[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial

These are positions? As if it's news that schools could be better or that some children are hungry and sick?

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Cc: cefinnjr@aol.com
Sent: Sun, 4 May 2008 1:48 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial


"...there are, as I said year ago, plenty of problems to work on in most
schools. Schools truly in crisis, such as those described by Jonathan Kozol
in Savage Inequalities and those serving the rural underclass, need
immediate, intensive, and extensive help."


Gerald W. Bracey

The Second Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education

Phi Delta Kappan, October 1992


"Above all, income maldistribution creates problems because it is VERY
difficult to provide good schooling for impoverished students who may come
to school hungry or in cast-off or torn clothing, who suffer from untreated
medical problems, who live in neighborhoods that are rife with crime and
violence or who come from homes that lack even basic amenities--let alone
books or other supports for education."


David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle

The Manufactured Crisis, 1995, p. 219


Ya know Art, if you're going to criticize our positions you really owe us
the courtesy of reading enough of our work to know what those position are.


JB


----- Original Message -----
From: <aburke5054@aol.com>

To: <arn-l@interversity.org>

Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 1:08 PM

Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial



If the children of the (apparently now 4) Bs attended a school that
taught
children below grade level and along came a law that required the
school
to teach them at the same level as other children, would the chorus
be
"Oh, no, no, please keep on doing what you've been doing all along?"
I
very much doubt that anybody would say that.



It's OK, though, when the sky falls on other people's children, isn't
it?



Art



-----Original Message-----

From: Bussardre@aol.com

To: arn-l@interversity.org

Sent: Sun, 4 May 2008 8:42 am

Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial







I'm sure someone has already had fund with the acronym ANAR by
renaming it

something "A Nation" And Liars. But just in case, I offer it for
someone to

pass along to the education-sky-is-falling group with the appropriate
acronym.



--Billee "B"



In a message dated 5/3/2008 4:25:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

gbracey1@verizon.net writes:



This is too priceless not to share widely.



Jerry



----- Original Message -----

From: GERALD BRACEY

To: eddra@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 4:14 PM

Subject: [eddra] Masters of Denial







I would have sent this earlier, but I was laughing too hard to type.
Larry

Mishel posted this to me. To read the whole article, you have to
click
on

the link.



This is one historic essay, let me tell you. Not only does Checker
make
all

the analogies Larry mentions, while I haven't checked with David
Berliner

and Bruce Biddle for total verification, I feel confident that this
is
the

first time in our singular or collective history, we have been
linked,
however

tenuously, however incongruously to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
Finn
actually

calls us "the three B's."



Yours in hyperbole,



Jerry



----- Original Message -----

From: Lawrence Mishel

To: GERALD BRACEY

Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 3:21 PM

Subject: FW: Disinformation from Finn
















-------------------------------------------------------------------------


-----

--



From: Lawrence Mishel

Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:31 PM

To: eddra@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Disinformation from Finn







Jerry,







This is disinformation of a kind.







Wherein Checker Finn likens Bracey, Berliner and Biddle and then
Richard

Rothstein and me as the equivalent of holocaust deniers, the Pope
that
denied

Galileo and those that deny evolution or the transmission of AIDS:












http://www.fordhaminstitute.org/institute/gadfly/issue.cfm?id=337&edition=#397

5



ANAR and the denial industry



Denial of hard facts and unwelcome implications runs the gamut. At
its
outer

edge, we find a few sorely misguided folks denying that the
Holocaust

occurred, doubting the wickedness of Stalin, contending the
greatness of

Lincoln.

Once upon a time, the Catholic Church denied Galileo's discovery
that the

planets revolve around the sun. On a modern denial cloud of their
own are
those



who dispute evolution or the transmission of AIDS. In the privacy of
our

homes, we may deny increasing avoirdupois, receding hairlines, the
tattered

state

of a favorite garment, the whiff of cigarette (or cannabis) smoke
around
a

protesting teenager.







Denial has many origins and explanations, but its primary source is
obvious:

facing reality would be inconvenient, embarrassing, unpleasant, or
costly

(whether in money, votes, reputation, book sales, family
relationships,
or

other metrics). So the denier insists that it isn't true or didn't
happen.

Sometimes that insistence is just for public consumption and
personal

aggrandizement--there is attention to be had and money to be made
from
certain

kinds of

denial. Often, though, the denier really believes it or manages to
convince

himself, too.



As we mark the 25th anniversary of A Nation at Risk on Saturday,
most
people

gratefully acknowledge that epochal commission report's sounding of
an

overdue and much-needed alarum, pointing out to Americans a
generation
back

that

the country faced a quality crisis in its schools that would imperil
our
very

future if we failed to take urgent steps to boost their performance
and

escalate the academic achievement of our young people. Other
influential

commentators, analysts, and panels pounded similar drums and helped
to
usher in

an

unparalleled era of education reforming--Tom Toch dubbed it "the
excellence

movement"--in which we still find ourselves.



But then there were--and, amazingly, still are--the deniers, those
who

declared that ANAR was overwrought, ill-informed, or just plain
wrong.
Some

were

social scientists asserting that the data didn't bear out the
conclusions.

Others were interest groups insisting that the schools had never
been
better

and

anything more that was needed to perfect them could easily be
handled if
we

trusted the experts and dug deeper into our pocketbooks. Some were
writers

and speakers who swiftly saw that they could command an infinity of
handsome

book sales and lecture fees by reassuring educators that all was
well and
that

dastardly critics were conspiring to weaken public education and
replace
it

with vouchers. Several of the best known deniers were dubbed the
"three
B's"

because their names were Berliner, Biddle, and Bracey. But they
weren't
alone.

Their companions included, to name just two more examples, the
so-called

Sandia Report and any number of big-selling books by Jonathan Kozol.



Does that sound like ancient history that I need not bother to
exhume?
Would

that it were so. But this very month, writing in the online journal
Cato

Unbound, none other than Richard Rothstein opted to observe ANAR's
silver

anniversary by declaring yet again that the Excellence Commission's
1983

diagnosis

was gravely flawed and that the reformist course on which it set
America
"has

done more harm than good." Echoing him this week was his Economic
Policy

Institute colleague Lawrence Mishel, who declared that ANAR's
analysis
was

"simple, seductive--and wrong." (Sol Stern and Rick Hess also
responded
to

Rothstein's piece.)











------------------------------------------

Lawrence Mishel, President

Economic Policy Institute

1333 H St.,N.W.



Suite 300, East Tower

Washington,D.C. 20005







lmishel@epi.org

Direct (202) 331-5533

Fax (202) 775-0819









__._,_.___

Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Calendar



Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)

Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch
format

to Traditional

Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent
Activity

a.. 2New Members

Visit Your Group

Yahoo! Groups

Discover healthy



living groups and



live a full life.



Yahoo! Green

Get things and



get things for free.



Find out how.



Yahoo! Groups

Join a program



to help you find



balance in your life.

.













**************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on
family

favorites at AOL Food.

(http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)

-----------------------------------------------

Report list problems to listmom@interversity.net











-------------------------------------------------------

Unsubscribe ARN-L:

http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/subscribe.html









Post a Message to arn-l:

Your name:

Your email address: (use the exact address you are subscribed with)

Subject line:

Message: