Re: descent into meaninglessness?

[aburke5054@aol.com]

It's certainly comforting that people preoccupied with meaninglessness 
and destruction are pursuing careers in education. If that's not a 
picker-upper for parents and kids, I don't know what is. In any event, 
I guess the "radical shift" that Thompson foresaw would follow the 
presidency of Ronald Reagan turned out to be the presidency of first 
one, then another, George Bush. Oh, well, maybe Jerry will run for 
president.  Let the sun shine in!

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Free2teach1@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 15:08:00 EDT
Subject: Re: [arn-l] descent into meaninglessness?

 I just happen to come across this passage from cultural historian 
William Irwin Thompson and thought it might provide a ray of hope and 
inspiration for what appears to be an intensifying descent into 
meaninglessness (and destruction) that characterizes the megalomania of 
current education reform policy -- it's called the "sunset effect":

Speaking of industrialization Thompson says:

 It is probably no accident that Ronald Reagan has come in to invoke 
all the old shibboleths of the industrial mentality, precisely at the 
moment when they are becoming inadequate, for one often sees in history 
that a radical shift is often preceded by an intensification of the 
old. Consider warfare in the fifteenth century: right at the moment 
when armor becomes most elaborate, with the knight lifted on to his 
horse by levers and pulleys, is right at the moment when the heavily 
armored knight is made irrelevant through the longbow, the crossbow, 
and the firearms. Elsewhere I have called this kind of historical 
phenomenon "a sunset effect," but one can see it as a kind of 
supernova, an intensification of a phenomenon that does not lead to its 
continuation, but to its vanishing."

Here's to radical shifts and sunsets.
A nice weekend to all,

JR


 In a message dated 6/9/2006 12:20:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
gbracey1@verizon.net writes:
 I wonder if we're seeing the start of a trend in which test results 
descend into meaninglessness.

 The University of Utah has decided it doesn't care if students have 
passed Utah's exit exam.

 Principals can exercise waiver rights in Indiana if certain grade and 
attendance criteria are met..

 Texas was denied its request on attendance and since it happened in 
Texas I'm sure we're all very cynical about the motivation but...Texas 
now excludes from NCLB reporting any kids who wasn't there by the end 
of October (or maybe the beginning). They wanted to exclude any kid who 
wasn't in the same district the previous year. No deal. But when should 
a school be held accountable for a transfer? This is particularly true 
if the transfers are from "failing" schools arriving under NCLB's 
choice option. I've seen no widespread documentation on this but it is 
clear that a couple of years ago principals in New York used the choice 
provision to dump their behavior and discipline problems.

Jerry




Judy Rabin

 Given the existence of an idealized vision of the community, movements 
of protest are likely to occur within the political nation when the 
discrepancy between the image and the reality comes to seem intolerably 
wide.

-- J.H. Elliott


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