The next generation — and why their brains will resemble, and be as useful as, overcooked oatmeal
Bookworm on Sep 02 2010 at 5:47 pm | Filed under: Education
Just a reminder that Zombie has been writing all week about the horrible state of American public school education, which has been multiculturalized and politicized into meaninglessness. The most recent installment is here. (At the top of the article, you’ll see links to the previous three chapters in this depressing book.)
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- On better writing
- Playing catch-up and thinking about the next generation
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7 Responses to “The next generation — and why their brains will resemble, and be as useful as, overcooked oatmeal”
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Don’t forget what Arne says:
–as Duncan called education “the civil rights issue of our generation
Can’t be leaving those civil rights to choice and school vouchers. Can we?
Wow. That is an eye opening read. I knew nothing of Gramsci until yesterday evening. Now Ayres, Obama, trends in education and elements of the cultural movement fit like a hand in a glove.
Education as the civil rights issue of our generation. There is a bit of difference between then and now. Those who didn’t have civil rights wanted civil rights very much. These days, a substantial proportion of those who are not getting a good education would consider it a violation of their civil rights to have to put in the effort to get a good education. Read? Do homework? Perish the thought.
The above may sound rather cynical, but it is a cynicism from a former teacher.
From George Will: Read more at the link at the end.
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the “startling” fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. This means “progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination.”
Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents, which partly explains why, while only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average day, 59 percent of their black peers do. (Privileged children waste their time on new social media and other very mixed blessings of computers and fancy phones.) Black children also are disproportionately handicapped by this class-based disparity: By age 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working-class family and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family — a child often alone with a mother who is a high school dropout.
After surveying much research concerning many possible explanations of why progress stopped, particularly in neighborhoods characterized by a “concentration of deprivation,” the ETS report says: “It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children.” And: “It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers” to effect that.
So, two final numbers: Two decades, five factors. Two decades have passed since Barton wrote “America’s Smallest School: The Family.” He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools’ proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students’ homes — and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082703805.html
The five part series (four parts published so far) mention the Communist Gramsci, and his Gramscian process of subverting a culture and a civilization and destroying it, to make the Communist takeover even possible.
Now, most far-left liberals have never even heard of Gramsci. But certainly their intellectual elite have, and I am beginning to wonder how many of them are deliberately following the Gramscian formula. In other words, I am beginning to wonder if there is in fact a conspiracy out there. Do they meet and plan? Do they understand what they are doing? Do they have long-term goals? Or is just a coincidence that their plans and goals MATCH those of Gramsci? Am I becoming a conspiracy nut-case?
Mike:
Am I becoming a conspiracy nut-case?
JornoList.
I don’t remember if Gramsci was directly connected with the Franfurt School, but if not, you might want to check that one out as well. AT had an article or two on them, about the same time as they did the one on Bella Dodd. It was during the campaign, I think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
I don’t have time right now, but there’s also a connection somehow between the Frankfurt School, San Francisco and the Jesuit School in SF. I don’t remember … physical proximity? maybe. Some something.
Mike, of course it is a conspiracy. That is by definition the Left.