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Re: the nanocultural curriculum
Yes, the social reproductionist function of US education (ranking and
sorting by social class) is as true today as it's always
been. Bowles and Gintis' analysis remains as accurate as it was in
1976. The state level high stakes "accountability" regimes and NCLB
are nothing more than reinforcement mechanisms for this traditional
role of public schooling, concocted by the Business Rountable (BRT)
during the Reagan era. The rhetoric about the "bias of low
expectations" is nothing more than Reaganesque right wing populism,
designed to obscure the racist, inequitable nature of these so-called
reforms. It's sad to see that so many well intentioned people are
still fooled by this mendacious propaganda: for example, those who
call for "more funding" for NCLB. More funding for what? Scripted
programs? Better test prep curricula? Replacement of pedagogically
prepared teachers by subject area specialists (chemists, engineers,
mathematicians, etc, who can't TEACH their subjects)?
To learn how the BRT methodically imposed this program on our
children, read Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian's book Why Is Corporate
America Bashing Our Public Schools?.
Pete Farruggio
At 09:55 AM 12/10/2006, Peter Majoy wrote:
Dear Mr. Horn,
I couldn't agree more with your brief, well written, sad but true
peek into the semantic insincerity of NCLB and its proponents. NCLB
made it easy for ideological crooks to appear concerned about racism
and the achievement gap because it gave them an abstract language
with which to pontificate and project a moral imperative and concern
for the education of minority children. It has allowed them to
preach the goals of NCLB as if those goals were synonymous with
NCLB's standardized/punitive means to achieve them, and all the
while, having created a simplistic, irrational, and quite stupid
prescription to cure the educational ills needing healing. It freed
them, if they cared in the first place, from truly exploring the
whole picture. They froze in place with pride swollen faces which
closed their eyes to real suffering, real kids, real homes, real
neighborhoods, real class warfare, real poverty, real hopelessness,
real estate segregation, real learning , and an endless list of
realities which marginalized and forced people into schools that
could not keep up with the whole gamut of human needs that need to
accompany learning. Instead of really facing head on the many
"Cuckoos Nest" schools in America with a vision that is informed by
compassion, creativity, community building, and cash, the
disembodied world from which NCLB was born could only go the
reductionistic route of testing-to-death what cannot be tested, the
caring souls of kids who want to learn because it is our human
inheritance. Instead, NCLB has fed the flames of non-achievement and
has done what it was meant to do, at least unconsciously: maintain
the status quo economic system requiring socio-economic levels in
order to maintain the various power structures whose time has come
to let go but cannot.
I have just begun to re-acquaint myself with the Bowles/Gintis work
of 1976, Schooling in Capitalist America. It has such a ring of
truth especially when one simply looks around their own lives to
witness the major theme of the work: "The educational system is an
integral element in the reproduction of the prevailing class
structure of society."
Thanks.
Pete Majoy
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:jhorn@monmouth.edu>Horn, James
To: <mailto:arn-l@interversity.org>arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: 12/10/2006 10:05:50 AM
Subject: [arn-l] the nanocultural curriculum
Just like the human recalcitrants in the Matrix movie trilogy,
multiculturalists have moved far underground in hopes of re-grouping
someday when rule by the Illusion Machine finally runs down from a
shortage of fresh, fleshy batteries willing to be sucked dry and
discarded like so many husks. You have go get 2-3 pages deep,
nowadays, into a Google News Search before finding anything going on
in what was once celebrated at ground level as multicultural
education. One of the few hits I could dig up was this conference at
SUNY-Birkenstock (New Paltz), where they have a surviving degree
program in multicultural education. Even here, we see the sucking
tentacles of the metrics matrix in the title of the conference:
"Opening Minds, Closing the Gap: Fostering Achievement and Equity
for All." Could there truly be anything sadder!
Today's real-world illusion farm is driven by a political machine
stoked 25 years ago by the coalition of conservative elitists and b
lue-collar racists (Reagan Democrats). One of the chief educational
accomplishments of those technocratic conservatives and social
reactionaries over the past 25 years has been the elimination of
equality and multiculturalism as principal concerns of K-12
education. The election of Reagan, in fact, signaled that the civil
rights work in the schools was over. Furthermore, the gains made by
minorities during the 60s would have to be paid back with the
acceptance of a never-ending series of confidence-crushing exams
that became central to the new accountability-driven schooling based
on privilege by test score--thus privilege by income. The rich get
richer, the poor get dumber.
By the time Bush Co. arrived in Washington with the Texas Miracle
ready to go live uplink to everywhere 24/7, the think tanks, talk
radio, and the corporate media had already marginalized anything
multicultural as politically-correct groupthink that threatened
national sovereignty. No Child Left B ehind, with its threats,
sanctions, and mandates, would then accomplish what no amount of
bad-mouthing could complete--the casting out of multicultural,
racial, and gender concerns into utter oblivion. What got tested got
taught, and there was nothing on the McGraw-Hill or Harcourt tests
that could be even vaguely associated with cultures, any cultures.
The only culture to survive would be the one that can be bought.
The predictably-weak results on mandated standardized tests in poor
communities would lead, then, to the jettisoning of any remnant of
multicultural curriculums and the stripping down of content to the
bare bones, followed by the implementation of direct instruction and
straight-jacket behavioral mod techniques. This would, indeed, put
black pride and the minority esteem back in their places at the back
of the bus.
Recall America's doddering dopey granddad, Reagan, in 1983 (the year
of A Nation at Risk) in his thinly-disguised repudiation of our re
cent civil and human rights gains:
The schools were charged by the federal courts with leading in
the correcting of long-standing injustices in our society. Racial
segregation. Sex discrimination. Lack of support for the
handicapped. Perhaps there was just too much to do in too little time.
Yes, yes, those activist Courts that now, after a generation of
conservative re-packing, are on the brink of re-writing the Brown
decision, thus re-activating Apartheid in America. What is that
tinny echo I hear being transmitted to all those warm, wired
cocoons, No Child, what?
--
Posted by Jim Horn to Schools Matter at 12/10/2006 10:00:00 AM
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