Troll feeding and AUTO DELETE

[Csubstance@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/8/06 11:40:16 AM, aflanigan@comcast.net writes:

<< Sherman and others, for everyone's sake, PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL! >>

8/9/06

Welcome back, Alan...

(And Sherman)

(And Brian)

It's like we all had to watch the country go through a couple of nasty 
"bottom line" cycles under NCLB before some of us caught our breaths and could get 
active here again. Nice to see you all back. 

As everyone's been noting, the issues here haven't changed much, but it seems 
(see below, after the Burke notes) that a few years of No Child Left Behind 
were required before the majority of people were paying attention to what our 
warnings were saying back when we were sued for a million dollars (and I was 
fired from my Chicago high school teaching job and blacklisted from teaching in 
public schools around here) by the Testocrats. I think many people here 
realized that this fight to abolish high-stakes testing and the world-view 
underlining a "bottom line" approach to public schools and children would be a long 
fight. I think in terms of the fights against similar evils (abolition comes to 
mind; anti-fascism, too) and how it was necessary to hunker down and keep a 
sense of humor.  

Once every six months or so, I have to note that ABurke555 (or whatever the 
address is) should be included in the "Auto Delete" function.

If you don't have Auto Delete, do it manually, just like you'd do that 
message for the bank deal from Nigeria or those beautiful Belorussian wives just 
longing to meet you. 

Here in Chicago we have more than enough to do without bothering to waste 
even a minute on such things or individuals. What's interesting to me is that 
even using my own manual AUTO DELETE when I see that return address I still get 
some indication that nothing's changed in years, because every month some new 
person gets sucked into a "dialogue" with those waste of time one liners...

Sigh. This year, in Illinois at least, even some of the most conservative 
Republicans (Congressman Kirk) are noticing that high-stakes testings are aimed 
at screwing up public schools and undermining the credibility of public 
education. Why waste your time on someone who is here simply to waste your time? 

Some of us have been repeating the same warnings about the trick behind all 
these NCLB testing gimmicks -- and that irrelevant "bottom line" -- for a 
decade or more. Now that more and more people are listening to the details, we 
can't afford to bother with those who were always hired and deployed to waste all 
of our time so we'd never get around to the important work here.

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance
Chicago
www.substancenews.com