Re: Please purge "Achievement Gap"

[Diane Aoki <dkeikoa@hawaii.rr.com>]

I understand about the Nation at Risk, but I must have missed the
conversation about the use of "Achievement Gap" in  the same way. Do you
have an article written about that that explains where you are coming from?
Diane


On 12/8/07 2:55 AM, "Csubstance@aol.com" <Csubstance@aol.com> wrote:

> 
> 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
> out AOL's list of 2007's hottest
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> 00000001)</HTML>