TOPIC: EVERYTHING…a long and important post, might need to read in portions
Bush won…so, what have I learned, what have I experienced?
1 – The people that make up America are not the people that I know. They are apparently largley Evangelical Christians. They are people who will vote on one or two factors like abortion, or gay marriage. They will vote on religious issues, which the media is now calling “moral values.”
2 – Those most affected by terrorism, the people in NY and DC, were not in favor of voting for Bush, the man leading the current war on terror. Many who voted for Bush, voted for him because they were afraid of another terrorist attack, and because they felt Bush was strongest on the war on terror, despite living in areas one might argue are less likely to be attacked than those previously hit, NY and DC.
3 – The map of the electoral college gives me a new view of American culture. The whole south and middle west, red for Bush. The west coast and northeast, blue for Kerry.
4 – In this election, you knew who Bush was. Despite supporting Kerry, this election felt more like it was always about defeating Bush. With Bush not running next time, it will be interesting to gauge how the election will be run on both sides.
5 – The average voter is swayed by only a few issues, and their perception of the candidate which is more about style than substance. Bush has been torn to shreds by analysts, intellectuals, the media, the foreign world and their leaders. Yet, average voters see Bush as an average person because of the way he speaks and presents himself. I grew hopeful about Kerry because I’m not an average person who only sees commercials and headlines. I’m in a slim minority of people who reads the paper daily, who watched all 3 debates, who listened to analysis of those debates, who did research, who read a few books, who had political discussions. Kerry never dumbed down his campaign in my opinion, or rather, never spoke in plain enough language that anyone could digest in a single sound-bite, and without needing to understand the complexity of the issue. Bottom line, Bush won on presentation.
6 – Too much entertainment television prevents average Americans from being well-informed about the realities of our government. Of all the things I believe can change, this is the easiest. More educational and entertaining shows, like the Daily Show, like the Bill Maher Show, and sadly, those are the only two I can name, will create a population that is more informed, and more thoughtful about politics.
Seeing Bush win was like seeing my Mets lose to the Yankees in 2000. You will never be able to experience what it would have felt like if it went the other way. But…i’m not crying “doomsday.” I’m learning from the experience, and if anything have gained a better understanding of the realities of this country that I wasn’t aware before election day.
Let me turn back to the topic that I am not more passionate about then ever. Education, and its partner topic which has also risen in interest to me, “democracy.” Election day was confusing to me. Why is the media calling a state before counting every vote? Why do they call a state based on exit polling, rather than votes? Why wasn’t I asked for an ID when I went to vote, but I’m asked for an ID when I enter a bar or buy a beer? The basic concepts of holding an election, having everyone who is old enough to vote, to vote, and then counting all the votes, and then declaring a winner…and that’s shaky. That’s something I was up with my family questioning last night.
Now that the election is done, we can quickly turn our attention to, “what’s next?” Clearly, our voting system isn’t perfect, yet, the act of voting is perceived to be the epitome of our democracy. We seem to ignore other issues such as having an informed electorate. That to me, would be the biggest push for democracy, because an informed electorate would not only make wiser decisions, but would vote without being yelled at to vote. Therefor, in my opinion, an uninformed public / a public that is not able to analyze its own government, is the core problem in our democracy, well ahead of the problem of voting turn-out.
Throughout the day, I have read through news articles that my mom has clipped for me over the past month or so, as well as through some old articles I have saved over the past year…I have also read through my journals from college. I now have a clearer understanding of how I got where I am today, where I am going, and a clearer picture of the problem of education and democracy in America.
Let’s start with education.
Time magazine last week wrote an article about high school AP exams. Here’s what one teacher of AP history had to say about teaching the class:
“We’re usually struggling the last few weeks just to get to the Reagan years,” This fall, with a presidential campaign under way, Kenny would have loved to draw some lessons from current events, but, he laments, “there’s no time. The kids love when we break away fand talk about today’s election, but I’m looking at the clock – that’s not a good thing.”
I’ve started to highlight and take notes on articles, something I never did in college. Next to this, I wrote, “This is a threat to democracy!!!”
An article from Time magazine, March 1st, 2004, titled “Beating the Bubble Test” about No Child Left Behind, had this quote:
“There are parts of No Child left Behind that are positive and good…but there’s a huge portion that’s horrible.” The casualties include social studies, creative writing, and teacher autonomy. “They’re not learning civics, history, geography – a lot of essential skills that they’re going ot need to be good democratic citizens.”
Once again, we see how traditional schooling is a threat to democracy. Those in favor of the war on terror argue, we need to be safe or we may not have a chance to worry about anything else. Well…in terms of school, we need to know students are learning about topics like history and civics, otherwise we cannot function as a healthy democracy.
In an article written in Harper’s magaizine, “Against School” by John Taylor Gotto, we learng the true history of schooling. We come to see clearly how the current system leaves students ignorant and apathetic, and we come to see how this fits the original goals of school. If you have time, here’s a link to the article:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm
here’s a fun picture from his site
Anyways…besides the obvious that school does not encourage very much independant though, we can now see that manipulative history behind schooling as we know it. Gotto is working on a documentary to expose school. Yes…simple little school, that we all went to, that many of us send out kids to, is the root of our countries large amounts of apathy and ignorance.
But…it gets more interesting. I’ve tried my part to speak out against higher education for promoting apathy and ignorance in my book “College Daze” The same problems I wrote about are starting to bubble up to the surface from others as well.
The president of Wesleyan University, Douglas J. Bennet, wrote an opinion article 9/12/04 in New York Newsday, “A rank disservice to all,” about the damage created by college rankings. He points out some of the obvious problems. “Students are…limiting themselves when they choose colleges from a ranking list.” He writes, “a former dean of admissions at Princeton once remarked that the ideal student was a Huck Finn – someone extremely curious, sensitive and clever, whose strengths would never show up on an SAT. If we limit a school’s ability to take chances on students like this – and the rankings discourage such risk taking – we risk passing over a huge pool of talented young people.”
I was excited to see that Reed College has chosen to boycott the rankings, something I suggest my school, Washington University in St. Louis do. Reed has experienced no apparent loss of quality applicants. Schools that try to avoid putting pressure on students to score well on tests like the SAT, such as Mount Holyoke College, have found this difficutl. They claim, “we have de-emphasized the SAT because we seek a truer assessment of a student’s potential” but applicants and their parents worry this is just a ploy to raise their school’s avg. SAT score and therefor their rankings.
It’s interesting to see how the false beliefs in rankings makes it difficult for others to get away from those false beliefs. The Time article on AP testing made a similar point about how non-academic factors make it difficult for schools to become better schools. Many schools would rather ditch the AP exams all together, noting the test has turned into “a kind of alternative high school curriculum for ambitious students that teaches to the test instead of encouraging the best young minds to think creatively.” However, “A large selection of AP courses attended by a broad swath of the student body is widely seen as a measure of excellence for US high schools and figures prominently in forumlas that attempt to rank public high schools. The more active the AP program, the higher the rank and, often, the higher the school district’s real estate values.” So…schools are tied to these AP exams which are damaging to the intellectual and personal development of a student, because of politics and money. More tests equals better school ranking equals higher real estate values. That’s a bit of a problem for education when priorities are caused by focussing on political and financial desires.
I also came across a short letter to the editor in the New York Times, a letter similar to one I submitted about a year ago that wasn’t printed. It is in response to the rise in tuition of public university tuition. “If the rise in tuition was correlated with a rise in academic vigor, most students would accept the additional cost. This, unfortunately, is not the case. Indeed, many colleges like Middlebury have used excess revenue to finance vast building projects, which, while aesthetically pleasing, do little to enhance the quality of a student’s education.” This quote fits the Wash. U model exactly.
It seems that many of the problems with higher education are because of political and financial reasons, but ultimately, it comes down to educational philosophy. In the article about No Child Left Behind, one school commented, “The kids are better readers, mathematicians and test takers. But while Democratic presidential candidates have bene lambasting the law’s fuding levels…teachers talk of other things. They bemoan a loss of spontaneity, breadth and play – problems money won’t fix.” So….it seems, fixing the educational problem merely requires the courage, it would seem, to look at the problem not from a political or financial standpoint, but from a philosophical one. What is the purpose of school? Start with that question, and the solution is easy to find.
It’s also interesting to note here, to bring this back to politics and democracy, how someone like Kerry was critical that Bush hadn’t properly funded Leave No Child Behind. To most, the problem is not one purely one of a lack of funding, but of a lack of a progressive philosophy of education. If Kerry had come out against the policy itself, he may have one some voters and shown a connection to those actually in the schools. He could have brought the debate to a common sense level. “We need our students to learn how to read, write, but also how to think, and how to question, and how to become civically engaged. Therefor, we need to do away with Bush’s policy that demands testing accountability at the expense of the education our children need.” Instead, we got Kerry going right along with Bush, and the only alternative he could offer was one of funding. In Iraq, the problem was not funding enough. Homeland security, not funding enough. Kerry never hit home any real philosophical differences or anything real and concrete that everyday people coule relate to.
I am optimistic. Alternatives are developing, and as they grow, so to will a future generation develop with the knowledge of our countries dark history, and with the skills and values to look at our present and do whatever it takes, ask whatever they need to, in order to create the dream of America that we inspire in our country, but that we fall far short of.
John Taylor Gotto ends his article with a great quote: “After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women.” By changing the culture of education in this country, we will see young people leap into the real world and create new ideas, and bring new energy, that this country is literally crying for after today’s election.
Something interesting happens when people take control of their own learning. When people begin to be exposed to the true ugliness of a society they had been blindly living in. I am one of those people. I have gone through 16 years of traditional schooling, and therefor hold myself as an expert on the subject. Looking back, I see now how ugly it was, and I realize that is why I felt so disgusting while I was inside of the system. What I am saying sounds abstract, but it’s literally as black and white as Bush’s view of the world. As a student, I assumed the system was in place for good reason. Now that I’m out, and I’ve seen other systems, and I’ve read about and spoken to people about the system that I was in, there is no question that I was subjected to an unhealthy way of learning about the world. Nothing was done to prevent my ignorance and apathy, and I fight hard now to make up for lost time, and to help others realize what the system has quietly done to them, in the same way that people quietly were transformed into democratic citizens when they voted, and back into normal citizens the next day. As important as anything in this country yet still largely underground, the transformation of our education system and the transformation of this country!!! Thanks for reading if you made it this far, looking forward to your comments.
-Dan
