islamic hand! He doesn’t let anybody compromise his principles. No sir! And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t flip-flop either.
Fidel Castro. He’s no flip-flopper. He’s stuck to his beliefs, despite repeated attempts to intervene with common sense, since the Bay of Pigs.
What a bunch of great guys, eh, Republicans?
If I were better known, the Fox headlines would already be proclaiming “Screaming liberal compares Republicans to Hitler!!!!” No, they’re not comparable to Hitler, but they are comparable to the Germans who allowed, and, in fact, encouraged a Hitler.
Today’s Republicans want candidates who don’t change their mind no matter what anyone else, like, you know, the American public, might want. They’re bent on electing a Conservative who will stick by his or her Conservative principles in the face of all opposition. Somehow they equate this unchanging dedication to an abstraction with democracy.
They may not know it, but democracy is not what they’re after. They want rule by people who think like them, no matter how reality or anything like the will of the electorate may try to intrude. They think it’s democracy because they think they’re a huge majority, and that’s only because they only listen to Limbaugh and Fox News, who are happy to give them that impression because it makes them rich.
These are the same people who always say government should be run “like a business.” It can’t be. Businesses are dictatorships, they reflect the vision and command of their owners. Democracies have to juggle divergent interests on complex issues. That’s where the Conservatives (big “C”) part company with the (small “d”) democrats. Democracy requires leaders to be somewhat flexible.
How, in a democracy, can any sensible political organization support anyone who is more dedicated to a rock pile of irrational, contradictory “core beliefs” than to the public who elects him or her, and pays his or her salary? No sensible political organization would, but we’re talking about today’s Republicans.
To be a Republican candidate today, you have to stand by contradictions like these:
- Using public funds to build up decaying infrastructure is “tax-and-spend,” whereas spending three times as much on what is already the world’s mightiest military to defend against lackluster enemies is “defending our freedom.”
- Decreasing payroll taxes is a cost that must be recovered while increasing taxes on the rich is “redistribution of wealth,” you know, socialism, even if it would help recover those costs and leave the rich no less wealthy.
- Requiring everyone to have some kind of health insurance is an egregious violation of individual rights, even though it would free us from the vise of ever-climbing health costs, whereas prohibiting gay marriage is defending our values against, uh, human nature, maybe?—even though a commitment between consenting adults harms no one.
You can’t question them or veer an inch from these half-baked “core beliefs” and still be considered a Republican. Otherwise, you’re not “pure” (Aryans were “pure,” too, don’t forget) or worse, a—gasp—flip-flopper! This is not rational, yet it defines today’s Republicans.
Today’s Republicans need to be reminded that flip-flop is another way of saying “compromise.” Most of the progress the United States has made on its way to become the greatest nation on earth has been due to compromises. To compromise, one party, both, or several, have to flip-flop.
Recently, what if Clinton had not given way somewhat to Newt’s Contract with America in 1994? Would we have had the period of prosperity that followed, or would the resulting gridlock have strangled the nation, much as today’s recalcitrant Republicans are doing today by failing to meet the elected President half-way?
Reagan had to raise taxes, too, after pledging not to, and the 1980s were years of glorious prosperity. A lot of the economic recovery under Reagan, by the way, occurred because OPEC members refused to flip-flop, or compromise, and OPEC fell into disarray. Oil prices collapsed, ending more than a decade of their stranglehold on most of the planet.
For me, I’ll take a flip-flopper over an uncompromising loyalist any day. Times change. Needs change. Minds have to change if we’re going to move ahead. If Republicans had united for the country instead of against the mocha-colored man with the strange-sounding name whom we elected to the Presidency, we would be on our way to recovery. The Republicans have decided, however, that their incongruous rock pile must stand, even if the country around it has to be laid to waste.
Bring on the flip-floppers!
Permalink
08.12.11
Posted in Opinion at 8:29 pm by Administrator
As debate rages on how to cut government down to size, we should remember how government got so big. Government got that way by doing the democratic thing and giving people what they wanted.
People were dying from bad food, so we got the FDA.
The airways got too cluttered, so we got the FCC
The skies got crowded, so we got the FAA
People lost their nest eggs in the Depression, so we got Social Security.
Seniors had a hard time getting health insurance, so we got Medicare
Poor people couldn’t afford doctors, so we got Medicaid.
Business got tangled up in interstate dealing and international trade, so we got the Department of Commerce.
People wanted to preserve public lands, so we got the Department of the Interior.
People got tired of choking on bad air and gagging on bad water, so we got the EPA.
People wanted to end securities corruption after the stock market crashed in 1939, so we got the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Strikes got too costly, so we got the Department of Labor.
People opposed drugs, so we got the DEA.
People wanted to preserve stunning scenery, so we got the National Parks Service.
The list goes on and on. When people want the government to do something about something that bothers them, Congress obliges. It is what we ask for. Now, however, we think government has gotten too big.
Everybody wants to cut everything out of the government that inconveniences them or that doesn’t serve their own immediate needs. Unfortunately, that’s almost all of what government does. One of the Republican legislators, from Ohio, I believe, hit the nail on the head recently when he said he wants to help save us from ourselves, rephrasing Pogo’s too often quoted observation, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
In our current debate we have to understand that because of what we still demand from government, government will probably be big when the debate is over, and it will continue to serve opposing constituencies. That, unfortunately, is part of its job in a pluralistic democracy.
That means we can’t solve the deficit problem by cuts alone. It’s politically impossible. Cuts will be compromises and government will not emerge as small as everyone seems to think it should be, but we still have to pay for it. That means everyone.
If we fail to tax the rich and corporations who have profited at our expense (from “jobless growth” and flatlined pay over the past decade and more, and by sending good jobs overseas) we are failing the country. The fading middle class is increasingly less willing and, more important, less able to bear the burden by itself. Further, it shouldn’t.
Permalink
08.01.11
Posted in Opinion at 4:08 am by Administrator
After reading the whining quotes from my local school officials complaining about the AYP goals they failed to reach, I got pretty angry. AYP measures achievement in the skills U.S. kids will need to compete in the global marketplace, and whining about it doesn’t help our kids as the nation falls further behind in educational achievement.
To school officials, here I suggest the proper response to parents when you don’t make AYP:
“Even though we continue to put improvements into action, we have again missed the mark on AYP. The bar is set high, but we must continue our efforts to give your kids a better education.
“We will continue to examine our methods and practices and explore and adopt the best practices of school districts that succeed. We are calling on teachers, administrators and parents to unite with us in our improvement efforts. We need cooperation from everybody. Our task is to develop systems and procedures that will help our kids perform at their best in the basic subject areas they need to master in order to achieve success in life. It’s hard. If it were easy, we wouldn’t need AYP.
“To begin, I have assembled a research committee made up of teachers, parents, administrators and school board members to learn about what works in school districts that consistently achieve AYP. I am also calling on administrators and board members from neighboring districts to determine areas of commonality that we can address together to help us all hit goals in academic achievement.”
That’s the first step: Say the right thing.
Then, do it!
Permalink
07.24.11
Posted in Opinion at 8:46 pm by Administrator
I wrote this back in 2009, looked at again just recently and decided to add it to the blog. Hope you enjoy it.
Stanley Bing, a knowledgeable and genuinely witty writer for Fortune magazine, has given me a new phrase to chew on: “stupid money.”
He kindly provided this illustration by way of definition: “…everybody asks, ‘How could all these smart people lend out so much stupid money?’ Because that’s what they do to make stupid money, Sparky.” You can find the column this appears in just inside the back cover, where Bing’s column always appears, of the May 25, 2009, edition of Fortune.
As you can readily surmise, Bing is talking about how the current economic mess, specifically what, including the point made above, we’ll forget when things get better. By implication, smart people did dumb things with dumber people’s money, because they always have and always will. Thanks, Stanley, for that bit of real wisdom.
Smart people lent money stupidly, because of dumber people’s failure to see that what is too good to be true, almost always is. Like mortgages “secured” by the debtor’s say-so. In fact, it is so often too good to be true that you can live a long, healthy and prosperous life by ignoring things that seem too good to be true, like Las Vegas. Vegas doesn’t look like Vegas because people win. But millions, including the author, continue to feed the slots occasionally, just in case.
Here’s what I don’t understand: The smart people saw it coming, or they damn well should have. Bankers hedged the risk of lending huge numbers of dumb people vast amounts of money through derivatives whose underlying value was this same unfathomable pool of stupid money. How could anyone think that anything else would happen but what did? And they keep saying that only one guy did. Crap! He was the only guy willing to talk about the 800-pound gorilla!
Stupid money looks and acts like smart money. It’s green and fungible. Smart people can buy Dodge Vipers in which they can stand in line on California freeways. They can lose vast amounts of money playing chemin de fer and Texas Hold ‘Em, and love it. They can afford pricey vacations where they receive excellent food and drink, elegant fun on pristine golf courses and deserted beaches, fine night life and impeccable service. Wait a minute… that’s not dumb. That’s what I’d do if…
Do you suppose? If I bought a foundry oven and started melting down people’s unused jewelry while paying them a small percentage of what I get for the bullion…Whaddaya think?
Who’s Stanley Bing?
Permalink
07.21.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:10 am by Administrator
I think I know how to make Congress come together over the deficit and budget: Talk the news media into boycotting coverage of the debate until the Tea-besotted Republicans and the occasionally delusional Democrats announce an agreement.
We need both, ladies and gentlemen. We need to tax more people than the ones with the yachts and private jets, AND we have to cut deeply into our most sacred entitlements. Mostly, we need less hype for bad ideas, like taxing only yacht and private jet owners and the Ryan health plan, which would create a cartel that would make OPEC look like amateurs. What we really need is a big ouch for all of us, and to start the healing pain while it can hurt less than that imposed on Greece and before we have it imposed on us by our “friends” in China.
The answer, although you’ll never hear this in the media, is somewhere in the middle, since both sides have some good ideas, too, along with the ideologically flatulent ones we’ve heard.
But every time you point a camera at Eric Cantor and John Boehner, which is far too often, you get “No taxes, just cuts. Where? Why, in the programs that we don’t like because they give things to people who don’t vote for us! (and which don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the cuts that are needed)” You point a camera at Pelosi and Reid and all you get is “We have to tax people who own yachts and private jets, (even though they can provide only a dribble of what is needed), while we continue vital fights for homosexual divorce and against global warming (which may be natural, not manmade).”
While these “leaders” posture before the dutiful cameras and notepads, there are some good folks in Congress hammering out the painful deal that must be done. Those quiet, red-eyed, pale, sweat-stained workers are the heroes, but the media can only seem to find the champions of bonehead ideologies, who have nothing to offer but shopworn, discredited talking points. Every minute that an ideologue postures on camera is a minute of action lost, not to mention $100 million worth of wasted opportunity to get the budget problems under control.
As a patriotic act, therefore, I am requesting that the media refuse to cover the debate until our “leaders” drop their playground posturing and work like adults to solve these very real problems.
Permalink
12.28.10
Posted in Dyspeptic Dystopia--Satire, Opinion at 4:40 am by Administrator
We have some big problems these days. Jobs, deficits, trade deficits, health care, environmental concerns, drugs, dysfunctional education, immigration…
Most reasonable people know what the answers are, too: raise taxes and cut spending; force China to float its currency; enforce necessary environmental laws while looking askance at global warming; legalize marijuana but start getting our people off addicting drugs; set and enforce education standards; enforce our borders but accept that you can’t turn back 30 million people…
All of these solutions are politically unpopular, though. They require political courage, but since most of our political leaders want to keep their jobs—power is a great motivator—they don’t take unpopular stands no matter how urgently necessary they may be.
I would like to make a modest proposal: We caucus Democrats and Republicans to develop a team of Kamikaze Volunteers. The job of the Kamikaze Volunteers would be to make sure that politically unpopular necessities carry the day just once, then return to private life after a well-deserved round of parties in Georgetown, assured they have done their country a mighty service.
I also propose that this Kamikaze squad would meet in special session once a year—right at the beginning of the legislative session–to take advantage of the world’s shortest political memories.
Our elected representatives could then continue to be re-elected to serve wealthy constituents and focus on the real questions of the day. You know, questions like whether gays and lesbians can shoot straight and follow orders, and whether acts that are already illegal should be made illegal anew when they offend the victim group du jour.
Since political courage, like statesmanship, has become an anachronism, the Kamikaze Volunteers would be the kind of people who are not too proud to serve but are too good to run. In other words, the kind of people we wish we could elect to office.
Permalink
11.17.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:24 am by Administrator
Remember the little guy with the big ears who made all the noise about a “giant sucking sound” of good jobs traveling out of the U.S. with the advent of NAFTA?
That was H. Ross Perot, independent candidate for president, predicting the fate of the American worker as NAFTA sent good manufacturing jobs south, where they could be done cheaply by the very poor. It’s not just NAFTA, however, it’s globalization in all of its forms that has drawn good jobs away from our shores.
Perot, it seems, was right. Even if you think NAFTA and globalization were inevitable, they have done U.S. workers more harm than good. Below this article is a list the most “popular” (that is, most widely held) occupations of 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as cheerfully channeled through Career Builder.com.
Every single one of them is a “service” job. All but three require less than college education, and only two, teacher and general manager, require bachelor’s degrees or above. The weighted average salary, nudged upward by the salaries of registered nurses and general managers, is a little over $34,000 a year. The median among them, however, is a dismal $27,700 a year.
What this means is that the median salary among the top 15 occupations in the country, as of 2009, was between the federal poverty-level guidelines for families of five and six. The average salary among them would have qualified a family of eight as impoverished.
Things have only gotten worse since 2009. Here’s Economist Chris Farrell writing recently in Business Week: “Private-sector unions have largely disappeared. Companies have outsourced all kinds of tasks to cheaper places overseas and low-cost contractors at home. The upward spiral in health-care costs has eroded wages.”
Further, Farrell reasons, “Intense competition unleashed by globalization, deregulation, and technological upheaval has kept a tight lid on compensation.”
He continues, “Nothing on the horizon suggests that a majority of workers will take home a bigger slice of the economic pie anytime soon.”
The job market, he says, will recover from current doldrums, but not wages and family incomes. “And that outlook,” he says, “is a long-term threat to America’s prosperity.”
I’ll carry it one step further. We’re becoming a third-world nation of haves and have-nots, with precious little in the middle. This is what comes of “jobless recoveries” and “growth,” in which most of the increases in value (not wealth. It was built not on products or services but on money-printing artificialities) go to the upper 1 percent of our income holders.
We have to wake up and realize that while we’re destroying our own jobs and impoverishing our workforce, we are also eroding the world’s richest market for finished goods.
We’ve got to find ways to grow well-paid jobs at home, and not just for the elites, the connected and the scions of the wealthy. This becomes more challenging when you add that we have inadequately educated our young adults for the professional jobs that make up the niche that the U.S. has chosen for itself in the global economy. While we import most of what we buy, we also import talent, because we’re not producing that commodity any more, either. That trade deficit should be more disturbing than our imports from an ally as dubious as China.
Long-term repairs to our current situation should be a priority of any administration, progressive or conservative.
Here’s the BLS/Career Builder list:
1. Retail salespeople:
Total employment: 4.21 million
Salary: $24,630*
Requirements: A high school diploma is preferred for entry-level positions. A bachelor’s degree is helpful.
2. Cashiers:
Total employment: 3.44 million
Salary: $19,030
Requirements: On-the-job training
3. Office clerks:
Total employment: 2.81 million
Salary: $27,700
Requirements: A high school diploma and a combination of word processing, computer and proofreading skills.
4. Combined food preparation and service workers, fast food:
Total employment: 2.69 million
Salary: $18,120
Requirements: On-the-job training. Employers look for workers with excellent customer-service skills, a neat appearance and the ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment.
5. Registered nurses:
Total employment: 2.58 million
Salary: $66,530
Requirements: RNs are required to have a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Many hold master’s degrees or an advanced practice nursing license (APRN).
6. Waiters and waitresses:
Total employment: 2.3 million
Salary: $20,380
Requirements: There are no minimal education requirements, though many establishments prefer staff to have high school diplomas.
7. Customer service representatives
Total employment: 2.19 million
Salary: $32,410
Requirements: High school diploma, on-the-job training.
8. Material movers:
Total employment: 2.13 million
Salary: $25,290
Requirements: On-the-job training
9. Janitors:
Total employment: 2.1 million
Salary: $24,120
Requirements: On-the-job training, ability to perform physical work for extended periods.
10. Stock clerks and order fillers:
Total employment: 1.86 million
Salary: $23,460
Requirements: High school diploma, on-the-job training, ability to perform physically strenuous work.
11. Secretaries:
Total employment: 1.8 million
Salary: $31,060
Requirements: High school diploma, though an increasing number hold an associate or bachelor’s degree. Secretaries must also have good computer and communication skills.
12. Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks:
Total employment: 1.76 million
Salary: $34,750
Requirements: High school diploma, though many employers now require workers in these positions to hold an associate or bachelor’s degree.
13. General managers:
Total employment: 1.69 million
Salary: $110,550
Requirements: Most hold a bachelor’s or advanced-level degree.
14. Tractor-trailer truck drivers:
Total employment: 1.55 million
Salary: $39,260
Requirements: A commercial driver’s license is necessary for all drivers. Some states also require a training program.
15. Elementary school teachers:
Total employment: 1.54 million
Salary: $53,150
Requirements: Bachelor’s degree and teacher certification
Permalink
11.08.10
Posted in Opinion at 5:56 am by Administrator
So, what did we prove on Nov. 2, 2010?
Not much. We indicated that we were angry because one in 10 of us who want to work can’t find a job, and because our current President seems to have dropped the ball by not miraculously undoing the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression in two years.
We did not say that we wanted the deficit cut. Most of us don’t give a damn about the deficit unless we can see its effects immediately in our daily lives, or unless we are reminded daily by disingenuous “ideologues” that if you shouldn’t run a deficit, neither should your government, because it’s just not fair, or some equally specious reasoning.
Yes, the deficit is big enough to worry about, but we bailed out banks because we had to, then passed the stimulus, which also would have happened no matter who was in the White House or under the dome. While we are also reminded daily that we should worry about the debt burden we’re leaving our grandchildren, we also need to feed and educate our grandchildren’s parents, heat our homes and buy gasoline in the meantime. But who’s really watching? Mostly the Loud Right–Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, et al., and the people who tell them what to say.
We sure as hell didn’t say last November that we don’t want the rich to pay a bigger share of taxes. They’ve taken home all the marbles in what has become a zero-sum economy. We just said, as we usually do, that we don’t want to pay more ourselves. The Loud Right has shouted down anyone who says that we didn’t want the rich to pay more taxes, though.
We also did not say we rejected health care reform. Since 1999, wages have risen 34% and health care costs have risen by 119%. That’s more than three times the rate of raises in pay. We do give a damn about health care, because we see it eating away our paychecks faster than any other single item while we get less and less care for every dollar we spend. Health care reform needs to happen, and soon.
When healthy markets work against the health of our workforce, then it’s time to try something else. The record shows that health care costs have been rising faster than inflation, let alone our salaries, year after year since the 1980s without significant controls. It’s hard to pinpoint a single component of the system to repair, so we have to fix the system. The Loud Right’s health care benefits are fine, however, so they tell us there’s no problem to fix.
The cry for smaller government was also underwhelming last November. The New York Times noted that public sentiment on this question was more or less evenly divided. Again the Louds and their paying clients have spouted the smaller government message consistently with no proof of a mandate from anyone but themselves. What we really need is less Loud Right.
So what did we really prove at the polls? We’re mad because we aren’t working and we’ll blame whoever’s in charge. That’s about all. Our simple mandate for more jobs has been so muffled by the braying of the Loud Right, however, that it can no longer be heard.
Permalink
08.21.10
Posted in Opinion at 10:44 am by Administrator
When the Los Angeles Times published the results of a study that actually pinpointed well performing and nonperforming teachers, the teachers’ unions protested loudly. A friend of mine who lives there asked me for my opinion on this situation, and I sent him a five-paragraph essay.
I argued that teachers’ unions should welcome such studies as a means of weeding out non-performers and boosting the unions’ credibility. My friend responded that teachers were scapegoats for generations of negligent parents. I think we’re both right.
American education is in the tank. We’re lagging behind just about everybody but the Third World in every category of education, except that our best higher education is the best anywhere. Our colleges and universities are still where the best and brightest products of superb foreign education systems flock to put the final polish on their academic careers, especially in engineering and management.
But in K-12, we keep falling further behind. We accepted No Child Left Behind and other programs designed to standardize our measures of achievement, but now, since scores are falling behind, the educational establishment is crying foul. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. Educational administrators and teachers have joined in arguing the law.
The headline in our local paper says “Assistant Superintendent: AYP Distracting.” In the story, both the new assistant and his boss deride annual yearly progress (AYP) reports and the whole NCLB program as interfering with the schools’ real agenda, whatever that may be. Last year in our district, two of our three schools failed.
Throughout the country, schools are crying foul. They will tell you that AYP is setting the bar too high and measuring the wrong things. That isn’t true, though. The areas that AYP is measuring are the ones in which the rest of the world is beating our pants off—basic knowledge of math, science, reading and writing, and critical thinking.
I think we should improve the law, not argue against it; if we don’t like the instruments we are using to measure our kids’ academic progress, we should develop better ones. We still need some kind of stringent objective standard—and nationally, if possible.
Yes, I said “nationally.” In an age in which “local control” of education is touted as an ideal, it’s fair to ask why I would say “nationally.” It’s because kids in Mississippi need the same basic skills for career success as kids in Connecticut.
“Local control” too often results in the “Lake Woebegone” effect. That is: “All the children are above average.” Local control means that fathers can make sure their boys excel at sports at the expense of their mental development, and still expect their boys to bring home good grades because the teachers should have allowed for the “sacrifice” of sports. It also ensures that girls can be steered away from math, science and other “male” subjects and tougher sports.
“Local control” has produced a nation of college students who spend their first collegiate years finishing high school, and huge drop-out rates in some areas, because local control means reinforced apathy.
Local control also means that parents can pressure schools to give their kids high grades to reward shoddy performance, because grades mean more than actual achievement. No wonder AYP is considered a “distraction.” Kids are getting parent-pleasing grades, but they aren’t getting basic education.
Schools are institutions at a time when institutions are not trusted, yet parents send kids to school for six hours a day, five days a week and expect the schools to the whole job of education. Because of their basic mistrust, however, too many parents don’t reinforce the schools on either what is being taught or in disciplinary matters. As a result teachers too often face rudeness, unruly behavior and apathy that they are powerless to stop at a time when everyone has “rights,” and no one is taught to take responsibility.
Basically, everyone should stop making excuses and start finding out what’s really wrong so we can fix it. Standardized testing is imperfect, but it’s a good step in the right direction—objective, measurable standards and feet-to-the-fire accountability.
It would be unfair to say we haven’t been trying. We have. We’ve been trying hard, and if it was easy, we’d be there. We won’t get there, however, if teachers continue to think of themselves as victims—overworked, underpaid and underappreciated, and if public mistrust of education continues.
Too often, educators are willing to motion parents away from the nuts and bolts of education, saying “you should leave it to the professionals.” They should welcome inquiries from parents. Parents should learn more about what their kids are learning, how it’s being taught and demand to see evidence that the materials and methods being used are effective. Educators should spend more time making sure that the parents understand the effort and discipline that produces educated students and re-earn crucial parental buy-in.
More show-and-tell and more parent buy-in could bring better support for school systems and return demand for academic excellence from parents to both their kids and the people who teach them.
Permalink
« Previous entries
