*************************************************

The 80's

****************************************************************************

We will now talk about the 80's.
We'll cover the period from The Newsletters
to 1990, when Our Graduate Student
went to Alaska and stayed for six years.
Chronologically, it goes like this,

sacramento city college
sac state (again)
univ of the pacific
subbing and Victory '88

OK, Tell Us About
sacramento city college
Our Graduate Student
bought a house, in 1980, in sacramento.
He didn't know it at the time,
but there was a community college
about a 15 minute walk away.

So, after writing The Newsletters,
he was unwelcome at the state university
and he was so furious
that he didn't want to be there anyway.
It's almost impossible
to settle your mind
into studying mundane coursework
in such an intense, hyped up environment.
Our Graduate Student
had already gone through that in 1969
when everybody was constantly
screaming and yelling all the time
at st peters college in jersey city.

So, he's dealing with unemployment
and partial employment
and one of the things he does
is he joins the army reserves.
He's thinkin' about the camaraderie,
the small weekend pay once a month,
and possibly the retirement.
But, largely, it was an emotional thing.
It was just like in 1973
when he joined the navy.
Back then, he was sooooooooooooo fed up
with the counter culture
that he joined the counter culture's
hated and mocked and scorned military
in protest.
He voted with his feet.
"Fuck YOU, loathesome counter culture !"
he said,
"Hello Miltary ! Let's Be Friends !"
So, Our Graduate Student
felt so abused and betrayed
by the shallow university
that he decided to "come home" again
to the military
and give the military another try.
Problem is, he was outgrowing the military.
The military is great for kids,
for young boys on the cusp of manhood,
in need of structure and in need of
a team, a family, a group to belong to.
Our Graduate Student was in his early thirties now,
and had more education than
all the officers in the company.
But Our Graduate Student had the rank of sergeant.
One day he struck a conversation
with his lieutenant,
asking which magazines he preferred to read
to keep up on things.
The young lieutenant didn't even know
what "left" and "right" meant in politics
and didn't care, either.
"LEFT ! LEFT ! LEFT RIGHT LEFT !"
Certainly, the lieutenant
was familiar with the vocabulary.
You would think he would want to know
some of the shades of meaning,
some of the nuances of "left" and "right".

You Would Think.
Officers Are Supposed To Be Educated.
They Have To Have College Degrees.
Oh Please !
Don't make me sick.
college degrees are a joke !
But, yes, you would expect an officer
to know the diffence between
left and right in politics.
The right wing is pro-military.
The left wing hates the military.
It's that simple and basic.
But the military doesn't really want
any of its member to know anything
except military procedures and obedience.
That's what keeps the machine working.
Just smart enough to do your job.
And no smarter.
Thinking is not good for you career
in the military,
or in any bureaucracy.

Like Education ?
BINGO !
That's right.
Like education, too
where the fashion is
diversity in all things,
except diversity in ideas.

Yes, How Absurd !
Because Diversity In Ideas
Is EXACTLY The Function Of The University !
Their Whole Purpose
Is To Present And Discuss
A Vast Range Of Quality Ideas.
That's Not The Military's Job.
The Military's Job Is To Get Thing Done,
When Called Upon,
Not To Have Stimulating Debates.
That's Right.
The universities' very purpose
is to present a great range of great ideas
for students to discuss and explore.
The military is not being hypocritical
when they say,
"There's three ways to do things,
The Right Way,
The Wrong Way,
and OUR WAY !"
They're being upfront and straight about it.
They're admitting that their way
almost certainly isn't the best way,
but it's the way they do things,
and what's most important
is that all its members
go along and do things their way.
That's what makes it possible
for them to get things done.
The universities, on the other hand,
don't HAVE TO get anything done at all
except for the enlightenment of their students' minds.
That's done by presenting, encouraging,
and supporting a wide diversity of good ideas,
and even talking about bad ideas as well.
That's the only "OUR WAY"
that a university should have.
The "OUR WAY" of the university
should be a policy of open and free
and spirited and enlightening discussion
about a wide range of ideas.
But the universities are hypocritical.
THEY have a politically correct doctrine.
THEY have an "OUR WAY" when it comes to ideas
and even WORDS that are acceptable.
Deviation from their politically correct doctrine
is punished.
THEY'RE FASCISTS.
The military is SUPPOSED TO BE fascist in nature.
The military is not being hypocritical when they say,
"This is the way it is and that's that. period.
That's just the way we do things here."
The university IS being hypocritical
when they enact their FASCIST model.
"Oh, we're such wonderful, enlightened liberals,"
they say (only NOW they call themselves PROGRESSIVES,
but it means the same shitty thing).
"We're such wonderful, enlightened,
advanced, and superior liberals."
You see, it's style over substance.
It's feel-good MYTHOLOGY.
They THINK they're in the tradition
of Voltaire and the Enlightenment.
That makes them feel good about themselves
as superior intellectuals.
Believing that they're superior,
they then conclude
that anyone who doesn't agree with them
is Stooooooooooooopit.
So they think that it's ok for them
to force their politically correct opinions
and behaviors on everyone
because they figure
everyone else is stupid
and they know better
so it's ok to ignore everybody
and insist on their own way
all the time, in every way.

You Mean,
Just Like Religious Fanatics ?
Bingo Again !
The liberal fascists
(or now, PROGRESSIVE FASCISTS)
are just like religious fanatics.

You know,
just because liberals
are clearly superior intellectually
to flat-earth, bible fundamentalists
doesn't mean
that they are intellectually superior
to thoughtful educated conservatives
or other educated thinkers
who disagree with them.
But, in the shallow, simple-minded fashion
of the liberals,
ANYONE who doesn't agree with them
is just plain stupid,
a "flat-earther."

So, anyway,
that's why Our Graduate Student
is attracted to join the military again.
It's more of an emotional thing.
He hates the university liberal fascists.
The university liberal fascists hate him.
So he joins the military again,
lookin' for comraderie, friendship.
But he finds them to be too dumb
and uneducated -
young bully boys lookin' to pick fights,
stupid old lifers -
nobody to talk to, really.

But, it seems like a pattern
in Our Young Graduate Student's life
to go from left to right to left to right
in his search
for a community of like-minded friends.
Problem is,
he's a rare and special bird
and he won't find like-minded friends
in either of those two groups
of dimwits.

You Mean,
Like Dr. Ravitch ?
Our Graduate Student
Is A Rare And Special Bird
Like Dr. Ravitch
Who Will Never Really Find A Home
With Either The Liberals Or The Conservatives
Because They're Doctrinaire Dimwits
And She's A Truth-Loving Scholar ?
BINGO Again !
That's right.
Dr. Ravitch is FAR superior intellectually
to both the conservatives AND the liberals.
Dr. Ravitch was SCATHINGLY critical
of the liberal educators
and even mockingly satirical
of their incredible intellectual shallowness.
In "Left Back," she mocked
the national council of teachers of english.
And in "The Language Police,"
she ridiculed both
conservative AND liberal censorship.
In a radio interview shortly after its publication,
she commented,
"You have to ridicule them
to get them to change."
Of course, liberal censorship is FAR worse,
because conservatives don't PRETEND to be open-minded.
Liberals do PRETEND to be open-minded,
so it's much more evil that they are FASCISTS.
They're an EVIL EMPIRE.
That's what the liberals are.
They're an EVIL EMPIRE.

But, Yes, Our Graduate Student
does relate to Dr. Ravitch's
defection from the conservatives.
Let me explain.
It's like this.
Thesis/Antithesis/NewAndBetterThesis.

You see, when you're part of a group,
you know them from the inside.
You know EXACTLY what they're made of.
Dr. Ravitch studied Eduation History at Columbia.
Hardly a bastion of conservative thought.
It's as liberal as it gets, up there.
She's a lover of public education,
a scholar at NYU right there in liberal Greenwich Village,
a scholar with The Brookings Institute,
She knew those motherfuckers from the inside,
and she couldn't help but be appalled
by the shit they farted out of their mouths.
Dedicated to scholarship and the truth,
she told it like it is.
Read in "The Troubled Crusade" the chapter
"From Berkeley To Kent State."
Read "Left Back."
Read "The Language Police."

The liberals gave her a chill
because she didn't spout
the required line of liberal propaganda
like they all did
and like she was expected to do.

The conservatives warmed up to her
because she was telling the truth
about the crazy, shallow
liberal fascists is education.

So, Then,
She Found A Home With The Conservatives.
Wonderful. Wonderful !
It's The Best Of All Possible Worlds.
The BEST Of All Possible Worlds !
I'm Delighted !
I'm Sooooooo Happy For Her !
She's Found A Home With The Conservatives !
Ah ! Those Wonderful Conservative People !
The Joy Of Finding A Home
With Those Wonderful Conservative People !
I'm Just Beside Myself With...
S H U T     U P.

What ?
You're acting like a liberal !
Stop it !

Yes, of course,
the conservatives embraced her.
You see, the conservatives
are just oozing with contempt for liberals,
and it's well-deserved contempt.
Read about "Mathematically Correct"
in "Left Back."
Read about how The Senate condemned
the anti-American, leftist history standards
by 99 to 1,
only because that dissenting one vote
didn't think the condemnation
was severe enough in its wording.

The conservatives saw Dr. Ravitch
as a rare gem.
A Columbia, NYU, and Brookings Institute Scholar
who made minced meat
of the flaky, shallow, liberal education nonsense.
They embraced her and invited her into their home.
She met all the big shots.
President Bush appointed her
Assistant Secretary of Education.
She became friends with Lynne Cheney,
Vice President Cheney's wife,
or so I conclude
from reading between the lines.

"I was swept along by my immersion
in the upper reaches
of the first Bush presidency."
(The Death and Life of The Great American School System,
(DLGAS) by Diane Ravitch (2010), p. 127)

So, she's a long-time scholarly critic
of the shallow, FAKE liberal and radical fascists
who dominated education,
and so she's embraced by the conservatives.

Like Our Graduate Student
Finding Camraderie In The Military ?
Yes, like that.
But guess what happened ?

She Got To Know THOSE Motherfuckers
From The Inside, Too.
She Became Disillusioned
And Had An Intellectual Crisis.
BINGO, Again !
How did you know that?

Well, Dr. Ravitch Told Us, Herself,
Right Up Front On Page 1 (DLGAS)
That She Was Having
An Intellectual Crisis.
The Rest Is Just Speculation.
That's right.
It's just speculation.
Fair comment, as they say.
We're just commiseratin' with Dr. Ravitch.
After all, Our Graduate Student's
been through that many times.
Go to the liberals. Mutual rejection eventually.
Go to the conservatives. Mutual rejection eventually.
Go back to the liberals. Mutual rejection eventually.
Go back to the conservatives. Mutual rejection eventually.
So, we're just wonderin' and speculatin'
if that's what Dr. Ravitch is experiencing.

Give Us An Illustration.
All right.

She seemed to be enthralled with the conservatives
("I was swept along by my immersion
in the upper reaches
of the first Bush presidency")
and extremely, extremely critical of the liberal
and radical fascists in education in 2000.

In 2000, in "Left Back"
Dr. Ravitch seems to be PRAISING Lynn Cheney,
Vice President Cheney's wife,
for blasting the politically biased History Standards
and initiating a heated debate
about those standards
throughout media, education, and politics,
which resulted in their
universal and well-deserved condemnation.

But in 2010, in "Death and Life..." (DLGAS),
Dr. Ravitch seems to be BLAMING Lynn Cheney
for the unfortunate demise of the history standards.
"The efforts to establish voluntary national standards
fell apart in the fall of 1994,
when Lynne V. Cheney attacked
the not-yet-released history standards
for their political bias." (p. 17)
"After Cheney raised a ruckus about the history standards,
elected officials in Washington
wanted nothing to do with them.' (P. 18)
"I thought they could be fixed by editing." (P. 18)
Dr. Ravitch gave Chapter Two of DLGAS this title,
Hijacked! How the Standards
Movement Turned Into the
Testing Movement
On page 29 she summarizes,
"the standards movement collapsed as a result
of the debacle of the national history standards"
And Dr. Ravitch concludes on page 30,
"So, the great hijacking occurred in the mid-1990's
when the standards movement fell apart."

So then, Lynne Cheney Hijacked the Standards Movement!
And her husband, Dick Cheney, the Vice President
and President George W. Bush and Captain Ahab
were the first modern terrorists!
Education Hijackers and Terrorists these conservatives!

"The controversy quickly became a debate
about the role of minority groups and women
in American history, which was placed
in opposition to the role of great white men. (DLGAS p. 17)

Diane's new BFF (Best Female Friend),
now that she's dumped that pesky ole Lynne Cheney
is louise cowan.
Here, let us listen to Dr. Ravitch GUSH,
GUSH with enthusiasm
as louise cowan bashes white men,
distorting history as she depicts
Captain Ahab of "Moby Dick"
as "the first modern terrorist."

Here, in her edweek blog last month, in June, 2010,
Dr. Ravitch enthuses,
"I was preceded by Dr. Louise Cowan,
the brilliant literary scholar...
spoke about rereading "Moby Dick",
and she had the audience enthralled
with her depiction of Captain Ahab
as the first modern terrorist,
determined to sacrifice everyone's life,
including his own,
in pursuit of vengeance.
By the time she was done,
this grand woman of 90-plus years
had inspired many of her listeners
to re-read that wonderful classic novel
with new eyes and an open mind."

An open mind ?
How about a leftist/radical biased
white-man hating mind ?
Who is cowan talking about ?
Captain Ahab ?
Or President George Bush and Vice President Cheney ?

It was an interesting few weeks
for Dr. Ravitch in June.
"On June 12, I was the keynote speaker at the
Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow-PUSH Coalition
annual conference in Chicago...
"Two days later I went to the white house...
"Then on June 15, I was guest of honor
at a buffet dinner hosted by
a member of Congress in her home. (I'm guessin' Pelosi)
About 30 members of Congress attended,
including key members of the
House Education and Labor Committee
and the administration."

It appears that perhaps Dr. Ravitch
is being swept along by immersion
in the upper reaches
of the Obama presidency.

"I was swept along by my immersion
in the upper reaches
of the first Bush presidency" (DLGAS, p. 127)

And, referring to louise cowan
and her "Institute of Humanities and Culture"
and Capain Ahab the first modern terrorist and all,
Dr. Ravitch enthuses, "I left...the Institute...
as a newly appointed fellow of this organization."
Dr. Ravitch, isn't there a bit of "presentism"
in cowan's revisionist, anti-white man
interpretation of "Moby Dick" ?
I mean, why bother reading it anyway ?
It was just written by a dead white man.
And it's just about an imaginary white man
who's dead now, too.
Granted, it was READ and discussed
by a "brilliant", "grand" white woman
of 90-plus years
"who had inspired many of her listeners."
Oh, how telling !
Reminds me of Tok, Alaska.
I'll talk about THAT later.
You know, the eskimos and Japanese kill whales
these days,
but not Bush and Cheney.

I mean, Our Graduate Student
would like to see Dr. Ravitch
appointed Secretary of Education
instead of that token pretty-boy white guy Obama chose.
I mean, and this is just my TAKE on it, you understand,
that pretty-boy white guy
is just gonna make jr. high school girls
enthusiastic about education, that's all.
And he's got too much competition
from Disney Radio and Justin Bieber.
I mean they're just THAT good !

Put the country's best education scholar
into that position,
and that's Dr. Ravitch.
But, first, Dr. Ravitch,
you got to collect yourself
and promise to return to your Centrist roots.

Remember, Dr. Ravitch,
"The Powerful Middle Ground" (Left Back, p. 450)
"Throughout the curriculum wars of the 1990's,
the message was clear:
both extremes were wrong.

Tell Us See How Dr. Ravitch Went From
Praising Lynn Cheney To
Blaming Lynn Cheney
In "Left Back," pp. 433-437,
Dr. Ravitch is nothing less than
brilliant, grand, and inspiring.
The history standards
were an insulting liberal embarassment,
and Dr. Ravitch gave Lynne V. Cheney
the credit for initiating the debate
that revealed the outrage.

"Two weeks before their official release
in the fall of 1994, Lynne V. Cheney,
the former chairman of the
National Endowment for the Humanities,
blasted them as politically biased...

"Cheney attacked the standards for their negativism
toward the United States and the West in general.
She pointed out that the American history standards
mentioned Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism
nineteen times, the Ku Klux Klan seventeen times,
and Harriet Tubman six times, but omitted Paul Revere,
Robert E. Lee, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell,
and the Wright brothers.
Cheney's article set off a heated debate...

"Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion
about the history standards...

"Criticism of the standards, however, was relentless,
and it came not just from conservative firebrands...

"'Time' noted that the document was...'guilty of...
disproportionate revisionism.'
Columnist Charles Krauthammer
complained that the standards
were characterized not only by
"ethnic cheerleading
and the denigration of American achievements"
but by "the denigration of learning itself...

"In January 1995, as the public controversy raged,
the U.S. Senate passed a resolution
condemning the history standards
by a vote of 99 to 1.
The lone dissenter,
a senator from Louisiana,
wanted an even stronger condemnation.
Albert Shanker endorsed the Senate vote.

"Secretary of Education Richard Riley
disowned the national history standards...

"A number of prominent historians
disagreed sharply
with the standards...
the standards misled students
by concentrating on social issues
and neglecting the nature of power in history...
the standards encouraged an attitude of
self-righteousness and cynicism among students
by judging events solely
from the point of view of the present.
This made it difficult for them to appreciate
'how hard our predecessors fought'
for the freedoms and rights
that were now taken for granted."
The way whalers dangerously hunted whales
to feed the white women waiting safely at home
reading novels, even those who were
brilliant, grand, inspiring, and 90-plus.

"Walter A. McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania
complained that the American history standards
had wrongly represented the nation's history
as a struggle of minorities and women
against white males."
White males like Bush and Cheney.
"He summarized the standards sarcastically:
'If Europeans braved the unknown to discover a new world,
it was to kill and oppress.
If colonists carved a new nation out of the woods,
it was to displace Native Americans
and impose private property.
If the Founding Fathers...invoked human rights,
it was to deny them to others.
If businessmen built the most prosperous nation in history,
it was to rape the environment
and keep workers in misery.'
McDougall concluded that the standards accurately reflected
what the historical profession wanted children to learn:
'Indeed, they reflect what our children are already
taught in schools across the country,
and are sure to influence future authors of textbooks as well.'

The only embarassment to liberal academics, he asserted,
was that their 'quiet conquest of America's schoolrooms'
had been revealed by the controversy."

"In the American history standards,
twentieth century Democratic presidents
were described positively,
while Republican presidents
were described negatively."

The three great terrorists of the modern world
are Captain Ahab,
President Bush, and
Vice President Cheney.
"Today, The Great White Whale !
Tomorrow, The Muslim World "

Oh My.
We're Back To Politics.
What's This All About?
Is Our Graduate Student Just Mad
Because Dr. Ravitch Is Hangin' Out
With A New Bunch Of Friends ?
Because she's not swept along
by immersion in the highest reaches
of the Bush presidency,
but is being swept along
by immersion in the highest reaches
of the Obama presidency ?
No. That's not it.
Our Graduate Student Voted For Obama.
Our Graduate Student,
now a white-haired senior citizen,
a Navy veteran who served on an aircraft carrier,
"The Enterprise," in fact, just like McCain,
a longtime Neocon,
voted for Obama, not for McCain.
Our Graduate Student
didn't want to see his next president
on an obsessive quest "to the ends of the earth"
searching for the unfindable osama bin laden,
didn't want to see an uneducated,
superstitious Vice President
a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
He likes Obama.
He's the kinda black guy
that lotsa whites wish most blacks were like.
Educated. thoughtful. civilized.
Liked the way Obama handled that
Law Review thing at Harvard.
Clever. Worked with the white conservatives.
It's just that...

Well ?
It's just that...well...

I'm Listening...Go Ahead...
It's like this see...
The number one, primary, fundamental
BASIC POSTULATE
of Our Graduate Student's
entire outlook on the universe
is that...

Yes ?...Yes ?
Is that
BOTH
Liberals AND Conservatives
are BOTH
JUST AS BAD AS CAN BE !

Dr. Ravitch has to
just be herself !
Sure, them conservative people
are the most horrible people in the world !
But so are them damn liberals !

I mean, that whole notion
of testing basic skills
all the time.
Sure, it's dumbin' down education.
Dr. Ravitch is absolutely right about that !
Hell, forget the business model !
Them damn conservatives'll run education
like the military !
EVERY school will be like endless boot camp.
BASICS, BASICS, BASICS !

But, why NOT test everything ?!
So what if it's a lot of work !?
It'll be work well-directed.
It all about the curriculum,
like Dr. Ravitch says.
Make up a rich curriculum
and have the teachers and students dive in
and get lost in it and enjoy it.
Then, after they've studied
whatever their interests
and their subject-oriented, highly-educated,
subject-loving teacher take them,
they report what they've studied,
and they take custom selected tests.
Instead of teaching to the test,
they'd be testing to the teaching.

The History curriculum could be vast indeed,
100,000 times more vast
than any high school class could cover.
But, 100,000 tests could be prepared.
Under a subject-loving teacher's guidence,
they explore away,
keeping it interesting, fascinating, exciting.
Wherever their studies take them,
they then report,
"THIS is what we studied.
Send us the appropriate tests."
That way, the subject-loving teacher
and the students
are in control of the curriculum.
Test taking can be a way of showing off,
the way it should be.

A way to stop all kinds of cheating,
including institutional cheating,
would be to have up to 30 different tests or more
for each classroom,
so that no two students
would be taking the same test.
Easy to do with modern electronic word processing.

Dr. Ravitch is absolutely right
that obsessing on testing for basic skills
will result in nothing but
students able to pass tests of basic skills.

And, she's absolutely right
that it's all about the curriculum,
WHAT should be taught.
We've got to stop thinking of schools
as being buildings,
as Albert Shanker says (DLGAS, p. 123).
The world is flat now.
Technology's changed everything.
Let's face it,
compared to a great documentary
on PBS or The Discovery Channel
or The Learning Channel or Biography
or something like that,
most teachers, at any level, are boring.
These professionally prepared documentaries
are prepared by TEAMS of the VERY BEST scholars,
with a professional support staff
of Hollywood quality production people.
Who needs schools !?
Who needs classrooms and classroom teachers !?
Most of them are just overpaid babysitters, anyway.
And they don't even do a good job at that.
I was teaching one time
as a school that was on strike,
and you know what movie the vice principal
showed the kids in the gym that day ?
Beetlejuice !
Beetle fuckin' juice !
Beetlejuice !
What a bunch of fucking crap !
I wouldn't let my DOG watch that stupid fuckin' movie.
It'd dumb her down too much !

I'm gettin tired, I guess.

Here it is.

Curriculum in the hands of The Discovery Channel
kind of thing.
More teams of experts.
Kids learn most of what they know from the media, anyway.
We ALL do.
Might as well channel it and have the best experts
prepare excellent educational programming
and let THAT be the classroom and the curriculum.

Stop referrin to traditional public schools.
It's loaded word choice.
There's nothing "traditional" about many public schools.
Kids would be better off hangin' out at a cesspool
or a pool hall than many of these "traditional" public schools.

Mrs. Ratliff would adapt and work for a charter school
or a voucher school.

If a public school closes down
and is replaced by a charter or voucher school,
what difference does it make ?

If it's the beloved traditional building we cherish,
then the charter or voucher school that has the most kids
could move into the beautiful, artistic,
traditional art deco or whatever building.

Stop obsessing about the bottom performing 20%.
The rest of the kids are important too.
And obsessing on keeping those
bottom performing, unmotivated kids
in the classroom with the motivated kids
is unfair to the motivated kids.

Keeping the bottom performing 20% in the regular classroom
dumbs down the class,
and many of them are behavior problems,
taking up 90% of the teacher's time and energy.

Keeping the bottom performing 20%
in their own schools and classes
with special "boot camp" training
would be better for them, as well.
They could learn and practice self-control
and civil behavior.

Let's break 'til tomorrow.

OK
Very Easily.