Please purge "Achievement Gap" from out discourse...

[Csubstance@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/7/07 7:19:19 AM, taunar@plateautel.net writes:

<< No doubt that achievement gap's gonna close for real this time. >>

There never was an "achievement gap." I wish people here would stop using the 
ruling class's language to describe the impacts of viciously segregated class 
society on what happens inside schools.

As long as we let Ed Trust and the rest of those pigs and hogs define the 
terms we use to discuss these problems, the further we are from real solutions.

Can we at least make two New Year's resolutions?

1. We'll never trace anything except THE BIG LIE back to "A Nation at Risk" 
and

2. We'll stop using the phrase THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP.

Just think of those two usages (the dating of history from "A Nation at Risk" 
and the defining of the problem with public education as "overcoming the 
'Achivement Gap') as the equivalent of using words like "Nigger" to refer to black 
and brown people or "Cunt" to refer to female people. 

"A Nation at Risk" and "Achievement Gap" are almost as obscene -- and 
certainly as dangerous to clear thinking -- as those two terms were when they had 
more power than they do today.

If we can do that after all the years of New Age rethink, maybe we can stop 
using the Boss's words to divert us from the real problems we have to struggle 
to solve.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR>Check 
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