bill ayers on obama and education reform

[madrchsod]

a very interesting read on the state or the fate of education reform under obama`s pick for secretary of education.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-ayers/obama-and-education-refor_b_154857.html

[ananda]

1. Yeah, Duncan is a truly horrible and abomnable choice.

No question.

QUOTE
Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization -- this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call "reform."
UNQUOTE

Hear hear!

[stillcool]

2. Nice article..

good to see him contributing.

[femmocrat]

3. Worth reading!

Thank you! I'm still p*ssed over Duncan's appointment. I expect nothing from him in the way of meaningful reform.

[LWolf]

4. Good article, and makes a good point.

He's a lot kinder, and more forgiving, of Duncan and the Duncan pick than I am.

He's right, of course, about it being up to us to push for what we want.

[LWolf]

5. Here's another perspective:

<snip>
So now do we have our own left-wing version of Mr. Tough Nut, Phil Gramm? Could this really be a psychologized privatization-corporate welfare scheme that we have dreamed up, rather than a real one? Except that Bill Ayers conveys nothing of the ramrod toughness of the fascist right that Gramm conveyed, but, rather, a milquetoasty soft-focus optimism based on an illusion of our government operating as a perfect democracy that gets its direction from the street, rather than from those we elect to make good appointments and to represent us for us in this highly imperfect union, sort of.

Now if Bill Ayers actually believes, for instance, that "if we want a foreign policy based on justice, for example, we ought to get busy organizing a robust anti-imperialist peace movement," then so be it. There are all sorts of pies in the sky to choose from, if that is where you like to forage for sustenance. But if he believes that the current testing hysteria and canned learning epidemic, our current schooling phenomenon that threatens to undermine the capacity of young people to discern the truth and to think, is going to be overturned by a few testing refusniks who are willing to give up their teaching jobs, then get the hell out of my face, mister.

Public education cannot survive eight years of the male version of Margaret Spellings, and there is no reason to pretend that it can. We could have a Secretary of Education that, yes, might not be fully with us, but one, too, that is not fully against us. To pretend and to advise that we should roll over for a choice whose primary postive attribute is that he is the smartest of the enemies of public education represents an invitation to the continued and extended domination of education by corporate interests--and those interests are not public, or even national, ones.

On the other hand, if you have built your own small empire as one of the most marginalized academic silverbacks among the perpetually disenfranchised intellectuals, then it could be that Duncan is not, indeed, such a bad choice, but one who represents the kind of reasonable repression that actually embraces the discourse of dissent as long as nothing changes outside the covers of the academic journals where such dissent safely rages. It could be that Duncan is just the right choice, in fact, to inspire a new redolent rhetoric of protest by those Marquard skewered on the academic Left as the "elites of non-elitism," those, in fact, "who live for the revolution and by its non-arrival." Don't worry, Arne and Bill, nothing has changed.

http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2009/01/bill-ayers-on-arne-duncan-smart-choice.html