"...an utterly corrupt new religion called environmentalism..."
If the history of this planet's climate over millions of years is any guide, we are about to enter a new ice age.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants to see the United States become a Muslim country.
Escape From Gangsta Island: The Progressive Decline of an Alternative School, Part 2
By Bernard Chapin (10/05/04)
Several sources have thoroughly documented the deficiencies present in today’s teachers[10] and also in the teacher unions[11] which represent them, but few address the psychology of the mediocre nobility that oversees the empire. This book showcases a tandem of administrators whose sole goal is to protect their jobs regardless of the harm they inflicted upon students or staff. While such a blatant refusal to act in the interests of others is undoubtedly abnormal, the fact is that, due to the lack of overseeing legal authorities, there is practically no one for whom insiders can appeal when administrators chose to deny that a Chernobyl has transpired on their watch. In the case of school, we were not directly subject to the purview of a school board[e] as our building was monitored by a gaggle of superintendents who had their own school boards with which to contend. It was highly unlikely that any of the parents on their boards had students at the Northlands Center so there would be no reason why any members would take even a casual interest in the specifics of what went on at our location. Yet, even in the case of school boards that represent non-alternative schools, it is sometimes difficult for them to know exactly what is going on behind closed doors. They rely on information that is relayed to them via the administrators who are seated before them during school board meetings, and if they wish to cover something up it is not very hard for them to do so.
In this story, what is unswervingly transferable to the rest of the educational world is the unaccountability of our managers and leaders. As admittedly absurd as the character of Principal Chin is, what should most appall the average reader is that no one above her seeks to censure or reprimand her for any of the outrageous acts she commits. Her superiors made excuses for her at every opportunity and minimized the severity of the vendettas she directed towards staff. Nearly any person off the street could easily point out that running a couple of motor vehicles in an enclosed gymnasium in the presence of 250 children is a feat of criminal negligence (at the very least) and that Chin’s choosing to bring an assault rifle to school as a present for another administrator was “a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Yet, our magnates could not be bothered to supervise an individual who’s history would enrich many a trial lawyer. In their minds, I suppose the fact that the district has its own legal protections and insurance in place dissuaded them from having to take a personal interest in the unbalanced behaviors of their protégé. Precious few individuals that I’ve met have ever worried about being sued personally.
In the chapter, “Denial as Religion,” we witness the supremos above Chin possessing a plethora of facts and testimony at their fingertips regarding her failures but that they consciously choose to disregard it in its entirety. Why would such highly educated adults purposely evade the truth? I would suggest three reasons. First, if you deny that a problem exists then, by definition, there is absolutely no need to address it because there is nothing for you to address. A second factor is plain and simple human greed. Our directors made over 100 grand every year and were as fat and happy as they possibly could be so the last thing they would do is risk throwing it all away by uncovering the snake that they had accidentally deposited in the garden they were supposed to be magical solutions–i.e. voting for my candidate will not solve the problems of public education. I know of no single partisan answer to the drama that will soon be laid out before you. This tale is true and while there are lessons to be learned those lessons do not include always voting for the Republican Party (although I would appreciate it if you did).
Earlier I mentioned the “prevailing sentiment” in education, and what I was referring to there is the reality that most of the educators I have known tend to associate themselves with the Democratic Party and would regard themselves as being “liberals.”[g] At one time I was no different from they. It was not until 2000 that I finally formally joined the side I was representing in spirit. Before then I had voted for Democratic candidates in every election since I was first eligible to vote in 1988. I did so because my mother and father were Democrats and because, at an early age, it was explained to me that Democrats wanted to help the poor while Republicans only wanted to help the rich. This was something I learned from my father who probably first heard it from his hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That such a grotesque, fallacious view could remain entrenched in my mind for so many years is absolutely related to my never taking the time to listen to what the opposition was saying. Had I ever done so, I would have probably joined the GOP many years earlier.
I imagine that many of my fellow educators derived their allegiances in much the same fashion I did as most of the people I’ve known professionally have been only mildly interested in politics. They shop, they live, they date, they marry, they have children, and they plan for their retirements. Teachers usually reek of moderation and domesticity. If the reader has heard stories of brigades of Trotsky’s running rampant through our the public schools, it will disappoint them to discover that I in no way can verify this rumor. Among the scores of Democrats I have known, no more than one or two were what I’d call radical leftists. In all likelihood, the majority were raised in Democratic homes and, as adults, find themselves members of a union that, in no uncertain terms, supports the party of their childhood over the one found on the right.[h] Every two or four years, they do as they have always done, and vote for the candidates that have [D] after their names. I believe they give the whole matter little thought. Unfortunately, the biggest disadvantage of this casual political affiliation is the group think that pervades regarding the other side. Political labels and identification, rather than sound argumentation, is often used to battle one’s opponents . Once, while I was teaching a graduate class called “Theories of Learning,” a student announced, in reference to another student’s comment about Charter Schools, that there was “only one Republican in the room [the speaker] so what else you could expect from her.”[i] This was followed by laughter from her classmates and the other student fell silent. It seemed that merely denouncing her peer as a Republican was sufficient to discount her opinions altogether.
On another occasion, during an adolescent development class, I heard a student remark on a reading I passed out. He didn’t even leaf through it after saying it was “from Hoover Institute.” I asked him what that he meant. He said that Hoover was a conservative think tank. No additional analysis was added as follow up. To him, labeling it conservative was reason enough to ignore it. Since he had a different ideological viewpoint he assumed that every word in the document was a lie. I asked him if that meant that we should ever read things we did not agree with and he did not answer me.[j]
In my opinion, it is counter-productive, and counter-intuitive, to hold that there is no worth in inspecting your opponent’s ideas. Many people who disagree with me still have a myriad of things to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. I have profited by opening my mind to the writings of certain leftists like Christopher Hitchens and Michael Walzer. Knowing their positions has helped me prune and strengthen my own or as Hitchens stated more authoritatively,
“It is very seldom, as he [Karl Popper] noticed, that in debate any one of two evenly matched antagonists will succeed in actually convincing or ‘converting’ the other. But it is equally seldom that in a properly conducted argument either antagonist will end up holding exactly the same position as that which he began. Concessions, refinements and adjustments will occur, and each initial position will have undergone modification even if it remains ostensibly the ‘same.’”[12]
I have found that numerous people in education are cognizant of their own political views but are ignorantly blissful as to what others believe. Without knowing what is thought on the other side of the hill, it is all too easy to paint others as extremists or caricatures. I recall being in a Counselors’ meeting in December of 2000 and hearing a social worker exclaim, “I sure hope Al Gore wins because if he doesn’t, the schools are in big trouble.” I asked her why she thought so and she said that George Bush was going to defund education. Ironically, between the time he took office and February of 2004, President Bush has increased federal education outlays to the tune of $533 billion.[13] Indeed, Bush seems to allocate vast amounts of money to any federal program that winks or begs in his direction, but many of my peers are unaware of his big government tendencies because they don’t read about the specifics.
Unfortunately, sometimes the political ideas of teachers find their way into the classroom. My friend Ari loves to tell the story about the time, while walking down the hallway where he works (Southern High School), that he overheard a teacher inform his class that “Democrats are for the little guy whereas Republicans support the rich.” It was the exact same advice that my father gave to me nearly thirty years ago, but, unlike my father, the teacher had an obligation to keep his biases to himself. Ari, of course, was tactful enough to not interrupt the teacher’s class to rebut him, but did try to engage him in a dialogue at a later date.
With this as our social backdrop, I think that the reader and narrator should keep our own biases to ourselves for the remainder of this book. I propose that we temporarily forget our ideologically differences, and try to learn from the decline of an alternative school that could have thrived had its leaders not been permitted to construct a cult of denial and irresponsibility around them which shielded them from criticism but allowed an entire building to fall into disrepute.
Read part 1 here
[10] An example of one such work criticizing teachers is Martin Gross’s “The Conspiracy of Ignorance” (1999).
[11] Peter Brimelow’s “The Worm in the Apple” (2003) is the bane of the teacher’s unions but is a very detailed and thorough work.
[12] Hitchens, Christopher. Letters to a Young Contrarian. 2001. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books. p.29.
[13] http://www.cato.org/research/articles/gryphon-040211.html
[e] In the second to last chapter our union representatives valiantly attempted to publicize the goings on in our building through attending one of our district’s board meeting and even contacting a reporter from "The Chicago Sun-Times."
[f] Numerous specific suggestions are made in my “Solutions” chapter but these solutions range from being minute to vast. I have no omnipotent magic wand that will solve all our problems and, thus, have no central philosophy upon which to manipulate the action of this text.
[g] This is not the place to discuss whether the use of the term “liberal” is appropriate for those who espouse leftward views but, anyway, I would argue their self-description is inaccurate. People like myself are in fact the liberals, albeit classical liberals.
[h] I became acutely aware of this in October of 2000 when the NEA sent me voting suggestions under the heading “The Pro-Education ticket.” Only Democratic candidates were mentioned. In fact, between 1996 and 2000, 95 percent of all teacher union political contributions benefited the Democratic Party.
http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/archive/200210/NAT20021002a.html
[i] She was wrong. There were two Republicans in that room.
[j] I should note here that I often go out of my way to distribute articles in class from liberal sources such as "The New York Times." On one occasion, my attempts at diversity hilariously led to my copying an article that I had not read carefully before class. The author suspiciously named Antonio Gramsci as an authority for most of his positions. I quickly moved on to the next source.
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