So the hope for today was to talk about The Nation. And I assure you, there would have been winning remarks about that dumb period in its name. But unfortunately, The Nation is not all the way on the Internet yet, and since we all have German history discussion sections to head off to, or the equivalent thereof, and god even knows when The Nation. will finally show up, now we have to talk about The American Prospect. TAP is all well and good, except many of the articles require your money, but we’re only going to be talking about those that don’t so DON’T WORRY.
“The Education Wars”: Dana Goldstein—who along with Danas Milbank, Priest and Perino, is one of the Washington Danas You Should Know—has a long piece about education reform. In one corner we have the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and their retainer of fatcat Big Education lobbyists who hate No Child Left Behind. In the other we have self-described “reformers”, who hate unions and love No Child Left Behind. But the real character in all this is a one Randi Weingarten, a Sapphic Jewess who is the first openly gay leader of a major union (the AFT). She’s all about compromise, and also merit-based pay for teachers. Except she’s calling it “differentiated pay”, and assigning teachers the color green, which means they are paid more, and red, which means they are paid less. This has made her all sorts of enemies, it seems! Fancy that. [The Education Wars]
“Post-Consumer Prosperity”: The big cover story boldly proclaims that “LESS IS THE NEW MORE.” Well then! Okay so here’s the plan: Maybe we won’t ever have indulgent capitalist luxuries like homes or jobs anymore, like we did in 2007, but maybe that’s cool now. Yeah, see, we can be happy—happier, even—without going back to the way we were. If you look at gross spending as something that’s done to achieve actual goals—buying $150,000 worth of Oscar de la Renta pantsuits from Neiman Marcus, for example, in order to look like you have a basic understanding of the US government. Anyway, when everyone buys $150,000 worth of pantsuits, then no one has a leg up, as it were, and we’re back to square one. Well, back to not being able to afford our mortgages on square one. [Post-Consumer Prosperity]
“Beyond Sunny Hopes and Windy Rhetoric”: Ooh big trouble ahead for us, the US, because we don’t have a renewable energy industry, which in theory would mean creating jobs and renewable energy. Plus, all the renewable energy things we do do are only done with equipment purchased from Asia or Europe. So what’s to be done? A bolded sub-sectioned list is to be done, by TAP! This list offers some constructive criticisms that will set America straight with all this.
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German History? Jeez, Juli. Why do you do this to yourself?
But what of The American Retard Prospect?
I would be for merit pay for teachers if I could hear one advocate for it explain to me exactly how you go about determining which teachers suck and which ones are great. My wife teaches special ed, and she’s a really great teacher, but there’s so much about her job that is nearly impossible to quantify. Still, it pisses me off that the burnout slacker teacher down the hall gets the exact same % raise as she does every year. Also, such as.
American Prospect?
But America HAS no prospects!
“Less Is The New More?”
Yeah, keep that shit up. Soon everyone will be chanting by their sterno-fires: “Nothing Is The New Everything.”
Looks like I’ve got the best of everything.
What was the name of that movie? You know, the one where a Taliban sort of scary ascetics gang was due to take over an island, and all the Haves were intent to dump all that toxic wealth on the Have Nots so as not to be implicated as class exploitation leeches, so they’d go into clothing stores and slip hundred dollar bills into the Sears line of bibbed overalls and be chased down the street by store security. The hovel dwellers would wake up in the morning to find Bentleys parked out by the old broke-down washing machine of several summers past. So they’d have to spend a day dumping the rides on the homeless.
Great film. I forget how it ended.
[re=274388]Dave J.[/re]: My wifey, also a great teacher, expresses the dilemma in much the same way. The only answer I can think of is to make the merit pay come in the form of outside grants (call them “Retention Bonuses” ala AIG). But if any of that grant money is going to come from our fat, rich gummint, you’re sorta creating a whole ‘nother level of bureaucracy to collect data and make judgments… Oy.
Finish this sentence: Hey asshole, shut the fuck ____.
Gustav Stresemann was an baller.
Dave J
I find it hilarious that so many teachers think you can’t put a number on performance. What the hell do you give kids at the end of every quiz, test, and semester?
There is tons that is ‘unquantifiable’. But here are some things that some teachers and administrators do that are quantifiable:
1. sexually harass students
2. make bigoted and homophobic comments
3. waste tens of thousands of dollars through incompetence and refusing to listen to others
4. commit acts of violence at work
5. discriminate against people in hiring and firing
and yes, i have seen all of those things in the wonderful woring environment of education, and heard many more horror stories from others. i dont know what reality some of these critics are living in, but i feel like the educational system is like AIG or Enron or the Catholic Church, full of deluded people who refuse to recognize reality when it is staring them in the face.
Schools fail because communities allow the criteria for success to be determined by the students.
If parents don’t stay involved then it’s just the teachers and the students. The teachers will measure based on academics, and the students will measure based on whatever the fuck they think is cool that week. Extended parental detachment leads to pop culture dictating student choices, which undermines academics, which leads to failing schools, which leads to parents blaming everyone but themselves.
There, now you know: Those ex-yippie hemp-wearing vegans in pinstripes are cheering for us to live in straw bale shacks sucking wind and eating organic, free-range, fair-trade tofu – at least as long as the soy plot doesn’t intrude on the viewscape from their solar wine tasting porch.
Forty acres and a mule is all we get for six centuries of Protestant work ethic and skyrocketing cortisol? Screw that! Have you ever tried sustainable agriculture? It’s almost as fuckin’ bow-ring as reading comment board lectures about educational policy and teacher pay.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
They’re coming for your plasma flat screen next.
I refuse to believe that Dana Milbank is one of the Dana’s I should know.
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