Re: Crazy, Nutty, Loopy Ideals

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 The Founders did not themselves characterize the Declaration and the Constitution as "crazy" or "loopy," but we all know what boat-missers they were, compared to the astonishing political acumen of poeple on ARN. In any event, NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency stands with the noble foundational goals of the Declaration and the Consittution. The New York Times had it exactly right when it said that NCLB ranks with the most important education legislation of recent times and Brent Staples had it exactly right when he said that NCLB ranks with the most important civil rights legislation of recent times. How sad, how terribly sad, and how terribly wasteful that many educators think that NCLB is about testing and fail to see the fundamental truth that it is about equity. 
  
 Art 
  
 -----Original Message-----
 From: campbellp@mail.montclair.edu
 To: ARN-state@yahoogroups.com; arn-l@interversity.org
 Sent: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 9:00 AM
 Subject: [arn-l] Crazy, Nutty, Loopy Ideals
 
  The Declaration of Independence was pretty crazy. 
 
 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 
 
 The Constitution was downright loopy. 
 
 We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 
 
 But we need crazy, nutty, loopy ideas like these to serve as our foundation. Indeed, these ideas came from people we often call "The Founding Fathers." These ideas are actually our ideals -- who we as a country aspire to be. 
 
 People who cling to ideals are often said to be divorced from reality. They are called "idealists." They are dismissed as impractical people, as dreamers, as out-of-touch Pollyanna's. These days, a lot of mud is being slung at people -- idealists -- who call for public education to be something other than job training, especially when it comes to educating low-income minority children. We need to serve these poor children, they argue. And the way to serve them is to train them to get high-paying jobs. All this stuff about critical thinking, preparing students to be good citizens, immersing them in the experience of democracy -- these are all wacky ideals preached by wacky idealists. They have never worked for poor kids and they never will. Best to leave all that fancy-schmancy, high-falutin' democracy stuff to kids that will be able to apply it later on in life. For these low-income kids, the best we can hope for is that they graduate being able to read and write. The rest is gravy. 
 
 As racist and as classist as this line of thinking is, it is incredibly popular. It comes in much more attractive packaging, of course. But the core is there in organizations like KIPP, Edison, etc. There even seems to be a grain of truth to it. After all, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma. 
 
 But here's where those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals come in. Yes, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma. But being able to read and write without knowing how the government functions or how laws are passed is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make. Being able to read and write without knowing anything about history, about other countries, about music or art or foreign languages is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make. 
 
 If we make these kinds of compromises, then we are compromising our ideals. We are compromising who we are as a nation. And we are giving up on truly closing the achievement gap between low-income minority children and their middle class and upper-class peers. We are sanctioning in our actions and in our institutions the position of Plessy v. Ferguson, that "separate but equal" facilities are OK, that the haves get one kind of education while the have-nots get another. Of course, we call this other kind of education "job training" and refer to it as "preparing students to enter the world of the 21st century workforce." But we should call it for what it really is: an injustice that runs counter to those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals that used to define us. 
 
 -- 
 Posted by Peter Campbell to Transform Education at 12/22/2006 10:48:00 AM 
   
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