Posted on 12/19/2001 8:15:00 AM PST by toenail
Neither does he, but that's not important to leftists like McLaren. What this kind linguistic drool is all about is to intimidate the reader: "gee, I don't understand what he's saying but it sure sounds impressive..."
You, too, can write like a liberal educator. Create endless run-on sentences with words like, hegemony, pedagogy, praxis, exegesis, patriarchy, postmodern, and multicultural. If you need to make emphasis, use racist, jingoistic, or, my favorite, ludic, as spicy adjectives. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Here's one of mine: "A pedagogy must be made available to teachers that will infuse their pedagogies with postmodern elan of the ludic intellectual hegemony inherent in the white male patriarchy".
And the laying off of thousands of union dues-paying teachers, which is why the Democrats will never allow anything like that to happen.
The folks on this forum can pick out media bias and educational propaganda in a sec.....but we are not the target audience. In a democracy such as ours, they only need to brainwash 51% to get what they want. In my estimation, only about 10% of the population can see what is going on...the rest lap this junk up like cats with milk. As for the Freeper 10%, we can just be ignored or intimidated while they continue to dismantle America.
The author, John Taylor Gatto, was New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 and is a member of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State.
Any CULTURALLY SENSITIVE individual would know that a passage such as that should be posted in jive, so that such wisdom can be available to a broad segment of society in their native dialect:
...a critical pedagogy dat embraces some resistance post-modernism needs t'construct some politics uh refusal dat kin provide bod de condishuns fo' interrogatin' de institushunalizashun uh fo'mal equality based on de prized impuh'tive uh a honky, Anglo male wo'ld and fo' creatin' spaces t'facilitate an investigashun uh de way in which dominant institushuns gots'ta be transfo'med so's dat dey no longa' serve simply as conduits fo' some motivated indifference t'victimizashun fo' some Euroimpuh'ial aesdetics, fo' depredashuns uh economic and cultural dependency, and fo' de producshun uh asymmetrical relashuns uh powa' and privilege...
BTW, this is what happened--accidentally--to me.
I had a prototypical rotten childhood, made more so by an Evil Stepfather straight out of Grimms' Fairy Tales. I spent my youth hiding from him and reading. Every week, I travelled by bus to the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and checked out dozens of books. I hid in my room on the weekends, behind a locked door, emerging only for the bathroom and to eat. Plenty of solitude and time to think.
I educated myself, in spite of the schools I attended.
In retrospect, a "rotten" childhood gave me one boon: the time and inclination to read.
Teach your kids to read. It doesn't matter what. For me, it was mostly science fiction and non-fiction. Read until you puke. Until your eyes fall out. But read!
--Boris
My favorite quote from this article. Has anyone here tried to engage a Gen-Y person in a debate? It is not just a question of their not being able to form an original idea or an effective critique, it is that they are unable to process the answer once you give it to them!
Public schools have become a cancer on the body politic, and they have to be de-funded and dismantled if we hope to have a better future. I've seen studies that say that one hour of homeschooling is as effective as ten hours of public school instruction. I'm inclined to believe this, as I recall endless hours of being bored out of my mind while the teacher dragged along at the speed of the slowest student in the class.
Impeach, thought you might like this article.
Ten families with 25 children ranging from K-12? Fine. Where is this hypothetical school supposed to be located? In someone's basement? I don't think so - most suburbs, especially, have zoning laws. Piano teachers can't even have students come to their homes in many areas. Now you're talking about rent, and insurance, and equipment, and books, and utilities. Do the ten parents form a corporation? Are they themselves entirely legally liable if one of them gets disgruntled and decides to sue? Add attorney fees to the pot.
Now let's talk about "getting paid handsomely." When you add medical insurance, social security, unemployment, workman's comp, and medical/life insurance benefits, you have to essentially double the salary the individual will receive. Thus someone earning $25,000/year as a teacher will actually end up costing the employer about $50,000. Nor is it realistic to expect one teacher to teach 30 kids ranging from K-12 for $25,000 a year; women did it in the good old days when it was that, marry, or starve. That was then, this is now.
This little private school solution is wonderful for those who have the means, time, and energy to do so. It is NOT a universal solution for the hundreds of thousands of public school students in any given city - many of whom have mothers who work, who don't want to help organize and serve on the board of a "small school of ten families," and many of whom would not educate their children AT ALL if education weren't compulsory.
As a final point, are these little cottage schools of ten families going to educate the autistic? The retarded? Those with severe cerebral palsy?
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