Jonathan Kozol, described accurately here as a "weepy Marxist," is in Seattle for a Town Hall disquisition tonight on the racist savagery of foisting accountability on minority students and minority parents.
This is one more heinous thing that liberalism, Blue City-style, has become. 
Kozol is also flogging a new book, no less than four times this week in Western Washington and once more at the end of the month. Kozol's corrosive view is essentially that to succeed, black and Hispanic students must escape their community's public schools for public schools in white neighborhoods. He tells the Seattle Times today that he supports the (student school assignment) "racial tiebreaker" Seattle Public Schools is still trying to win legal permission to use, and that real progress in minority-heavy schools must be regarded as a freakish occurence. Some Q&A on Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Seattle, is revealing:
Q: Thurgood Marshall is a school that's often held up as a success because, up until this year, its test scores were rising.A: In every city in America, you can find a handful of segregated schools which, at one point of another, appear to boost their scores. ... They are almost always exceptional situations, either because they have an unusually charismatic principal, or because they happen to have a cluster of unusually terrific teachers.
But the main reason you get these temporary blips in test scores is that so much time is devoted to drilling children for exams. At the time I visited Thurgood Marshall, there was almost nonstop emphasis on a kind of robotic curriculum in which children were exposed to repeated incantations and slogans, posted everywhere.
Times education writer Linda Shaw challenges Kozol's hermetic white guilt at several points, and appropriately so. Read the whole thing.
The problem Kozol ignores with his "bus them to white schools" mantra, is literally, the many children left behind, at underperforming schools in minority communities. They deserve choices such as charters and vouchers, higher academic standards in their neighborhood's public schools (focused on core skills mastery, state achievement tests and college preparedness), and an end to labor agreements which protect incompetent or burnt-out teachers. But to all this, especially real school choice, ed school darling Kozol is intractably hostile.
Most of all, the children left behind deserve two-parent families engaged in their education, and proper upbringing. They require parents who foster a love of learning and knowledge, in the home, and who seek to raise community standards by spreading these values at every turn. But Kozol tells Shaw that for whites to voice such concerns is "self-serving." In The Times today, Kozol also called Thurgood Marshall "a basically segregated school," leading to an embarrassing (for him) editor's note that the school is 63 percent Black, 19 percent Latino, 15 percent Asian and 2 percent White.
Perhaps minorities all look alike to Kozol.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 26, 2005 02:43 PM | Email ThisCan you believe that!! Posted by: sue gill rose on September 26, 2005 03:29 PM
It would be great to freep that SOB.
Posted by: ERNurse on September 26, 2005 03:50 PMIn your list of what children left behind as a result of busing deserve, you left out one obvious thing they deserve - fully funded schools. You list vouchers and ending labor agreements as things they deserve, but you never suggest that we as a community should invest more in eductation. Why don't we give that a chance for once. Can you honestly say that we spend too much on public education in this state? There are few things more important that educating our children. For example, walk around some of the public schools in our city - they're not exactly posh, and many are pretty run down. Investing in education is good for the community as a whole.
As for your suggestion that a school that is 63% black and 2 % white is not a "basically segregated school" what would you call it, integrated? Isn't Seattle something like 74% white?
Oh, come on...can you say we spend too little? What is the real world correlation between spending and performance?
Two things... 1) are Latinos and Asians now second class citizens and don't count? Seriously, you say that at 63% black and 2% white, it's not diverse... but that's only 65% total. What about the other 35%? You know, there are other races besides black and white.
2) What is fully funding schools? What is the magic number at which we say schools have enough money? Where is that money supposed to come from? And why does more money magically mean better performance? And who says Seattle schools don't have enough money? Did you not here about the state auditor's report calling the Seattle Schools a cash cow, but they can't manage their money? Why should we invest more money into schools when they can't spend the money they get properly. I saw an interesting interview of either a principal or superintendent (I forget which) in the Bellevue School District. He pointed out that due to the way state law works, Bellevue spends a lot less per student than Seattle. Go look at Bellevue schools... they have good facilities and three of their high schools are nationaly rank in performance. The Seattle Times ran a list a while ago with the figures of per student spending per high school (you'll have to look it up in their archives... it's free but requires registration). The better schools also have a lower per student spending than the worse schools. How does throwing more money then equal better performance? How much money does it take to teach a kid to read and write and do math? If it costs so much, why do homeschooled kids learning from their parents (who probably don't have a teaching degree) tend to do so well in placement tests? Is it really a matter of dollars and cents? Or could it be something else?
Posted by: Mike H on September 26, 2005 08:05 PMAnd - as Bill stated above, this victim mentality has done nothing to advance equality and understanding between races...It's just brought ruin upon everyone!
I'd love to see Bill Cosby at one of Kozol's town hall meetings....
Posted by: Deborah on September 26, 2005 08:10 PMCall it what it is, Kozol is a bigot.
Posted by: dl on September 26, 2005 08:34 PMBig surprise claire - public schools are fully-funded. Just not the way libs would like. Like any addiction, y'all just keep demanding more more more. Show me how spending even more would make any difference (when the union controlled public school culture obviously hasn't a clue as to prioritized spending with what they've got).
"Can you honestly say that we spend too much on public education in this state?"
Yes. Easily and absolutely.
Two other statements that you make are once again glib, but pointless:
"There are few things more important that educating our children."
"Investing in education is good for the community as a whole."
So what? Are you seriously suggesting that this state (run by democraps, BTW) aren't committed to educating our kids? Or is it that those evil Republicans just don't care? Either way shows an incredible lack of depth of understanding.
To your red herring about "segregation":
I would call it the typical breakout for that community. What is your solution, force blacks to move out until the community reaches a "color coefficient" that satisfies your sense of esthetics? Or maybe compel them to move to other, less affordable neighborhoods and shoulder debts that will certainly break them, all to satisfy your sociological Feng Shui?
People live where they want, and where they can afford to buy. Not that's choice!
Posted by: alphabet soup on September 26, 2005 08:36 PMAnd if the results aren't good, you can just say that it wasn't enough money or we didn't "try" hard enough or whatever. This type of reasoning permits a country to keep trying failed policies for generations!
And if in the process you cause greater harm than good, that doesn't matter, because you have good intentions and That's All That Really Matters.
Posted by: Bostonian on September 27, 2005 05:46 AMJames S.
Posted by: James S. on September 27, 2005 07:30 AMThanks for the humor.
You and Kozol were made for eachother.
…less affordable neighborhoods and shoulder debts that will certainly break them, all to satisfy your sociological Feng Shui?
"Sociological Feng Shui" - BRILLIANT!!!
Please may I use this in one of my next arguments with leftie pinheads?
I love it.
Posted by: Jeffro on September 27, 2005 12:52 PM*Sociological Feng Shui*....nails it!
I just don't think I could get my mouth to say it with the impact it deserves! Heh....(I've been practicing!)
Brilliant though!
Posted by: Deborah on September 27, 2005 02:28 PMMemorization bad, bad!! Useless feel good dribble good good!
Teaching facts bad - means kids might realize that there are absolutes - God, etc.
Worked well for their nihlist ideology to destroy history and make it into social studies, turn science into a series of random events, literature into a study of femininst lesbian vampire anti-zenith trash, stop teaching grammer altogether, spelling??? they can look it up. And math - well after dumbing down math to the nth degree they just couldn't get 2 plus to 2 to equal anything but 4 so they had to scrap the new, new math and turn math into a writing class. After calculating the square footage of the chicken cage write a pargraph on how you might feel if you were the chicken living in such a cage?
What are your kids still doing in the government schools?
And if you are a Christian why are you turning your kids over to the enemy? Why are you sending them back to Egypt?
Posted by: Jericho on September 27, 2005 08:46 PMIgnorant boofs like Claire show how ridiculous some people are for no good reason - except to unknowingly be used as useful idiots by clowns like Kozol.
Posted by: KS on September 27, 2005 10:00 PMYes, yes, yes, and yes.
And yes indeed, Claire offers us the dubious opportunity to peer into the abyss.
Just don't look too long though, arrogant degeneracy is depressing. She talks too much like a school teacher (oh, I forgot--e-d-u-c-a-t-o-r).
I prefer to observe the humorous side of her silliness and the fact that she has herself so well deluded.
It's about values folks. My values reflect a support for public education and taking care of those less fortunate. Your values apparently stop at the big screen in the den and SUV in the garage. My values are compassionate and Christ- like - your values are selfish and short sited. You don't need me to point that out, you know it's true and you are privately ashamed of yourselves - that's why you act the way you do on this site.
As for where the money's going to come from to properly fund education - it's going to come from my pocket and your pocket. Break out the checkbooks folks - there's no free lunch. You get what you pay for, and to date far too many of us have been getting a lot more than they are paying for. So buckle down, you live in the greatest country on earth - it's time to start paying for that country's upkeep and invest in its future.
Posted by: Claire on September 28, 2005 10:14 AM"Break out the checkbooks folks - there's no free lunch. You get what you pay for, and to date far too many of us have been getting a lot more than they are paying for."
Claire, for too many people, that lunch consists of being forced to pay $15 for a $2.50 Big Mac. No one has a problem paying for education, the problem come from how that money is being spent and the crap it's being spent on.
By the way, Christ wasn't for spending money foolishly and just throwing money at problems. Get off your self rightious high-horse. How is it compassionate to waste more of my hard earned money on public schools without accountability when the kids in those schools still can't read or write? As I said in a previous post, do some digging and look at the numbers... the worst schools tend to be the ones that have the most money poured into them. First, have some finacial accountability, then show that the programs you're dumping money into actually are working, then come to us demanding our checkbooks.
Posted by: Mike H on September 28, 2005 10:34 AMHow can you say that people don't have a problem paying for education. Those critics who are proposing education reforms are hell bent on cutting education funding - not increasing it. Why not reform education and spend more on education. If you want school vouchers - sure, so long as it is part of a program whereby we invest significantly more on education. You want to bust the teachers' unions - fine, then up teachers' starting salaries to numbers that reflect their importance and will attract the best qualified techers (something equivalent or higher than what a starting BS degree holder could earn working for Microsoft - $85k). Unfortunately, more often than not critics are using purported accoutablity problems as a smoke screen for decreasing funding for public education. That's the wrong direction. We need more overall investment in education while at the same time being more efficient with our investments by reforming public education.
Posted by: Claire on September 28, 2005 11:20 AM"..something equivalent or higher than what a starting BS degree holder could earn working for Microsoft - $85k."
Are you kidding? Maybe back in the early 90's, but today somebody with a master's degree would have a hard time getting that kind of starting salary (I know, I have an MBA and do not make that much money).
I've looked at the teacher's salaries in this area (public information) and I was very surprised to find at least half of them make as much or more than I do, and they certainly get a lot more time off than I do.
However, I agree that higher wages attracts a higher quality of teachers and I would not be against raising teacher's salaries. But in exchange, those teachers should have regular performance reviews and their salary should reflect their level of performance. Something like how it works in the real world. However, the union would never hear of such a thing!
Oh well, I'm just wasting my typing skills - you obviously have imbedded in your brain the incantation, "More money is better. More money is better." and anybody who doesn't join you in your paper thin argument is selfish and shortsited.
LMK
Posted by: LMK on September 28, 2005 12:11 PMTalk about Hypocrisy !
Public education is going down the wrong road - with a politically correct agenda where free conservative speech is no tolerated - by a bunch of brown shirts at the top. In too many cases, that is deemed more important than teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and disciplines in new technology.
We do need more investment in education, but not by throwing money at it like you suggest, but by offering more quality education - not driven by the political agenda of the NEA and ACLU - for the left-tilted education community . Too much hand waving and no viable or practical solutions - that's what the left is all about.
I do not drive an SUV and think that they are really TFD's (terrorist funding devices).
Your whimsical parading self righteous air of superiority comes with the obvious expectation that I must pay to support it. You are a phony liberal who knows nothing about the sacrifices that I have made to make life better for others. I would happily wager that I have contributed far more to education than you, so direct your degenerate fraudulent slobber back on yourself.
What you call “values” has no relation to values at all except a singular excuse to confiscate the value of more of other people’s money, so you can pretend that you are a good person. If you think putting more money into education is the answer, put your own money into it. No amount of money placed anywhere will ever correct your lack of wisdom or integrity, so why would I wish to pay extravagantly to further corrupt others especially when an entirely different approach will do the trick?
Your generosity in the name of whatever symbol you find convenient to stand behind, while humorously shallow is not bigheartedness or value-rich high mindedness but simple-minded duplicity. Education is broken not by under-funding, but by the phony mentality of idiots like you who don’t have the sense god intended for a squid, and who think “values” can be bought--but only with other people’s money.
While I don’t expect anything better from you, I do find your silly arrogant comments illustrative of liberal “values.”
Thanks for the examples.
Apparently I hit a nerve (thus the misdirected hostility). After some self-reflection, you will likely come to terms with the shortsighted and selfish nature of your hostility towards public education. We're all in this together Amused. That means we all have to take our turn on the laboring oar. You claim to have made great contributions to education - that's fantastic. It's time for us all to follow your example. Unfortunately, it can't be on a voluntary basis (free riders and all that). But I'm sure that if we reflect on our values as Americans (and overcome the knee jerk reaction to go it alone and delude ourselves that what we do has no impact on our neighbors) we will collectively realize that increasing funding for public education in Washington and elsewhere is the far wiser course.
With all due respect claire, that's a whole boatload of hooey. You've made grand claims of so-called "values" (as if they were unique to you and you alone) and dared others to live up to your mark. Live up to you own mark! Dream up all the goofy, fanciful alternative realities you want, but don't expect others to mindlessly buy into it.
In the real world, people plan using tools like responsibility, practicality, reconciliation, and measured doses of pragmatism. You just want (me) to throw more money into the pot! Phooey on that! I prefer to see practical results for the money I spend.
Your commentaries, while cute in a surface level, simple-minded sort of way, has grown increasingly tiresome and frankly, increasingly stupid.
Do you actually think about anything that you scribble?
Posted by: alphabet soup on September 29, 2005 11:57 AMYou want to fund failed government schools be my guest. I'm sure they will take your check for their rat hole. Don't advocate that the rest of us pay for this miserable thing called public education.
And as for what the Bible says about education? I paraphrase. Those who are taught (or their parents) should pay their teacher.
I pay for my kids education. Don't try to force me to pay for yours.
Posted by: Jericho on September 29, 2005 12:35 PMIt's not about "you" it's about "us." I'm not talking about just asking you to fund public education - we all should do it as a community. That's a major difference between the liberal and the conservative mindset. Liberals think about what's good for the community as a whole while conservatives think about what's good for themselves individually (and in the short term). The beauty about public education is that we all benefit from it - regardless whether we have children in the schools.
I agree with you that "responsibility, practicality, reconciliation, and measured doses of pragmatism" are important. We can act consistently with all of those ideals while at the same time collectively increasing our investment in public education.
No Claire, it's not about "me" or "us," it's about you. The only short sighted selfish attitudes on this thread lay in your artless adherence to banal platitudes in substitution for concrete claims and lines of reasoning. You like socialist communism, and you want to force it on the rest of us any way you can, and over-funding public schools goes a long way towards that goal.
Still, you are more correct than you know when you say that, “[I]t's time for us all to follow [my] example." Indeed, it’s long overdue. Our schools are run as tools of indoctrination for modern radical liberalism. Liberalism as you so aptly demonstrate is a social disease of sham pretense, intellectual laziness, and shallow symbolism whose ultimate consequence is disaster. Reflection on genuine American values is motivating many to turn to home schooling in order to protect their children from the exploitation wrought by your religion and its countless manifest forms of degeneracy and social delinquency.
As “values” may be associated with education, you speak almost exclusively of education funding. Aside from the obvious fact that buildings do not educate people, your comments suppose an unspoken approval of the epistemological and academic status quo (liberal political indoctrination) in our schools. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that you would love to over-fund such corruption. Most decent and intelligent people would rather that our children obtain objective and substantive skills and critical thinking abilities than your sloppy style of pseudo reasoning and mind numbed propaganda. Paradoxically, your very survival, and continued freedom of choice to practice slothful mental indolence depends directly on real education reform.
When you say that, ”liberals think about what's good for the community as a whole while conservatives think about what's good for themselves [sic] individually (and in the short term).” As though somehow rationally questioning spending could ever be “bad for the community.” Our schools have been dominated in every conceivable way by the liberal left for well over four decades. They have been funded with far more money in total and per capita than any country in the world, and previous generations did much better comparatively with far less. You say the solution is more funding? All this idiotic comment proves is that it makes you feel good to think that you are a good person despite all facts and all logic.
Increasing funding for public education in Washington and elsewhere would be another in a long line of incredibly stubborn refusals to face reality -- that doing so is an important part of the continued cause not the cure. It characterizes the shallow collectivist liberal communist views you espouse, by paying good money (my money) to communist degenerates like Kozol and Churchill so they can puke anti-Americanism into our children's ears. Because your views are cynical and devoid of substance your side is losing the debate with thinking people. I am not in the least surprised that you don’t get any of it.
Nevertheless, your supercilious attitude is quite amusing.
A few comments. First,your arguments are meaningless if you just make stuff up. For example, you argue that public education in the U.S. has "been funded with far more money in total and per capita than any country in the world." Well, that is true but it does not argue that we should not be doing more. After all, we didn't get the world's most powerful military on the cheap - we got it by making value choices and investing resources. Let's strive to have the worlds best public education system. Doing so is going to take the same commitment that we've historically shown to our military.
Further, on a technical point, while we may have spent more in absolute and per capita terms, we have not spent more in terms of what our available resources have been. For example, as a percentage of GDP - a more accurate way of measuring spending unless you think it's relevant that the U.S. spent more money on education than Uganda - U.S. public funding of primary and secondary education comes in below the average for developed countries. (per the OECD) In fact, as a percentage of GDP, we come in below countries like Canada, Sweden, Denmark. This shows that to date that, in allocating its vast wealth, America has chosen to spend more on things other than education. To me average is not good enough - we can and should do better.
As for your complaining about modern radical liberalism. It's about time that you realized that what you call radical liberalism is the direction that western civilization is heading. Science over god / reason over prejudice. You are more than welcome to get off the ride and homeschool your kids in some bunker - but, don't for a minute think your mindset reflects what decent, reasonable, intelligent people think. It's not. Those people believe in a sense of community, sacrifice for the common good, reason, diversity, compassion and tolerance. We will even tolerate you - but don't expect us to buy into your paranoid world view.
Finally, you need to update your rhetoric. Calling people with whom you disagree communists is so 1990's. Get with the program friend. The current mindless right-wing attack line is to call us terrorists.
Posted by: Claire on September 30, 2005 10:27 AMInteresting nonsense. You say my arguments would be meaningless if I just made stuff up, and then you admit that I am correct. Then you change the whole argument by qualifying it with niggling unrelated bullshit. Do you ever think before you prattle?
Then you venture into a completely spurious series of justifications for spending money on education based on entirely irrelevant grounds. Spending more money on “things other than education” is not the same as limiting spending on education, and certainly does not justify spending more. Look up "per capita" sometime stupid.
Science over god / reason over prejudice I suppose that you fancy your views as “reason” over prejudice?
There is no reason let alone any decency in the shallow collectivist liberal communist views you espouse, just pretense.
If you believe what you say, knock your socks off; you’ll be left behind along with those other idiots of your communist ilk. Western European civilization is indeed moving inexorably towards modern radical liberalism, and they are becoming more and more irrelevant in the world. As they are over-run by Islam, tell me about “Science over god / reason over prejudice.” America’s is embracing my conservative leanings in numbers so large that you couldn’t be more incorrect. The blind liberal hatred of GW Bush, and his defeat of liberals at every turn proves it.
Finally, I don’t call all of the people I disagree with communists, just the communists. You are free to dress yourself up in any trendy period–fashion you like, I’m not running for office as a Democrat so I am still allowed the right to tell the simple truth. Besides, communism didn’t die completely just because it miserably failed in the most demonstrable ways wherever it was tried around the world. Dumb ass people like you are doing all that you can to keep it alive by dressing it up as other things even in your own so-called minds. A rose by any other name . . .
Thanks for the nonsense. You prove that conservatism has little to worry about from your quarter.
Number killed in the 21st Century - Yet to be determined.
But look up and be ever hopeful for the time of the beast is coming to an end.
Posted by: Jericho on October 1, 2005 12:38 PM