Thursday, October 14, 2004
NCLB Magick?
I didn’t listen to the debate. I caught the game instead at a local bar, somehow believing that would be less stressful. Yeah, right.
What I’m hearing this morning, though, through the web and email and over coffee at the diner, is that the lying, smirking chimp-beast answered every question about wages and jobs with a reference to the NCLB. True?
If that was his strategery, he just lost.
NCLB is more hated than any recent education legislation I can remember. I used to be a teacher. A lot of my friends still are teachers. And I can’t think of one who likes this bill. One of them sent me this quote awhile back:
The ESEA [No Child Left Behind Act] is like a Russian novel. That's because it's long, it's complicated, and in the end, everybody gets killed. --Scott Howard, former superintendent, Perry, Ohio, public schools
Besides that, how in the everlovin’ blue-eyed world of nellyboo is testing children to death going to help create jobs or raise wages?
Perhaps it’s a classic case of Republican’t reasoning:
P1: If we test children until they bleed we can make sure they know the basics (unlike the preznit).
P2: If children know the basics, they will be able to get better jobs because everybody knows that’s how you get a good job—it just happens when you're smart and stuff.
P3: If the public schools close because they’re failing to pass all the tests, then the children can use tax money to go to private religious schools and that will make them all even smarter, because now they don’t have to be tested anymore; Jesus just makes them smarter.
C: Therefore, their parents will have higher paying jobs that will be created somehow because their children will have passed the test.
C2: And when the children grow up they’ll all have high-paying jobs, too.
C3: And everybody will have access to health care at a reasonable cost.
C4: And the third world won’t hate us anymore.
C5: And there’ll be flu shots for everybody.
C5: And Jesus will rapture all the good people.
It’s magical reasoning! Almost as if we don’t live in a world of diminishing resources and widening gaps between rich and poor people and rich and poor countries. Presto change-o! Abracadabra!
Get out the vote!
What I’m hearing this morning, though, through the web and email and over coffee at the diner, is that the lying, smirking chimp-beast answered every question about wages and jobs with a reference to the NCLB. True?
If that was his strategery, he just lost.
NCLB is more hated than any recent education legislation I can remember. I used to be a teacher. A lot of my friends still are teachers. And I can’t think of one who likes this bill. One of them sent me this quote awhile back:
The ESEA [No Child Left Behind Act] is like a Russian novel. That's because it's long, it's complicated, and in the end, everybody gets killed. --Scott Howard, former superintendent, Perry, Ohio, public schools
Besides that, how in the everlovin’ blue-eyed world of nellyboo is testing children to death going to help create jobs or raise wages?
Perhaps it’s a classic case of Republican’t reasoning:
P1: If we test children until they bleed we can make sure they know the basics (unlike the preznit).
P2: If children know the basics, they will be able to get better jobs because everybody knows that’s how you get a good job—it just happens when you're smart and stuff.
P3: If the public schools close because they’re failing to pass all the tests, then the children can use tax money to go to private religious schools and that will make them all even smarter, because now they don’t have to be tested anymore; Jesus just makes them smarter.
C: Therefore, their parents will have higher paying jobs that will be created somehow because their children will have passed the test.
C2: And when the children grow up they’ll all have high-paying jobs, too.
C3: And everybody will have access to health care at a reasonable cost.
C4: And the third world won’t hate us anymore.
C5: And there’ll be flu shots for everybody.
C5: And Jesus will rapture all the good people.
It’s magical reasoning! Almost as if we don’t live in a world of diminishing resources and widening gaps between rich and poor people and rich and poor countries. Presto change-o! Abracadabra!
Get out the vote!
