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- NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT
The State of the Union's New Educational Eugenics
- by Greg Palast
Go ahead, George, and lie to
me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But don't you ever lie to
my kids.
Deep into your State of the
Siege lecture tonight, long after sensible adults had turned
off the tube or kicked in the screen, you came after our children.
"By passing the No Child Left Behind Act," you said,
"We are regularly testing every child ... and making sure
they have better options when schools are not performing."
You said it ... and then that
little tongue came out; that weird way you stick your tongue
out between your lips like the little kid who knows he's fibbing.
Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue dart out
and I thought, "He knows."
And what you know, Mr. Bush,
is this: you've ordered this testing to hunt down, identify and
target for destruction the hopes of millions of children you
find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.
Here's how No Child Left Behind
and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago.
Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases.
They are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed.
Once the kids are stamped and
sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill
your tantalizing promise, to "make sure they have better
options when schools are not performing."
But there is no "better
option," is there, Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better
schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts?
Where's the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green
lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain.
And if I bring up the race
of the kids with the low score, don't get all snippy with me,
telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of
the kids left behind; and it's not the color of the kids you
went to school with at Philips Andover Academy.
You know and I know that the
testing is a con. There is no "better option" at the
other end. The cash went to the end the inheritance tax, that
special program to give every millionaire's son another million.
But you'll tell me, you took
tests as a youth. I know you did. And you scored on the Air Guard
flight test 25 out of 100, one point above too dumb to fly. But
you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys. They were stamped,
"Ready for 'Nam." And you took a test to get into Yale.
And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you, your
grandpa on the Yale board provided the "better option"
which got you in.
Here in New York City, your
educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor Bloomberg, had issued
an edict to test the third-graders. Winnow out the chaff and
throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same
failed program another year. In other words, the core edict of
No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind
another year. And another year and another year.
You know and I know that this
is not an educational opportunity program - because you offer
no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is
the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: Identify
the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them
cheap. The system will provide the new worker drones that will
clean the toilets at the Yale alumni club, to punch the McDonald's
cash registers color-coded for illiterates, to pamper the winner-class
on the higher floors of the new service economy order.
Greg Palast is author of,
"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," which has returned
this week to the New York Times bestseller list. View Palast's
writings for Harper's, The Guardian (UK) and BBC television at
www.GregPalast.com.
First Nations children lack skills to
finish school: FSIN
Anne Kyle, Saskatoon StarPhoenix,
April 24, 2002
REGINA -- The province's education
system, both on and off-reserve, is failing to provide First
Nations children with the basic level of knowledge and skills
to complete their schooling, says FSIN Vice-Chief Lindsay Cyr.
Cyr, who holds the education
portfolio with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations,
said a study released Tuesday shows 78 per cent of First Nations
youth have less than a high school education compared to 49 per
cent of non-aboriginal youth.
"We have to do a little
bit of work in terms of guaranteeing our people have the tools
and are equipped to deal with the education (requirement) that
are needed at the post-secondary level," he told reporters.
Despite the amount of money
now spent to educate First Nations people and prepare them for
university or take trades training, entry-level test results
show they lack the level of education that is required, Cyr said.
"Certificates show they
(students) have a Grade 10 level (education), but our own testing
and the military testing show that they don't," he said.
According to the FSIN study,
17 out of every 100 First Nations youth have not advanced beyond
Grade 8.
Low education causes low workforce
participation and severely limits the employment prospects of
First Nations youth and severely limits their earning potential,
the report states.
The education system needs
to be made accountable, he said, noting that standard testing
and performance indicators need to be developed to ensure students
are receiving the quality education that they deserve and one
that meets their cultural and academic needs.
"I think that testing
is one thing we should be doing. If the curriculum is not to
our satisfaction then I think we should be given the opportunity
to redevelop the curriculum to meet the needs of our people,
and if necessary change the teaching methods," Cyr said.
"We are paying a tremendous
amount of money for education, yet our people are still not getting
what they need in terms of an education. We have to look at what
the deterrents are in the system and address them one by one,"
he said.
The high dropout rate is a
huge challenge for the provincial government, said Aboriginal
Affairs Minister Chris Axworthy, noting the province's future
labour market will rely on First Nations and Metis youth.
"If the education levels
are not high enough to be able to get a job, keep a job and make
a living, then that means not only will our economy suffer, but
also peoples' lives will suffer as well," Axworthy said.
The province, he said, has
to ensure young people are meeting the appropriate educational
attainment standards and that the education system is not lowering
those standards to make it easier for children to achieve those
levels.
"We need to keep raising
the bar, but in addition to that, we also have to keep raising
the supports for children so in fact they can meet those expectations,"
Axworthy said, pointing to the creation of community schools
as part of that support system.
© Copyright 2002 Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
Striking Teachers Trade
Class for Jail
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS,
December 6, 2001
FREEHOLD, N.J. (AP) -- History
teacher Barbara Guenther hasn't missed a day of class in 37 years.
Now, she is spending her days in a 9-by-9 jail cell, locked up
along with scores of other striking teachers in a bitter lesson
in civil disobedience.
Among them is Arline Corbett,
57, a veteran teacher who jokingly says she is so law-abiding
she still has the ``do not remove under penalty of law'' tags
on her old mattresses.
Then there is physical education
teacher Steve Antonucci, who was the toast of the town last weekend
after coaching the Middletown Township High School South Tigers
to a state football championship.
Two days later, he was in jail,
eating bologna sandwiches and standing for twice-a-day head counts
with alleged killers, carjackers and petty crooks.
``This is the reward I get,''
the 30-year-old coach told a judge before being led away in handcuffs
like all the others.
By the end of the day Thursday,
nearly 240 striking teachers in well-to-do Middletown Township
had been jailed this week for violating a back-to-work order.
They are the first New Jersey teachers to be locked up in 23
years, and some 500 more could follow suit.
It is the biggest mass jailing
of striking teachers since 1978, when 265 were locked up for
18 days in Bridgeport, Conn., according to National Education
Association spokeswoman Darryl Figueroa.
It is so busy at the courthouse
that hearings have been assigned to three judges.
The teachers, who make an average
of $56,000 annually, are fighting a move to increase their health
care premiums by up to $600 per person, per year. Currently,
they pay $250.
None of the district's 10,500
students have been in class since Nov. 28 and the two sides remain
far apart. The Board of Education received a death threat this
week in a message left by a caller.
``It's become a war,'' Schools
Superintendent Jack DeTalvo said.
The teachers have been called
before judges in alphabetical order -- how else? -- starting
with the As on Monday, the Bs on Tuesday and moving into the
Os, Ps, Qs and Rs by Thursday.
Many have made impassioned,
Patrick Henry-like speeches about willingness to suffer the consequences
of their defiance, their love of the job, and their contempt
for Board of Education leaders.
``I try to teach my students
this country is fair and just,'' Guenther, 57, told Superior
Court Judge Ira Kreizman this week, her voice breaking. ``In
this process, the law is not fair and just. Sometimes, good people
have to stand up to fight an unjust law, and that's what I'm
doing.''
Judge Clarkson Fisher Jr.,
who imposed the back-to-work order, said he decided on the one-week
jail terms because he was concerned fines would not get teachers
back to work.
``You are holding the keys
to the jail,'' Fisher told one group of strikers. ``Any time
you want to come out, let me know and you are out.''
Eight of those who were jailed
were released on Thursday after pleading hardship and agreeing
to return to work.
Dozens of others have avoided
jail altogether by citing family responsibilities or medical
problems -- high blood pressure, single parenthood, an elderly
parent in need of care. Fisher has been lenient but not always
patient.
Special education teacher Kate
Cosgrove told Fisher in a long monologue how she bought classroom
equipment with her own money, and never complained or filed a
worker's compensation claim. She was excused after telling the
judge she had two young children to care for.
As she walked out of the courtroom,
Fisher said: ``It's a good thing there wasn't a back door at
the Alamo.''
Others have gone proudly, holding
handcuffed wrists up in the air as they were escorted to sheriff's
department vans for the half-mile trip to the jail.
Middletown Township, a bedroom
community of 66,000 people about 45 miles from New York City,
was one of New Jersey's hardest-hit towns in the World Trade
Center attack. Three dozen Middletown residents were among the
victims Sept. 11.
Add in the worsening economy
and fallout from layoffs at nearby Lucent Technologies, and there
appears to be little sympathy for what some residents consider
money-hungry teachers.
``With everything that is going
on in this world due to the tragic attacks of Sept. 11, can't
anybody sit down and be thankful for what they have?'' one resident
wrote in an e-mail to the Board of Education.
7th-grader
freed after being jailed for essay: Paper described killing teacher,
classmates
Nov. 2, 99 By Annette Reynolds
/ The Dallas Morning News
A seventh-grader at Ponder
High School was freed from the Denton County juvenile jail, where
he had been held since Oct. 28 for writing a Halloween essay
that described killing a teacher and several classmates.
Denton County Juvenile Court
Judge Darlene Whitten had ordered Christopher Beamon detained
for 10 days after reading the essay and reviewing his previous
records, officials said.
In an interview before the
boy was released, Judge Whitten would not discuss specifics of
the case but said she takes any statement or threat of bodily
harm very seriously.
"I do want people to understand
that , just like making a threat at an airport, a threat in a
school situation is very serious, even if it was in jest,"
she said from Austin, where she was attending a conference for
juvenile court judges. "The system has got to take such
words in an earnest way."
Christopher was released after
his mother, Jan Beamon, hired Dallas attorney William Short.
"He's gone to Russia,"
Mr. Short said, referring to the boy's confinement. "It's
insane."
Mr. Short said he and the boy's
mother want him publicly identified to help call attention to
what they perceive as injustice.
Denton County District Attorney
Bruce Isaacks said Tuesday that he did not plan to prosecute
the case. The judge, who could not be reached for comment immediately,
will have the option of releasing the child early.
``It looks like to me the child
was doing what the teacher told him to do, which was to write
a scary story,'' Mr. Isaacks said. ``But this child does appear
to be a persistent discipline problem for this school, and the
administrators there were legitimately concerned.''
Christopher received a grade
of 100 on the essay, plus extra credit for reading it aloud.
Dr. Byron Welch, Ponder school
district superintendent, supported the boy's release.
``Seeing a child in a jail
setting is disturbing for everybody,'' Dr. Welch said. ``But
we are concerned with the safety and security of everyone, and
the balance point is, when someone feels threatened, we had to
step in and do something.''
According to school officials,
students were given a relatively generic beginning for an essay
and asked to finish the scary story. Christopher read his essay
to the class; it talked of shooting and killing his teacher and
a few classmates.
Parents of students named in
the essay called school principal Chance Allen expressing concern
that Christopher might harm their children.
``If we feel like there was
any element of criminal activity, be it a child or a teacher
receiving a verbal or written threat, we are dealing with a penal
code issue and must make a referral to law enforcement,'' said
Dr. Welch.
The school district asked the
Denton County juvenile authorities to intervene. A sheriff's
deputy was dispatched to take the child to Denton County Juvenile
Court.
The boy's attorney suggested
that authorities overreacted because of school shootings that
have occurred around the country.
"This is now the nightmare
in reverse for school administrators,'' Mr. Short said. "How
do they differentiate between acceptable but unruly behavior
and behavior that is menacing to the extent that it constitutes
a genuine threat to the well-being of other students?"
Judge Whitten said parents
need to warn their children that threats made at school will
not be viewed as child's play.
"These threats are not
considered empty threats or jokes" she said. "Especially
after Columbine, we have to take them seriously."
(Staff writer Brenda Rodriguez
contributed to this report.)
The
story that got the grade seven student busted
My flashlight went out and
I heard someone right behind me and I turned in a very slowly
scared way and boom the lights came on and the door bell rang.
I walked very slowly and creepy and turned the knob ding dong
the door bell went again. I said just a minute and I will be
right there and I looked through the little hole in the door
and Robin said Boo. I told him to come in and have a seat and
we both wated and wated for Ismael because he was supposed to
bring the (ounce) so we could get high but half an hour later
still no Ismael so I got the idea of freeon and we grabbed a
bag and a knife and ran out back to the airconditionar.
We througth the bag over the nostle and
covered it tightly and used the knife to press the volv. We started
to hear something after we got high so we ditched everything
we quickly run to the door to see who it was and there wasn't
anybody there then we heard someone at the back door to see who
it was I thought it was a crook so I busted out with a 12 guage
and Ismael busted out with 9 mm and we step off the porch and
this bloody body droped down in front of us and scared us half
to death and about 20 kids started cracking up and pissed me
off so I shot Matt, Jake, and Ben started laughing so hard that
I acssedently shot Mrs. Henry. Ismael saw somebody steeling antifreeze
so Ismael shot over ther near the airconditonar and hit somebody
(indecipherable word) also scattered out and went home and my
mom drove up and everything was back to normal but they didn't
have any heads.
My Life in a Stolen Moment
- Duluth's an iron ore shipping
town in Minnesota
- It's built up on a rocky cliff
that runs into Lake Superior
- I was born there - my father
was born there -
- My mother's from the Iron
Range Country up north
- The Iron Range is a long line
a mining towns
- that begin at Grand Rapids
and end at Eveleth
- We moved up there to live
with my mother's folks
- in Hibbing when I was young
-
- Hibbing's got the biggest
open pit ore mine in the world
- Hibbing's got schools, churches,
grocery stores an' a jail
- It's got high school football
games an' a movie house
- Hibbing's got souped-up cars
runnin' full blast
- on a Friday night
- Hibbing's got corner bars
with polka bands
- You can stand at one end of
Hibbing's main drag
- an' see clear past the city
limits on the other end
- Hibbing's a good ol' town
- I ran away from it when I
was 10, 12, 13, 15, 151/2, 17 an' 18
- I been caught an' brought
back all but once
- I wrote my first song to my
mother an' titled it "To Mother"
- I wrote that in 5th grade
an' the teacher gave me a B+
- I started smoking at 11 years
old an' only stopped once
- to catch my breath
- I don't remember my parents
singing too much
- At least I don't remember
swapping any songs with them
- Later I sat in college at
the University of Minnesota
- on a phony scholarship that
I never had
- I sat in science class an'
flunked out for refusin' to watch
- a rabbit die
- I got expelled
from English class for using four-letter words
- in a paper describing the
English teacher
- I also failed out of communication
class for callin' up
- every day and sayin' I couldn't
come
- I did OK in Spanish though
but I knew it beforehand
- I's kept around for kicks
at a fraternity house
- They let me live there an'
I did until they wanted me to join
- I moved in with two girls
from South Dakota
- in a two-room apartment for
two nights
- I crossed the bridge to 14th
Street an' moved in above
- a bookstore that also sold
bad hamburgers
- basketball sweatshirts an'
bulldog statues
- I fell hard for an actress
girl who kneed me in the guts
- an' I ended up on the East
Side a the Mississippi River
- with about ten friends in
a condemned house underneath
- the Washington Avenue Bridge
just south a Seven Corners
- That's pretty well my college
life
- After that I thumbed my way
to Galveston, Texas in four days
- tryin' to find an ol' friend
whose ma met me
- at the screen door and said
he's in the Army -
- By the time the kitchen door
closed
- I was passin' California -
almost to Oregon -
- I met a waitress in the woods
who picked me up
- an' dropped me off in Washington
someplace
- I danced my way from the Indian
festivals in Gallup, New Mexico
- To the Mardi Gras in New Orleans,
Louisiana
- With my thumb out, my eyes
asleep, my hat turned up
- an' my head turned on
- I's driftin' an' learnin'
new lessons
- I was making my own depression
- I rode freight trains for
kicks
- An' got beat up for laughs
- Cut grass for quarters
- An' sang for dimes
- Hitchhiked on 61 - 51 - 75
- 169 - 37 - 66 - 22
- Gopher Road - Route 40 an'
Howard Johnson Turnpike
- Got jailed for suspicion of
armed robbery
- Got held for four hours on
a murder rap
- Got busted for looking like
I do
- An' I never done none a them
things
- Somewheres back I took time
to start plain' the guitar
- Somewheres back I took the
time to start singin'
- Somewheres back I took the
time to start writin'
- But I never did take the time
to find out why
- I took the time to do those
things - when they ask
- Me why an' where I got started,
I gotta shake my head
- an' weave my eyes an' walk
away dumfounded
- From Shreveport I landed in
Madison, Wisconsin
- From Madison we filled up
a four-door Pontiac with five people
- An' shot straight south an'
sharp to the East an'
- in 24 hours was still hanging
on through the Hudson Tunnel -
- Gettin' out in a snowstorm
an' wavin' goodbye
- to the three others, we swept
on to MacDougal Street
- with five dollars between
us - but we weren't poor
- I had my guitar an' harmonica
to play
- An' he had his brother's clothes
to pawn
- In a week, he went back to
Madison while I stayed behind an'
- Walked a winter's line from
the Lower East Side
- to Gerde's Folk City
- In May, I thumbed west an'
took the wrong highway to Florida
- Mad as hell an' tired as well,
I scrambled my way back to
- South Dakota by keepin' a
truck driver up all day an' singin'
- One night in Cincinnati
- I looked up a long time friend
in Sioux Falls an' was let down,
- worried blind, and hit hard
by seein' how little we had to say
- I rolled back to Kansas, Iowa,
Minnesota, lookin' up
- ol' time pals an' first-run
gals an' I was beginnin'
- to find out that my road an'
their road
- is two different kinds a roads
- I found myself back in New
York City in the middle part
- a summer staying on 28th Street
with kind, honest
- hard-working people who were
good to me
- I got wrote up in the Times
after playin' in the fall
- at Gerde's Folk City
- I got recorded at Columbia
after being wrote up in the Times
- An' I still can't find the
time to go back an' see why an' where
- I started doing what I'm doing
- I can't tell you the influences
'cause there's too many
- to mention an' I might leave
one out
- An' that wouldn't be fair
- Woody Guthrie, sure Big Joe
Williams, yeah
- It's easy to remember those
names
- But what about the faces you
can't find again
- What about the curbs an' corners
an' cut-offs that drop out a sight an' fall behind
- What about the records you
hear but one time
- What about the coyote's call
an' the bulldog's bark
- What about the tomcat's meow
an' milk cow's moo
- An' the train whistle's moan
- Open up yer eyes an' ears
an' yer influenced an' there's nothing you can do about it
- Hibbing's a good ol' town
I ran away from it when I was 10, 12, 13, 15, 151/2, 17 an' 18
- I been caught an' brought
back all but once ---Bob
Dylan
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
