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School Reform Doesn’t Work

[ 100 ] October 18, 2011 | Erik Loomis

In this amusing article naming Tom Friedman “The Bard of the 1%,” the real kicker is the last paragraph:

It is also worth noting that Friedman implies that the Chicago school system is desperately in need of the reform that Emanuel plans to give it. Emanuel’s predecessor as mayor, Richard Daley, also placed an emphasis on reforming Chicago’s schools. From 2001 to 2009 he installed Arne Duncan, currently President Obama’s Secretary of Education, as head of the Chicago school system. If Friedman and Emanual’s complaints about the current state of Chicago’s schools are accurate, this would imply that Duncan must not have been very successful in his tenure even though he was widely acclaimed as a reformer at the time.

Indeed. School reform has become a catchphrase disconnected from the reality of actually reforming schools to help kids learn better. If Arne Duncan was so great, why does Rahm Emanuel need to push school reform? Because it makes good political sense. But these actual reforms do little more than bust teacher unions and place a corporate model on education, a corporate model it should be said that has totally failed the country in the last decade. Moreover, I’m not even sure there is a crisis in education. Are schools really worse than when I went to them? I am skeptical of this and would note that if things have gone down, it’s because of tax reductions rather than any of the “problems” mentioned by reformers. I went to a crappy high school and managed to get a good education. And I’ll tell you this–I hear a lot of liberal people talk about the “inability to use the public schools.” To me, that a coded phrase meaning, “there are too many dark people in the public schools.” Even if that’s not intended, it has the direct effect of reinforcing de facto segregation.

If we really want to reform schools, we need to fight poverty. Schools can’t do anything if kids are unprepared, malnourished, with parents who are too poor and desperate to worry about their kids education, with cockroaches in the house. Without centering poverty as the real reason for educational problems, any attempt to reform schools is politicized and anti-teacher bullshit.

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Legalize

[ 47 ] October 18, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Gallup has conducted its first poll on marijuana legalization showing more people favoring it than opposing.

Given the seeming inevitability of decriminalization if not outright legalization, I find it somewhat odd that the Obama Administration is looking to crack down on the most pot-friendly place in the country, California. This seems like an issue where government indifference is the best move. It certainly doesn’t feel like legalized pot is going to be an election issue so I don’t think there’s any concrete political benefit here.

It could be that Obama outright opposes unregulated medical marijuana dispensaries and legalization and is giving his law enforcement team full powers to crack down. Given the budget crisis, unreasonable sentencing for drug violations, and overcrowded prisons, this doesn’t seem like very good public policy.

On the other hand, you can make a legitimate argument that the pot culture of California has gotten a bit too public. I was in Oakland last weekend for the Western History Association conference. I went with some friends around San Francisco. My friend knew of an excellent beer bar in the Mission so we stopped in to get a delicious beverage. We go out on the patio and people are openly smoking pot out there. And not just the surreptitious joint but pulling out pipes. I don’t have any principled opposition to this and no doubt people within the neighborhood knows what establishments allow what. But, like cigarette smoke, it’s a drug that those around you also inhale, so the actual smoking of pot in public seems suboptimal. So I think there needs to be some kind of control on the process.

Editors: Our Best Friends

[ 67 ] October 18, 2011 | Erik Loomis

I love editors. I say this as someone who doesn’t have the greatest confidence in his own writing. I don’t always agree with their ideas, but I usually do.

I am reminded of how much I love editors when I see the Director’s Cut of most any film. Gerardo Valero has an excellent piece on the disaster known as the “restored” version of Cinema Paradiso. This is the only version of the film I’ve seen and I don’t think I could go back and watch the original. Tornatore may have wanted all that footage in the original, but someone knew better. All the modern stuff tacked on to the end is completely unwatchable. I absolutely cannot understand what people saw in the original other than nostalgia, but that’s probably because I was subjected to Tornatore’s vision rather than the work of many collaborators, including editors and studio executives who realized a bunch of this sucked.

And then of course you have Apocalypse Now Redux. There wasn’t a single second added to the original that was worth a damn. The scene with the Playboy Bunnies in the original is bad enough, but then their copter goes down and Martin Sheen has sex with them? Really? The added scenes with Robert Duvall searching for his surfboard destroys the power of his character built up in the previous scenes. And then the whole French plantation scene, well, the less said about that the better.

The Director’s Cut phenomenon comes straight out of the auteur myth around directors. But any film is a collaboration among many artists with many different vision. The director may be the most important single individual, but cannot make a film by him/herself. When they are given full artistic control, disaster can often result, which we can see so many examples ranging from Coppola after Apocalypse Now to Kevin Costner’s dross.

Banana Republic Stores to Open in Panama and Colombia

[ 22 ] October 17, 2011 | Erik Loomis

I’m not sure if this is a very good idea.

I know I look forward to them spreading across Honduras and Nicaragua. Maybe they can sell shirts emblazoned with images of the lifeless body of Augusto Sandino.

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Romney to Woman Who Will Die If She Gives Birth: “Well, Why Do You Get Off Easy When Other Women Have Their Babies?”

[ 31 ] October 17, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Jessica Valenti savages a heartless misogynist man by the name of Mitt Romney.

Slow Food Movement

[ 26 ] October 17, 2011 | Erik Loomis

A very interesting interview with Josh Viertel, head of Slow Food USA. The piece particularly interrogates the annoying Mark Bittman piece from a couple of weeks ago when he blamed the poor for their own obesity, accusing them of being too lazy to cook for themselves. Viertel explicitly addresses this, noting that the food environment of the country makes bad food decisions the only food decisions and that while his movement is accused of elitism, that they are fighting this charge by their actions rather than empty words.

Random Killings of Endangered Species

[ 12 ] October 15, 2011 | Erik Loomis

As if the mass slaughter of pelicans last week wasn’t bad enough, there have been a disturbing number of whooping crane shooting this year.

Again, destructive human behavior is why I have very little hope for the future viability of most species, especially birds.

Shorter Limbaugh: “No Crime Against Humanity Isn’t Worth Supporting if the Perperators Claim to be Christians”

[ 43 ] October 15, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Limbaugh loves him some Lord’s Resistance Army.

Even more disgusting than usual.

How to Prevent Masturbation, 1922

[ 24 ] October 15, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Via the always great Sociological Images is this set of excellent posters training kids to not masturbate through a solid regimen of exercise, self-control, and a non-spicy low-meat diet that included a maximum of mastication.

Topeka: Domestic Abuser’s Paradise

[ 51 ] October 11, 2011 | Erik Loomis

This ain’t good:

Three arms of government, all ostensibly representing the same people, have been at an impasse over who should be responsible for — and pay for — prosecuting people accused of misdemeanor cases of domestic violence.

City leaders had blamed the Shawnee County district attorney for handing off such cases to the city without warning. The district attorney, in turn, said he was forced to not prosecute any misdemeanors and to focus on felonies because the County Commission cut his budget. And county leaders accused the district attorney of using abused women as pawns to negotiate more money for his office.

After both sides dug in, the dispute came to a head Tuesday night.

By a vote of 7 to 3, the City Council repealed the local law that makes domestic violence a crime.

This is an interesting new front in our national attempt to recreate the Gilded Age. Activists have fought for decades to prioritize prosecuting domestic violence, but like outlawing child labor, food safety standards, and minimum wage laws, and environmental regulations, it looks like we should expect these laws to go away pretty soon.

Theoretically, this move is supposed to put the onus of prosecuting domestic violence in the lap of the state, but there’s no real evidence that it will do so.

At this point, it is very difficult to shock me. I expect every good thing this nation has created to be destroyed in the next 10-20 years. Yet I still managed to want to puke upon reading this. Sometimes, even I can be devastated anew.

Our Future Firefighters

[ 58 ] October 11, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Prisoners, of course!

A select group of inmates may be exchanging their prison jumpsuits for firefighting gear in Camden County.

The inmates-to-firefighters program is one of several money-saving options the Board of County Commissioners is looking into to stop residents’ fire insurance costs from more than doubling. [...] The inmate firefighter program would be the most cost-effective choice, saving the county more than $500,000 a year by some estimates. But that option is already controversial, drawing criticism from the firefighters who would have to work alongside – and supervise – the prisoners.

The Camden program would put two inmates in each of three existing firehouses, and they would respond to all emergencies – including residential – alongside traditional firefighters. The inmates would have no guard, but would be monitored by a surveillance system and by the traditional firefighters, who would undergo training to guard the inmates.

The inmates would not be paid for their work, but upon release they would be eligible to work as firefighters five years after their conviction dates instead of the normal 10.

Of course, the long-term goal here is to replace all highly paid workers with prisoners. It’s the ultimate solution to the labor problem. Forget cheap labor. Slave labor is absolutely the way to go. If they die in a fire, who cares! And when they get out of prison early for this, we can just arrest more people to keep the labor supply strong. Then we can give millionaires more tax breaks!

And the fact that the majority of these unpaid Georgia prisoners are black and are working for a white-dominated government has no meaning at all. Like with Troy Davis, there’s nothing to see here….

The End of the Liberal Arts at Public Universities

[ 73 ] October 11, 2011 | Erik Loomis

Allow me to join Paul and Scott in making this a day dedicated to higher education here at LGM.

Rick Scott opens the logical next front in the conservative war on the liberal arts:

Scott said Monday that he hopes to shift more funding to science, technology, engineering and math departments, the so-called “STEM” disciplines. The big losers: Programs like psychology and anthropology and potentially schools like New College in Sarasota that emphasize a liberal arts curriculum.

“If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” Scott said. “So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.”

“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

And in fact, the future of the anthropology department at Florida St. is in doubt, to the extent that it is no longer accepting applications from graduate students and possibly not allowing undergraduate majors as well, but I’m not sure about that point.

Of course, the real issue for Scott and other conservatives is that the liberal arts might teach people to think for themselves. Republicans know they are fighting a war on any part of American society that might create liberals. They have taken over the churches, the airwaves, and television news. There’s not much left–academia and Hollywood. Academics are easy to fight because we don’t fight back very effectively.

And the public believes that liberal arts majors are worthless. With the cost of education rising so rapidly, students and their parents are wary of the liberal arts majors because they want a direct return on their investment. The fact that there’s little evidence suggesting that liberal arts majors are permanently unemployed is besides the point.

We are probably moving toward a day where majors like history and sociology are mostly restricted to liberal arts schools, where the children of the wealthy can major in what they want, knowing that they will always be taken care of. Everyone else will be in what is essentially trade school.

I am by no means confident that tenure will exist when I come up for it in 6 years or that if I get tenure, the University of Rhode Island will have a history department for the rest of my working years. Rhode Island supports higher education much better than many states, but eliminating liberal arts departments is absolutely on the agenda of conservatives. And I don’t see much evidence that conservatives don’t eventually get what they want.

Or maybe I’m just too gosh darn pessimistic.

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