Bill Ayers

Steve Chapman’s normally deft portrayal of the American political scene surprised me in his column concerning Barack Obama’s acquaintance with William Ayers. Most of us liberals loved William F. Buckley Jr. and his conservative purity, with whom Chapman opened his piece.

The word “extremism” never sits well with me, whether spouted by Barry Goldwater or Chapman, whom I admire and read as often as I can. In such analogy, I remind myself why I don’t mix in social circles involving the Bushes, Cheneys and Rumsfelds–themselves saintly conservatives who have led America to real political purity. I guess it’s OK for others to socialize with them without condemnation of blowing up people abroad.

Ayers’ and his wife’s actions are no less tragic and criminal in their intent. But we have an august body of political cohorts in Congress for whom such political deliberation involves comparable mayhem. Whether they wear flag pins on their lapels or not, extremism in pursuit of liberty is a vice if it leads to the deaths of innocent people too. Thank God, William Buckley and Barack Obama have not been convicted of such homicide; neither would abide by hiding behind a pin to foster such political destruction, already witnessed by our forces of extremism disguised as democratic action.

Often it takes more courage to remove a pin than to wear one, if the cause is just.

–Vincent Kamin

Chicago

It’s sad to see a Libertarian such as Steve Chapman embrace McCarthyism. First he tells us that Pete Seeger should be banned from getting medals for his folk singing due to his politics. Then he tells us that Barack Obama is responsible for having an acquaintance with William Ayers.

Well, what about the Chicago Tribune, which has done far worse than Obama? The Tribune has printed pieces written by Ayers. Will Chapman resign from the Tribune now that its past association with a so-called terrorist (albeit one who never hurt anybody) has been revealed?

–John K. Wilson

Chicago

Radical left

‘Who has forgiven William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for their revolutionary activities in the Weather Underground? Certainly it is not those who love their country and want to protect it from left-wing revolutionaries.

Many forgivers are concentrated in our universities, where the radical left tends to concentrate as if by centripetal force.

Parents who want to know what happened to their children’s minds and morals during college years should look to the left-wing faculty for answers. There are many examples to support this assertion.

–Stan Stec

Chicago

We’re all ex-terrorists, no matter which side we enabled then or are on now. That’s what wars of aggression do to the instigating nations.

Obedience and loyalty are never excuses for sins against mankind. Finger-pointing won’t hide that.

–Chris Deignan

Cary

Past transgressions

Steve Chapman apparently doesn’t believe in redemption by others for past misconduct. Nor does he demonstrate the need to cease and apologize for his own complicity in misconduct.

His column on Barack Obama’s relationship with former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn appears to be part of a concerted media and Republican campaign to paint Obama as unpatriotic. Ayers and Dohrn are convenient vehicles to further this agenda.

As one who opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s, I understand the frustration of those who worked to end an immoral war that needlessly killed more than a million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. Ayers and Dohrn make no apologies for their particular efforts, which included condoning if not participating in violent conduct.

But Chapman fixates on the lack of apology as the main reason to impugn Obama’s character through his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn.

They long ago fulfilled their legal responsibility for their radical activities. They could have thrown away the rest of their lives as many in their movement did. Instead they redeemed themselves by becoming productive citizens, working to make this a better country and world.

Thankfully at least one presidential contender has the wisdom and courage to work with anyone, regardless of past transgressions, who now treads the path of peace and progress.

Instead of obsessing over refusals to apologize for 40-year-old behavior, Chapman and the rest of the Tribune editorial board should examine their continued enabling of the Bush administration’s needless and self-destructive war in Iraq, which is bankrupting America, morally and financially.

Our future leaders need to solicit the support of every thoughtful and productive member of society if we are going to end this catastrophic war and begin solving the avalanche of problems confronting America.

–Walt Zlotow

In his State of the Union address on January 28, President Bush, our self-styled “education president,” urged Congress to re-authorize the No Child Left Behind Act, calling it a “good law” and claiming, that because of this legislation student learning is improving and “minority students are closing the achievement gap.”  Not true, not true—student learning is not improving under NCLB, and the so-called racial achievement gap is a fraud.  But through a combination of slight-of-hand, cooking the numbers, and manipulating the metaphors George Bush could make those claims with a smile.        The education revolution that Bush touts is the result of decades of “school reform” spearheaded by business and powered by right-wing ideologues.  “Global competitiveness” is the preoccupation, “accountability” and “standards” the watch-words, all of it resulting in a ramped-up obsession with standardized testing and an emphasis on minimal competencies along a narrowed band of cognition and skills.  The business metaphor dominates the discourse: inputs in relation to outputs, discipline and punishment, incentives and competitiveness.

It’s worth asking ourselves what makes education in a democracy distinct.  Of course we want children to study hard, to be responsible, to stay away from drugs, and to be prepared for work.  But those are goals we share with totalitarian regimes, monarchies, dictators and kings.  So what is uniquely characteristic of democratic education?

The founders of American education spoke of forging a common culture and preparing youth for lives of citizenship.  The democratic aspiration was that young people would grow into reflective, critical citizens, capable of work and also self-governance, full participation and free thinking.  The aim of production in a democracy is not the production of things but the production of free human beings, the goal, in W.E.B. DuBois’ phrase, not so much to make carpenters of men, but to make full human beings of carpenters. 

A basic tenet of democracy is that the ultimate authority on any individual’s hurt or desire is that individual himself or herself.  Education in a democracy demands equity, access, and an acknowledgment of the humanity of each person.  The job of schools is to stimulate latent interests, desires, and dreams that cause people to question, to challenge, to criticize, and to act.  Obedience and conformity are the enemies of democracy; initiative and courage are its hallmarks. 

The right wing attack on public education has taken many forms: an unhealthy obsession with standardized tests as a measure of intelligence and accomplishment; the elevation of zero tolerance as a cultural weapon used to sort students into winners and losers with a disproportionate number of students of color on the losing end and the widespread use of a market metaphor to judge school effectiveness.  This campaign never raises the issue of fair funding, of equal access, of generous pay for teachers, of rebuilding dilapidated schools, of encouraging students to ask their own questions in pursuit of their own goals.  

NCLB has had a huge impact on school districts, and the impact has been devastating for poor schools.  The curriculum has narrowed to what is testable, the arts and sports have been stripped from schools, teachers have been dispirited and discouraged.  President Bush’s overall grade is F.

The State of the Union is not good:

• The United States pours  $720 million a day into the furnace of war in Iraq — — that’s enough to pay for 12,000 new teachers or 35,000 scholarships to four-year colleges or the construction of 84 new elementary schools every day.

• As the only economically advanced country on earth that fails to guarantee health care to its citizens, the United States has created a system controlled by massive for-profit insurance corporations and giant pharmaceuticals, simultaneously delivering the best medical interventions possible to the fortunate few and a descending level of care down the economic ladder, impoverishing middle income people who have the misfortune of falling ill and leaving millions with no insurance at all and little access to the most basic care — a system where getting a joint replacement is the expected standard for some, while dying from an abscessed tooth is a routine possibility for others, a system that can transplant a heart but doesn’t have a heart.

• The income gap between white and black families is greater now than it was 40 years ago, and the gap between the richest and the poorest Americans is huge and accelerating.

• Mass incarceration — over 2.1 million of our fellow citizens are caged in America — and widespread disenfranchisement have become normalized and expected in this country.  For example, a third of black men living in Alabama are disenfranchised and civically dead because of a drug conviction.

The picture is grim: Empire resurrected in the name of a renewed and powerful jingoistic nationalism; war without end; identification of opaque and ill-defined enemies as a unifying cause; unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion and militarism of the entire society; white supremacy essentially intact and unyielding; the entangling of religion with government; the shredding of constitutional rights, the casual disregard for human rights, and the systemic hollowing out of democracy; corporate power unchecked and the ideology of the market promoted as the only true expression of democracy; fraudulent elections; a steady drumbeat of public secrets — obvious lies issued by the powerful, like “we don’t torture,” whose purpose is both future deniability as well as evidence of power’s ability to have its way regardless of law or popular will; disdain for the arts and for intellectual life; the creation of popular movements based on bigotry, intolerance and the threat of violence, and the scapegoating of certain targeted and vulnerable groups.  On a world scale dislocations and imbalances are endemic: 1% of the world’s richest people own 40% of the wealth while 50% of the world’s population controls only 10%. This is a recipe for continued violence and war and ongoing disaster, and while it may not be the whole story, it is without a doubt a bright thread that is both recognizable and knowable.

Now let’s take a trip through the looking glass to the upside down world of George Bush.  In an address that sounded as if it had been crafted in some dark cubicle in the cellar of the Heritage Foundation, President Bush delivered a faith-based, fact-free speech rich in reactionary ideology but completely disconnected from the world we live in.  The economy is fundamentally sound, we were told, peace is at hand, democracy is on the march, we’re the greatest country on earth.  I was reminded of the legendary I. F. Stone’s fundamental principle as a reporter: assume that all governments lie most of the time.  If you start there, you are at least forewarned as you struggle to get your bearings and figure out what’s actually going on.

But most of us don’t start there.  We are too trusting, too credulous, too easily seduced into discussions set up with so that the conclusions are inevitable.  Take the “war on terror.”  The term is a metaphor constructed in the aftermath of the terrible crimes of September 11, but it wasn’t an inevitable choice.  A different metaphor — a criminal justice metaphor, say – might have led to a different conclusion; after all if there’s a killing in Chicago, the cops question witnesses, gather evidence, pursue leads, focus energy and activity on finding the perpetrator.  Perhaps the “war on terror” like “the war on poverty” or the “war on drugs” appealed simply because the rhetoric seems to stand for an all-out effort or a serious undertaking.  But here the metaphor is brought to life through full-scale military invasions in Afghanistan to Iraq.  The metaphoric bind is this: “the war on terror” can’t be won because it’s being fought against a tactic, perhaps a state of mind; the real wars in real countries are hard to stop because “the war on terror” is ongoing — it’s a war that is everywhere and nowhere at once, a war whose conclusion no one can describe with any confidence.  As soon as we begin to discuss “the war on terror” we are trapped in a lie.

Or take health care: if the controlling metaphor is that health care is a product much like a television set, then our current system makes some sense — it taps into deeply held cultural beliefs about individual responsibility and choice and cost.  But if the analogy shifts, if health care begins to be discussed more and more widely as a universal human right, like the right to an education or to public safety, then other deeply held beliefs — about fairness and shared community responsibility — move to the front.

President Bush styles himself the education president, and touts his attachment to standards and accountability, to trusting students to learn, to empowering parents to make choices, and to introducing market metaphors in the discussion of public schools.  Here again he has proven himself the master of the metaphoric battle — enter his framing of the discussion about standards and accountability and feel the ground shift, the slippery slope toward privatization just ahead — but his efforts have been a catastrophe for students and families and teachers in schools.  His overall grade is an “F.”

A basic tenet of democracy, as W.E.B DuBois argued, is that the ultimate authority on any individual’s hurt or desire is the individual himself or herself.  Education in a democracy demands equity, access, and an acknowledgment of the humanity of each person.  The job of schools is to stimulate latent interests, desires, and dreams that cause people to question, to challenge, to criticize, and to act.  Obedience and conformity are enemies of democracy; initiative and courage are its hallmarks.

The right wing attack on public education has taken many forms: an unhealthy obsession with standardized tests as a measure of intelligence and accomplishment; the elevation of zero tolerance as a cultural weapon used to sort students into winners and losers; and the widespread use of the market metaphor to judge school effectiveness.  This campaign never raises the issue of fair funding, of equal access, of generous pay for teachers, of rebuilding dilapidated schools, of encouraging students to ask their own questions in pursuit of their own goals.  It’s a campaign aimed at destroying public schools.

The State of the Union address was a theater of the grotesque; a long line of marionettes on a string, jerked periodically from their seats, heads bobbing, faces twisted into perverse smiles, hands clapping, while the Marine chant – hoo-AH, hoo-AH– pierced the air.  It was mesmerizing.  The death march on display.

from John Carroll’s column, SF Chronicle, October 31

In San Diego County, many homes were burned that had been built on the sites of old fires. Why? Well, fire or not, it’s still a pretty location out there in the woods. Besides, the rebuilders already owned the land. Why worry? Maybe fires are just nature’s way of saying that you have too much junk. In any case, the county officials have made it clear that under no circumstances do they want to discourage growth in their area.

Besides, hardly anyone died. Oh, there were those four charred bodies of what CNN called “illegal immigrants.” Can you still be illegal when you’re dead? And, besides, how did CNN even know they were immigrants – except in the sense, I suppose, that we are all immigrants? Does CSI have some sort of immigrant test? “That’s a positive, boss – we found illegal-immigrant DNA on their clothes.” I understand that the place the bodies were found was suggestive, but couldn’t we just give it a rest? They’re dead, for God’s sake – they will not be seeking employment.

So the situation, as I understand it, is this: Let’s build a great big wall to keep the Mexicans out, but let’s not under any circumstances build a fire break.

Norman Finkelstein resigned today from DePaul University, a wrenching decision given what he has faced and endured. An earlier letter of protest follows:

September 4, 2007

The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M.

President

DePaul University

1 East Jackson Boulevard

Chicago, Illinois 60604-2287

Dear President Holtschneider,

            We write to you today as colleagues from a neighbor institution, and we write in the spirit of dialogue and tolerance which is so central to the Vincentian tradition that you and DePaul University hold dear.  We write in the hope that in the midst of what must seem to you at times like a firestorm, you can find a space of serenity and peace to reflect on the larger meanings and implications of events unfolding now at DePaul, locate those events in the context of increasing attacks on speech and open inquiry in the academy, and, finally, stand up unequivocally for intellectual freedom and for justice.

            We refer, of course, to the controversy swirling around Professor Norman Finkelstein’s tenure and promotion case, and the University’s decision to deny tenure to him and another highly-regarded professor, Mehrene E. Larudee.  Tenure and promotion is rarely an open affair, but these particular cases have entered the public square with force and velocity.  In part this is because the University reversed the Political Science Department’s recommendation regarding Dr. Finkelstein, reached through a time-tested peer review process, and in part it’s the result of the noisy campaign by Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Harvard University law professor, to undermine and demonize Dr. Finkelstein and his work.  Professor Dershowitz publicly promised that he would see to it that Norman Finkelstein would never be granted tenure, and, as events continue to unfold, as standards, rules, and rights seem to topple before him, it’s increasingly believable that Alan Dershowitz’ troubling and bullying threat has come true. 

            But perhaps the decisive element igniting this case is that Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship is at the vortex of one of the most complex and vexing areas in the world today: Israel/Palestine.  His work is controversial without doubt, always provocative, sometimes gut-wrenching.  It is also courageous, for he has little concern for who he offends or who he supports.  He follows the evidence wherever it leads him, and he speaks in a singular voice without regard to any orthodoxy whatsoever.  His record is stellar: five published books with a variety of academic and trade publishers, a range of scholarly articles, reviews, and papers.  His work is widely read, cited, debated. 

            There are many areas of inquiry and debate that are fairly straight-forward; Israel/Palestine is not one of them.  It is, rather, a dynamic and complex area full of emotion, conflicting claims, ideology, fear, anxiety.  But our universities are uniquely organized so that these areas, too, can be at the center of its discourse, even when they cause misunderstanding and hurt, anger and hostility. 

            The primary job of intellectuals and scholars is to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of all authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted.  The growth of knowledge, insight, and understanding depends on their kind of effort, and the inevitable clash of ideas that follows must be nourished and not crushed. 

            Teachers have certain fundamental responsibilities, chiefly to organize classrooms as sites of open discussion, free of coercion or intimidation.  By all accounts Professor Finkelstein meets this standard.  His classes are fully enrolled, and students welcome the exchange of views that he encourages.  Students should always recognize that a classroom can only be relatively safe, that arguing about ideas cannot be risk-free.  Feeling uncomfortable about one’s beliefs—students and teachers alike—is a matter of course in good classrooms.

            Reverend Holtschneider, your decision in this matter will have an impact far beyond Norman Finkelstein himself.  The dismissals of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee threaten to undermine the role of the university as a foundation of democracy and as a forum for ideas and debate on the critical social issues of our time.  They impact the life of the university as a whole by casting a chill on classroom teaching, the selection of research projects, and the tenure and promotion process.  All of your students are watching to see how a leader responds to a crisis, and what role principle plays.  Young scholars and teachers are watching, weighing what is worth knowing and experiencing, studying and pursuing.  The larger society is watching, many of us hopeful that you will strike a blow for the right to think, which is today in doubt.

                                                                                    Sincerely,

The tragic consequences of Bush and Cheney’s scam war must some day be accounted and paid for. Impeachment Now!!

Their puppets in Karachi and Baghdad are now being blamed for US failure in both Pakistan and Iraq, and they’re learning a fundamental lesson about empire: a primary responsibility of being the front man is to take the fall so the  evil puppet masters can live to kill another day.

where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe….   Frederick Douglass

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REVIEW

Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade.

by Linda Perlstein

Henry Holt and Co.

2007

reviewed by Rick Ayers
I knew a man from a small Mayan village.  He said something that has always stayed with me.  “When you look out at the ruins of Tenochtitlan, with its massive buildings and straight avenues, perhaps you see evidence of a great civilization.  What I see is a fascist nightmare.” 

I couldn’t help thinking of that phrase again and again as I read Linda Perlstein’s Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade.   Perlstein, an education reporter for the Washington Post, has spent a year in a low-income elementary school in Annapolis, Maryland.  Specifically, she was looking at the impacts of testing, of No Child Left Behind and the Maryland School Assessment (MSA) on children’s lives.  What she found, while not always fascist, was certainly a nightmare.

Perlstein has done what hardly anyone else has in the current policy debates on education and testing:  spent time in a real school, with real people, for enough time to get a feel for the daily life of children.  At Tyler Heights Elementary School we meet youngsters caught up in a frenzy of test prep and drills – driven by a principal and superintendent who are obsessed with meeting the MSA test levels so their school won’t be punished. 

The year starts with a buzz of excitement because Tyler Heights has scored well, very well, in the previous year in the tests.  The anxiety now was to be able to repeat the results. “Scores were posted throughout the school and recited at meetings, a constant reminder of the ultimate goal.”  Teachers were held to scripted curricula, required to make academic progress every day.  On day one, first graders were drilled on the difference between consonants and vowels.  By now, independent reading, and rich imaginative play were out the window. 

In this brave new world of schooling, students don’t simply respond to a piece of writing.  They must learn (in third grade) to create a “brief constructed response” – which has an acronym like everything else, it’s a BCR.  Students are taught to use BATS, to borrow from the question, answer the question, use text support, and stretch.  These students must do five BCRs per day, in their practice for the March testing days.  They must also answer the question, “why is this a poem?” with such inane (and wrong) comments like, “I know it is a poem because it rhymes and has stanzas.”  Don’t tell Allen Ginsberg about this.  Stories are reduced to the “message” – devoid of wonder.  My writing teacher in college told me, “Only Western Union sends messages.”

Some schools, the ones that make a fetish of test prep, indeed make improvements in test scores.  But is this good education? At Tyler Heights, physical education, art, music, play, and even science are pretty much set aside.  And whatever small amount of art or exercise they do is justified because it might help math scores, not because it has value in itself.  What kind of citizens are we making here?

So, you might wonder, what if we are miseducating the kids a bit, making them stupid in the short run so they can perform higher tasks later?  At least they are learning, right?  But you have to look more closely.  Students are required to sit in a “learning position”:  with feet on the floor, back against the chair, hands on desk, head up and forward.  Students are criticized, harped at, intimidated, and threatened. 

During an attempt to cram geography factoids into a group of third graders, one teacher became frustrated with the squirming and distraction of the kids.  “‘Put your papers away in your social studies folder and put your heads down,’ Miss Johnson said.  ‘I’m done teaching for today.  I’m not talking any more.  You don’t want to get smarter, that’s your problem.  If you don’t pass third grade, if you don’t pass your report card, if you don’t pass the MSA, you can explain to your parents why not.  If you want your third grade to be awful and miserable, keep doing what you’re doing.’”  (p. 49)  Wow, sounds like a lot of people are confused about their responsibility. 

This horror is not for all kids, of course.  Don’t believe the children of politicians suffer these tortures – most of them go to wealthy suburban or private schools where independent thinking, critical reflection, and free play are the norm. Even at nearby Crofton Elementary School, with a white middle-class population, test scores were always pretty good and students were treated to projects, field trips, and creative writing. The tests, you see, are calibrated to white middle-class discourse and approaches so the achievement gap is in place before the students ever arrive at school.

One of the most disturbing discoveries Perlstein has made in her investigation is the host of consultants and packaged education programs that buzz around schools, selling them pre-packaged curricula and test-boosters.  Like the war profiteers who respond with glee to the Iraq quagmire, these companies make literally billions in the currently constructed education crisis.  Some of the catchy names that show up at Tyler Heights include the Open Court reading script from McGraw-Hill (for which the district paid $7 million for just one year), Saxon Math, Corrective Reading, Soar to Success, SpellRead, Brain Gym (who present a new age set of exercises called Education Kinesiology, I’m not kidding, that costs a pretty penny), Second Step (violence prevention), Ace Your Test, Polishing the Apple, Total Quality Management, and the Positive Behavioral Intervention System.   The latter has teachers writing on turkey decoration during Thanksgiving:  “We are thankful for great behavior!”

Perlstein’s account makes the reader shudder and wonder how we let education “reform” become such a mess.  My one quibble with her is that she tends to repeat the misinformed prejudices about the inadequacies and deficits of the poor, mostly African American and Latino, community.  The stereotype that the community is rife with crack, abusive parents, malnutrition, and constant television is belied by real data (there is often more cocaine, alcoholism, divorce in nearby wealthy communities – yet kids are doing well in school).  Pathologizing the poor instead of looking for ways to make education institutions more relevant is an old game in public policy.

As Wisconsin education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings has pointed out, we should not define the problem as an “achievement gap” as much as an educational debt that has accumulated as a result of centuries of denial of access to education and employment – which is exacerbated by deepening poverty and the lack of funding for schools.

One comes away from Tested with a sad sympathy for the people involved.  The children, of course, who endure this official abuse; the families who are marginalized and detested by the schools; even the principal and the staff, who are working hard every day on this impossible project.  After all, just because it is wrong does not mean it is not a lot of hard work.

Rick Ayers is the author of Great Books for High School Kids:  A Teacher’s Guide to Books That Can Change Teens’ Lives

Tough being an imperialist— you give and give, sacrifice and sacrifice, and the little colored natives never seem to get it right. This attitude is the screaming subtext in the ongoing discussion among the idiots who pass for political leaders in the US, perfectly captured in a headline in the  liberal pro-imperialist New York Times on June 13, 2007—“Iraqis Are Failing to Meet Benchmarks Set by US.” It’s all their fault! The US did what it could for those people, but the Benchmarks for god’s sake, they can’t meet them!