Dear Commons Community,

In yesterday’s New York Times Book Review, Jonathon Rauch, a scholar with the Brookings Institute, reviewed America  in the Age of Descent by Edward Luce.   It is an insightful review with a balanced amount of caution and optimism about America’s future.

In one section, he compares the ascent of China and its potential to vie with America for dominance.  He refers back to the fears of the late 1970s and 1980s when some naysayers were predicting that Japan would be the successor to the United States for world economic dominance.  Rauch explores several reasons why this is not likely to be the case including a comment that the public education systems in both China and Japan rely heavily on “rote instruction, good for playing catch-up but not so good for taking the lead.”  I concur completely with his view.  However, someone should tell officials in the US Department of Education, the various state education departments,  the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations,  that their agenda for test, test, test and teaching to the test is just a slight variation of rote learning  and one that leads our students to be exceptional good followers not leaders and not creators.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article today describing public education in Texas and how schools are coping with massive budget reductions.    Here is a sample:

• the Hutto Independent School District stopped providing bus service to students who live within two miles of their schools;
• the Keller Independent School District started charging parents for bus service ranging from  $185 to $355 per student per year;
• Northside in San Antonio eliminated 973 positions and made classes larger in a $61.4 million budget reduction.

Several lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature have played down the impact of the $5.4 billion in cuts on schools statewide. In an interview in February with The Dallas Morning News, Gov. Rick Perry said he saw no need for a special legislative session to restore some of the education funding that was eliminated last year and said the schools were receiving an adequate amount of money.

We should be grateful that  Mr. Perry’s modest skills were on display during the televised Republican presidential candidate debates earlier this year thereby  ending his candidacy quickly and limiting his  harm to public education.  We sympathize with the children, their parents and educators of the Lone Star State.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd takes aim at several  institutions namely the Augusta National Golf Club and the Catholic Church in their treatment of women. In her New York Times column,  she comments:

“Augusta National Golf Club, which has kept its men-only policy long after giving up its black-caddies-only rule, should stop emulating the Saudis and award a green jacket and club membership to Virginia Rometty, the new chief of I.B.M., a Masters sponsor…“The thing about Augusta is, it’s not just another golf club,” said David Israel, who was a sports columnist with me at The Washington Star. “It is the most famous private golf club in the world. It should be leading and opening doors and minds. Instead, it chooses to venerate a venal and exclusionary past, an idyll of segregation. Revering its lost traditions is like wistfully remembering Lester Maddox’s ax handle.”

And for Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church:

“Pope Benedict welcomed Easter by sitting on a golden throne and denouncing the “disobedience” of Catholic priests who want the decaying, ingrown institution that sheltered so many abusive priests to let in some fresh air and allow female and married priests, as well as Holy Communion for Catholics who have remarried without an annulment.

“It seemed like a bitter statement,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.” “It further erodes, almost tragically, the respect for the papacy because it looks like what you want is institutional conformity rather than obedience to the Gospel.”

The message of Jesus, after all, is not about exclusion, but inclusion.”

Happy Easter!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

If Charles Blow’s column (mentioned on this blog earlier this morning) was the epitome of measured, sane and hopeful discussion about racial issues in this country in light of the Trayvon Martin case,   John Derbyshire’s piece, published in Taki’s Magazine, is the exact opposite.  It is an insane article warning whites on how to act around blacks.  He presents ten suggestions such as “avoiding large concentrations of blacks”.  The article is so offensive National Review editor Rich Lowry announced today that John Derbyshire had been fired because of it.

The article is startling from beginning to end. He provides advice and cautions whites in how to deal with blacks.  Here are three examples:

• Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
• If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
• Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

God please save us from these conservative screwballs.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Charles Blow has a fine column in today’s New York Times commenting on the Trayvon Martin case.  He expresses concern that  it may produce another O.J. Simpson moment in America.   Blacks and whites will line up on one side or another.  He references a recent Gallop poll  detailing divergent racial views of the Martin case.

“The USA Today/Gallup poll found that most blacks believe that George Zimmerman, the Hispanic man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, in what he claims was an act of self-defense, is definitely guilty of a crime. It also found that nearly three-fourths of blacks believe that racial bias was a major factor in the shooting, and the events that led up to it, and that Zimmerman would have been arrested if he had shot a white person.  On all these measures, nonblacks were more reticent. Only 11 percent believed that Zimmerman was definitely guilty, while most said that the case was unclear or they had no opinion. Only about a third believed that racial bias was a factor or that Zimmerman would have been arrested if the person he shot was white.”

Blow holds out hope that this case need not be racially divisive:

“The Martin case… holds the potential to be a high point [for America]. There is nobility in the advocacy for truth and justice for a dead child who would still be alive if Zimmerman had not pursued him. While opinions shouldn’t get ahead of the facts — and we must all remember that what is right and what is legal don’t always dovetail — public pressure for a thorough investigation and fair dealings in this case needn’t and mustn’t be defined as a black issue. It’s a universally human issue.”

On this holy and religious weekend for many of us, I say “Amen”.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today strongly supports Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, who has introduced a bill to assist veterans  looking to learn more about their educational benefits under the G.I. Bill.   While there are many reputable private and public universities, trade schools and training programs  committed to helping veterans further their education and careers,  there are also for-profit predators itching to pad their enrollments with veterans and get their hands on government billions.    600,000 people are expected to enter classes under the G.I. Bill this year, with the Veterans Affairs Department footing more than $9 billion of the cost.  The editorial states:

“The G.I. Bill Consumer Awareness Act seeks to ensure that veterans enter school and training programs armed with useful information: data about things like the true cost of student loans, how credits they earn may be transferred, dropout and job-placement rates, how well a program will prepare them for a job or for earning a professional license or certification, and what wages they might expect.

The bill would require programs to have at least one full-time-equivalent employee able to advise service members and veterans about their benefits. It would also ensure that the Veterans Affairs and Defense Departments work together to curb G.I. Bill abuses stemming from aggressive, misleading recruiting and marketing, on base and online.

Senator Murray’s bill complements steps the V.A. is already taking to prepare veterans to pursue education and new careers. With the economy still slumping, many in the home-bound surge of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are finding hope and opportunity in the classroom. It is important to make sure that this country’s huge investment in the futures of those who served is not squandered or exploited.”

This bill is long overdue and much needed to protect the returning veterans who have given so much in service to our country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague Stuart Ewen at Hunter College, passed along the URL for an article written by Noam Chomsky that examines the forces that are waging an assault on public education.  He considers a number of issues such as decreased state funding, higher tuition, applying a business/corporate model, etc.  In his introduction, Chomsky states:

California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest public higher education system in the world: “California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot.”

Similar defunding is under way nationwide. “In most states…  it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget,” so that “the era of affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over.

Community colleges increasingly face similar prospects – and the shortfalls extend to grades K-12.”

Everything Chomsky says and observes is true.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting that leaders of a national education reform movement, including Joel I. Klein and Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellors in New York and Washington, have formed a statewide political group in New York with an eye toward being a counterweight to the powerful teachers’ union in the 2013 mayoral election.

“The group, called StudentsFirstNY, is an arm of a national advocacy organization that Ms. Rhee founded in 2010. Like the national group, the state branch will promote the expansion of charter schools and the firing of ineffective schoolteachers, while opposing tenure.

Led by Micah Lasher, who is leaving his job next week as the director of state legislative affairs for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the campaign is beginning while advocates of reform have an ally in the mayor. But their eyes are focused on 2014, when a new mayor — most likely one who is more sympathetic to the teachers’ union than Mr. Bloomberg has been — enters office.

Members of the group worry that without a significant marshaling of forces, their achievements could be dismantled. Their aim is to raise $10 million annually for five years, hoping to make an imprint throughout the next mayor’s first term. On the board are some of the most well-known and polarizing figures in public education, including Ms. Rhee; Mr. Klein, now a News Corporation executive who oversees selling education software systems; and Eva S. Moskowitz, the former councilwoman who now runs a chain of charter schools. Also on the board are former Mayor Edward I. Koch; Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone organization, a network of charter schools; and a number of venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, who have served as the movement’s financial backers.

There is a quote from Mr. Canada that tends to support Ms. Rhee and Mr. Klein confrontational approach with teachers’ unions at a time when some political and education leaders have spoken of the need to lower the temperature of the debate.

“Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war,” Mr. Canada said. “And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.”

Not a good way to make peace!

Tony

Click to enlarge

Dear Commons Community,

NASA has given us a treat today by releasing images from its WISE satellite.  After fourteen years of preparation and three years of collecting data, we now have an atlas of the entire infrared sky. The image above is just the capstone for a cosmic map that contains 18000 images and 560 million different objects.

This represents the culmination of years of work by NASA’s WISE satellite and the astronomers behind it. By studying the universe in infrared wavelengths, we can see objects that are far too dim to be seen in visible light. Each of the 560 million objects represents either a star or entire galaxy, many of which were completely unknown until WISE began its survey three years ago.

For more, check out NASA’s website and the WISE homepage.

Hooray for NASA!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Down in her New York Times column, socked it to the U.S. Supreme Court Justices today.  She comments on the 2000 presidential election and the Citizens United Decision with self-interested sugar daddies and wealthy cronies overwhelming the democratic process.

“This court, cosseted behind white marble pillars, out of reach of TV, accountable to no one once they give the last word, is well on its way to becoming one of the most divisive in modern American history.

It has squandered even the semi-illusion that it is the unbiased, honest guardian of the Constitution. It is run by hacks dressed up in black robes.

All the fancy diplomas of the conservative majority cannot disguise the fact that its reasoning on the most important decisions affecting Americans seems shaped more by a political handbook than a legal brief.”

Her personal shots at several of the justices were particularly sharp:

“John Roberts Jr.’s benign beige facade is deceiving; he’s a crimson partisan, simply more cloaked than the ideologically rigid and often venomous Scalia.

Just as Scalia voted to bypass that little thing called democracy and crown W. president, so he expressed ennui at the idea that, even if parts of the health care law are struck down, some provisions could be saved: “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” he asked, adding: “Is this not totally unrealistic?”

Inexplicably mute 20 years after he lied his way onto the court, Clarence Thomas didn’t ask a single question during oral arguments for one of the biggest cases in the court’s history.”

Go get them Maureen!

Tony