Family feud

Call me nuts, but usually, I go home for lunch so that I can prepare the meal and usually do a couple of chores while home. While eating, I typically turn on the TV, and during the lunch hours of 12-2, there are at least 2 viewings of Family Feud available. Am I the only one that loves to see how 100 people that are surveyed respond to occasionaly serious questions and primarily unimportant ones? Am I also the only one that tries to pit my answers against the answers of the teams?

Illiberal Education

I have been reading Illiberal Education by Dinesh D'Souza recently. It is an interesting book, especially when you spend a lot of time around a university, thinking about diversity, and conversing around the topic of the necessity of diversity in education. I would like to say I try to read folks who are moderate (not too left or right in thought patterns), but so far, D'Souza comes across on the right side (note, not necessarily the correct side). He identifies problems with current admissions policies and "diverse" attempts at curriculum formation, and seems to call upon the classical education of reading the great books to foster diversity within democracy. Reverse discrimination, especially against people of asian decent is particularly strong in places like UC Berkeley. He paints African American protests as primarily selfish and secondarily idealogical, which he sees as a problem, and I think I do too, although I want to finish the book before I start discerning where truth lies in his writing.

Illiberal Education will make liberals cringe with what seems like an accurate assessment of the problems of quotas, but he hasn't given a good solution yet, so the jury is sill out for me.

pax,
David

One more excerpt that resonated within me

As I was reading this, it resonated within me, and is another affirmation of my current direction...

I.I. p 100 - "What is common to all true master-pupil relationships is the awareness both share that thei relationship is literally pricelss and in very different ways a privilege for both....

...This kind of teaching is always a luxury for the teacher and a form of leisure (in Greek, "schole") for him and his pupil: an activity meaning for both, having no ulterior purpose."

I think this quote is a means and ends free method of education. Learning is valuable because learning is valuable. Not because of what it provides or the way it is done. Learning is good. The word schole is the word that translate, means leisure, but it is also the word we derive scholar from. How often do you think of scholarly work as leisure?

I am going to graduate school to hopefully recapture schole as my life.

From Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society

Reading Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society." Published in 1970, but speaks to the present. On page 74:

"In a basic sense, schools have ceased to be dependent on the ideology professed by any government or marke organization. Other basic institutions might differ from one country to another: family, party, church, or press. But everywhere the school system has the same structure, and everywhere its hidden curriculum has the same effect. Invariably, it shapes the consumer who values institutional commodoties above the nonprofessional ministration of a neighbor....

In view of this identity, it is illusory to claim that schools are, in any profoudn sense, dependent variables. This means that to hope for fundamental change in the school system as an effect of conventially conceived social or economic change is also an illusion MOreover, this illusion granst the school - the reproductive organ of a consumer society - almost unquestioned immunity"

If school is truly reproducing consumers (which I believe it is, and I see as unhealthy), is it safe to let schools receive financing from corporations? - see this link

Here is an interesting assignment from the Curry School of Education...

The separation of church and state exists, so how about the separation of school and business?

Freedom of speech and definition of voice

The link connected to the title above has started a conversation in my head about free speech and the existence and value of voice in America.

1. Americans are given the right to freedom of speech through the constitution. Simple enough. Most people hear about it regularly via the ACLU, and have their own definition. Sadly, I think advocates for the freedom of speech are pigeonholed as liberals who fight for the rights of adult store owners, racists, and propaganda makers.

2. Freedom of speech, however it is applied, is important for justice. The link to Stuart Buck's blog had a conversation over the use of eminent domain on privately owned property by other private companies via public office (most of American knows about the current cases). The conversation slowly moved to the possibility of freedom of speech being hurt by the potential of the land that people stand on to have a voice being figuratively taken out from underneath them.

3. What does it mean to have a voice? For the Christian - "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" James 1:27. The existence of a voice seems significant to this passage in the modern day. If we are to look after "widows and orphans" (who happened to be the least powerful people in the middle eastern culture) I think we need to seek to understand who the powerless in our world are. Are they still widows and orphans? In many ways yes. Do a little research to the effects of foster care on children, and you will find some astounding stuff (check out books by Dave Pelzer). Are the powerless the people that are under dictators in smaller countries? Are they the homeless, the elderly, the handicapped?

For the freedom of speech to be effective, I surmise that people do not just need to be able to speak, but need to be able to be heard. Some people do not want to be heard, but when injustice occurs (like I see with the recent use of eminent domain) people without money and good attorneys often have no voice. They spoke on may TV stations, but in the court systems, where it mattered, the voice of the poorer (poorer because these people were by no means poor) and much less powerful were easily drowned out by the public officials and lawyers of wealthy corporations.

Voice is still found in some places. There have been multiple cases where WalMart has sought to buy land to develop a supercenter. The people of the towns have come together and ardently proven that bringing a WalMart into town does not necessarily increase the number of quality jobs or standard of living in an area. If anything, they have proven that it reduces the standard of living more than anything. These people have found voice by banding together and raising valid arguments for the problems that the powerful corporation pose to their area. It appears then that from the examples of the denial of WalMart, one thing that gives a voice is a number of people combined with a body of facts about a the problem.

As the economy becomes the only factor that determines the "health" of a community, people with wealth need to "care for the orphan and the widow" by ensuring that the powerless are given a voice and a place to stand with that voice before the land is taken away. Power is a prime factor in giving a voice to groups of people, and hopefully, someday, economic situations will not be the determining factor of powers have and have nots.