Undernews For June 16, 2009

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16 June 2009

SHOP TALK

The Progressive Review has completed its move to its new headquarters in Freeport, Maine, where your editor has ties going back over 60 years. As part of our belief in what has been described as the need to have a place from which to view the world, we will be providing a local Maine edition - called the Coastal Packet - similar to what we did in DC with DC City Desk. You can find the initial postings here. Click here for the RSS feed. You can also get email updates by writing us.

BRITISH REPORT BLASTS CORPORATIZED EDUCATION

Daily Mail, UK - Schools using the 'Orwellian language of performance management' are undermining teenagers' education by turning them into 'customers' rather than students, a landmark report says.

Teachers who are forced to use phrases such as 'performance indicator' and 'curriculum delivery' lack enthusiasm for the job, the six-year investigation found.

The Oxford-based Nuffield Review, the most comprehensive study of secondary education in 50 years, said that 'the words we use shape our thinking'.

It notes: 'As the language of performance and management has advanced, so we have proportionately lost a language of education which recognizes the intrinsic value of pursuing certain sorts of question . . . of seeking understanding [and] of exploring through literature and the arts what it means to be human.'

Teachers are inundated with the language of measurable 'inputs' and 'outputs', 'performance indicators' and 'audits', 'targets', 'customers', 'deliverers', 'efficiency gains' and 'bottom lines', the report continues.

In a damning indictment, the report said that a culture of hitting targets, where 'cuts in resources are euphemistically called 'efficiency gains', has led to 'the consumer or client' replacing 'the learner'.

Among the jargon were such baffling phrases as 'performativity' (the emphasis that government monitoring has on achieving targets) and 'level descriptor' (the outcomes that a learner should reach).

'Dialogic teaching' (an emphasis on speaking and listening between teachers and pupils) and 'articulated progression' (allowing pupils options for their next step in the qualification system) were also singled out in the report for censure. . .

The report also said that hundreds of thousands of youngsters better suited to practical work leave with poor qualifications because their skills go unrecognized.

Woodwork, metalwork and home economics have all but disappeared while geography field-work and science experiments are in decline.

Instead, a culture of testing has brought about a narrow focus on written exams at GCSE and A-level. This has consigned a generation of pupils to an 'impoverished' education. . .

OBAMA: BAILING OUT BANKERS INSTEAD OF BANKS

Joseph Stiglitz, Guardian UK - It has long been recognised that those America's banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason that the performance of several of them has been so dismal. . . Normally, when a bank fails, the government engineers a financial restructuring; if it has to put in money, it, of course, gains a stake in the future. Officials know that if they wait too long, zombie or near zombie banks - with little or no net worth, but treated as if they were viable institutions - are likely to "gamble on resurrection". If they take big bets and win, they walk away with the proceeds; if they fail, the government picks up the tab.

This is not just theory; it is a lesson we learned, at great expense, during the s crisis of the 1980s. . . In a financial restructuring, shareholders typically get wiped out, and bondholders become the new shareholders. Sometimes the government must provide additional funds; sometimes it looks for a new investor to take over the failed bank.

The Obama administration has, however, introduced a new concept: too big to be financially restructured. The administration argues that all hell would break loose if we tried to play by the usual rules with these big banks. Markets would panic. So, we not only can't touch the bondholders, we also can't even touch the shareholders - even if most of the shares' existing value merely reflects a bet on a government bailout. . .

I think the Obama administration has succumbed to political pressure and scaremongering by the big banks. As a result, the administration has confused bailing out the bankers and their shareholders with bailing out the banks.

Restructuring gives banks a chance for a new start: new potential investors (whether in equity or debt instruments) will have more confidence, other banks will be more willing to lend to them and they will be more willing to lend to others. The bondholders will gain from an orderly restructuring, and if the value of the assets is truly greater than the market (and outside analysts) believe, they will eventually reap the gains.

But what is clear is that the Obama strategy's current and future costs are very high - and so far, it has not achieved its limited objective of restarting lending. The taxpayer has had to pony up billions, and has provided billions more in guarantees - bills that are likely to come due in the future.

Rewriting the rules of the market economy -in a way that has benefited those that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy - is worse than financially costly. Most Americans view it as grossly unjust, especially after they saw the banks divert the billions intended to enable them to revive lending to payments of outsized bonuses and dividends. Tearing up the social contract is something that should not be done lightly.

But this new form of ersatz capitalism, in which losses are socialized and profits privatized, is doomed to failure. Incentives are distorted. There is no market discipline. The too-big-to-be-restructured banks know that they can gamble with impunity - and, with the Federal Reserve making funds available at near-zero interest rates, there are ample funds to do so.

Some have called this new economic regime "socialism with American characteristics". But socialism is concerned about ordinary individuals. By contrast, the US has provided little help for the millions of Americans who are losing their homes. Workers who lose their jobs receive only 39 weeks of limited unemployment benefits, and are then left on their own. And, when they lose their jobs, most lose their health insurance too.

America has expanded its corporate safety net in unprecedented ways, from commercial banks to investment banks, then to insurance and now to cars, with no end in sight. In truth, this is not socialism, but an extension of longstanding corporate welfarism. The rich and powerful turn to the government to help them whenever they can, while needy individuals get little social protection.

We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks; there is no evidence that these behemoths deliver societal benefits that are commensurate with the costs they have imposed on others. And, if we don't break them up, then we have to severely limit what they do. They can't be allowed to do what they did in the past - gamble at others' expenses.

This raises another problem with America's too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-be-restructured banks: they are too politically powerful. Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate and then to have taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Their hope is that it will work once again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of the risks for taxpayers and the economy. We cannot afford to let that happen.

KEY NUMBERS TO REMEMBER IN THE HEALTHCARE DEBATE

Robert Parry, Op Ed News - To understand the financial stakes involved in the battle over U.S. health-care reform, it's useful to keep two numbers in mind: 50 million and 119 million.

The first number is the approximate total of Americans without health insurance, a new market that the private health insurance industry is salivating to get its hands on. The industry's hope is that the government will mandate that those Americans sign up for private insurance and offer subsidies for those who can't afford to pay the premiums.

Fifty million new customers and government largesse to help pay the bills would be a huge windfall for the insurance industry, which otherwise faces a decline in its market because baby boomers are reaching the age to qualify for Medicare and because rising unemployment is draining the pool of Americans who have insurance through their employers.

So, as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. noted, the 50 million potential customers explain why the insurance companies have been so eager to sit down at the reform table.

"Their public-spiritedness reflects enlightened self-interest," Dionne wrote. "Health-care reform could bail out these interests by adding the currently uninsured--fast approaching 50 million people--to their customer base and by preventing more individuals and employers from dropping insurance altogether."

But Dionne and other mainstream analysts miss the significance of the other number--119 million--and why it is even a more powerful incentive for private insurers to have the ear of key members of Congress and White House insiders. It is the figure that the industry and its backers cite as the potential exodus of disaffected customers to a public health insurance option.

The industry's curious argument is that so many Americans would bolt to a government-run program that the option simply can't be allowed. . .

Though some analysts question the 119 million estimate, it has transformed the debate over health-care reform into something of a death match for the private insurance industry, especially because it's a good bet that many of the 50 million uninsured also would opt for a public plan, since they've been heartlessly left out in the cold by the private industry.

CANADIAN HEALTH CARE MYTHS

Rhonda Hackett, Denver Post - As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.

Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes. . .

As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.

Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.

In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.

Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services. . .

Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.

While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks - unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.

There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. .

Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.

Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.

Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.

Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.

Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada.

From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.

Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock, Colorado is a clinical psychologist.

WESTERN MISCONCEPTIONS MEET IRANIAN REALITY

George Friedman, Stratfor - In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.

The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch's modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years - Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn't speak Farsi all that well.

The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising - Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn't think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than the those in the first group.

Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading - because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy - people Americans didn't speak to because they couldn't. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.

Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization - a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook "iPod liberalism," the idea that anyone who listens to rock ‘n' roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran - a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand - but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.

Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different.

Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.

It also misses a crucial point: Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn't speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.

First, Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization - whether from the shah or Mousavi - as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.

Second, Ahmadinejad speaks of corruption. There is a sense in the countryside that the ayatollahs - who enjoy enormous wealth and power, and often have lifestyles that reflect this - have corrupted the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is disliked by many of the religious elite precisely because he has systematically raised the corruption issue, which resonates in the countryside.

Third, Ahmadinejad is a spokesman for Iranian national security, a tremendously popular stance. It must always be remembered that Iran fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s that lasted eight years, cost untold lives and suffering, and effectively ended in its defeat. Iranians, particularly the poor, experienced this war on an intimate level. They fought in the war, and lost husbands and sons in it. As in other countries, memories of a lost war don't necessarily delegitimize the regime. Rather, they can generate hopes for a resurgent Iran, thus validating the sacrifices made in that war - something Ahmadinejad taps into. By arguing that Iran should not back down but become a major power, he speaks to the veterans and their families, who want something positive to emerge from all their sacrifices in the war.

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad's favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran - something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Lower East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn't win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad's security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it's a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then preceded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad's victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.

HOW THE STANDARDISTOS ARE DAMAGING EDUCATION

In the name of reform, the Standardistos are freezing in bureaucratic place the worst aspects of traditional education.

This essay originally appeared in Phi Delta Kappan

Marion Brady - What should the young be taught? No question we can ask ourselves is more important. Nothing less than the survival of humankind hinges on our choice of answers. . .

There has been very little dialogue focusing on fundamental curricular issues -- little debate about the ultimate goals of education, little debate about what new knowledge belongs in the curriculum, little debate about what old content can be abandoned, little debate about whether or not the traditional disciplines are the best organizers of knowledge, and little debate about the appropriateness of the arbitrary boundaries that separate fields of study. . .

There is almost no dialogue about fundamental curricular issues because it seems to be widely assumed that there are no serious problems with the traditional curriculum. What should the young be taught? Without hesitation, policy makers and politicians answer, "They should be taught what those of us who are educated know." This is the philosophical underpinning of the latest educational fad: the standards movement.

Enter, center stage, the people Susan Ohanian has called the "Standardistos." No need, in the Standardisto view, to identify and clarify an overarching reason to educate. No need to decide what new knowledge belongs in the curriculum. No need to agree on what old knowledge to discard to make room for the new. No need to weigh the merit of alternative ways of organizing knowledge. No need to introduce students to the integrated, mutually supportive nature of all knowledge. From the Standardisto perspective, all that is necessary is to determine what most "well-educated" people know, organize it, distribute it to the schools, and demand that teachers teach it and students learn it. In the name of reform, the Standardistos are freezing in bureaucratic place the worst aspects of traditional education.

The standards movement has a lot going for it. Its promoters are true believers who have ready access to the media because they are considered authorities. The movement has massive political and corporate backing. Educators who oppose the movement are not well organized. It enjoys an inspired label -- who can reasonably oppose the setting of standards? Perhaps most important, it meshes well with simplistic, popular views of what educating is all about. . .

That generations should share a large body of general knowledge makes good sense. Every society needs a "language of allusion" in order to function. Such statements as "The Monroe Doctrine is still a sensitive issue for many Latin Americans" or "He has the patience of Job" have meaning only if the speaker and the listener share some level of understanding of the Monroe Doctrine and of the Biblical story of Job's troubles.

A shared language of allusion provides a significant means of holding a society together. However, it is a mistake to assume that whatever members of the dominant elite know should determine what is taught to the young. . .

A fact-based curriculum that teaches students about ancient Rome's battles with Carthage but fails to explore the differing value systems that underlie most conflict is missing a significant learning opportunity. A curriculum that requires students to learn the names of major rivers or mountain ranges but leaves them unaware of the implications of a gradual drop in the level of their region's water table tacitly invites eventual disaster.

Determining the probable or possible long-term consequences of knowing or not knowing something is, of course, no easy task. The process requires looking at the world as a system, and traditional schooling does not encourage that. Ordinary experience may tell us, say, that medical research increases life expectancy; that increased life expectancy expands the total population; that increased population expands the demand for food, water, and living space; and that those needs are on a collision course that could have disastrous consequences.

But what ordinary experience tells us is not addressed by the traditional curriculum that the Standardistos are so eager to reinforce. Tracing even a simple causal sequence like the one above touches on physiology, technology, geography, economics, and sociology. In our schools, such subjects are taught, if at all, at different levels and at different times, as if they had little or nothing to do with one another. Standards are written for disciplines. It is a rare standards document that tries to promote the exploration of relationships between or beyond the familiar disciplines. . .

Two theories about how students learn best have long been in competition. One of them is summarized by the old saying "Throw enough mud on the wall, and some of it is bound to stick." This view acknowledges that not everything taught is learned, but it suggests that there is nevertheless merit in bombarding students with information because at least some of it will be remembered.

The second theory is summarized in the statement "Less is more." Early in the 20th century, mathematician, teacher, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead maintained that dumping vast amounts of information on students was counterproductive. He argued that humans are simply not mentally equipped to handle a great deal of random, "inert knowledge." The young, Whitehead said, need to study in great depth a relatively few really powerful ideas, ideas that encompass and explain major aspects of human experience.

For example, Whitehead probably would have approved studying the concept of polarization. This process, by means of which minor differences between humans become major ones, touches almost every dimension of life. Polarization gradually turns complex, "gray" issues into ever simpler "black and white" ones, attaches to those issues ever greater significance, and loads them with ever more emotion until effective communication becomes impossible, and conflict becomes all but inevitable. A shared, thorough understanding of the process of polarization sheds light on the dynamics of friendship, marriage, neighborhood incidents, labor/management relationships, barroom brawls, religious schisms, international relations, and much more. . .

The Standardistos pay lip service to the necessity for both breadth and depth, but nowhere in evidence in their efforts are "big" ideas that organize the myriad facts they demand that students remember. Indeed, most are convinced that the young cannot handle big ideas, that facts must come first, and that, given enough facts, some master pattern will eventually emerge to bind them together in a way that makes useful sense.

Effective teachers of the young are much concerned with what, in educational jargon, is called "developmentally appropriate material." Certain sequences are taken for granted. The simple is taught before the complex, the tangible before the intangible, the concrete before the abstract.

Most Standardistos have little use for such ideas. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., surely a closet Standardisto, asks, "What, exactly, does 'developmentally appropriate' mean? . . . Must children in the second grade have their horizons bounded by the local mall, as opposed to . . . learning about China and India, ancient Greece, and the Civil War?". .

To the casual observer, attempting to teach the young about China or India might seem to indicate more respect for the intellectual capabilities of the young than does a focus on the mall or other topics drawn from student experience. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Because they know little or nothing about things remote in time and space other than what they are told, second-graders have few options other than to parrot such information back. But make their own experience a legitimate focus of study, and their insights and critical powers can begin to be displayed, sometimes in startlingly impressive ways that demand genuine respect.

I do not mean to suggest that schoolwork should be confined to the study of immediate reality. Even the very young have imaginations that can transport them almost anywhere. But surely, given the difficulties inherent in dealing in a systematic way with the complex, the abstract, and the remote, immediate reality is the place to begin to build the descriptive and analytical conceptual models that will eventually take students to wider experience. Standardistos, unaccustomed to the instructional use of what students know rather than what they themselves know, rarely write standards that exploit the teaching power of a student's own experience. . .

Back in the 1960s, the education establishment's thinking about thought became somewhat more sophisticated. "Thinking" began to be seen as actively engaging in a wide range of mental processes. Recalling was just one of those processes. Categorizing, translating, hypothesizing, valuing, generalizing, and synthesizing were others. Even the very young, it became apparent, use a great many thought processes in the course of ordinary experience.

When teaching is seen primarily as telling by means of teacher talk or textbook reading, the mental processes available to students dwindle down to just one: recall. Students may not be able to put their fingers on the reason schoolwork so often frustrates and bores them, but its lack of genuine intellectual challenge is surely a major factor. . .

Many share the view of Standardisto Louis Gerstner, Jr., CEO of IBM, who apparently believes that educating has to do primarily with "the distribution of information." If only it could be that simple. Teaching, real teaching, involves the altering of the images of reality in the minds of others, a challenge inherently far more complex than those presented by rocket science. . .

There are other wrongheaded views shared by many Standardistos -- that somehow just "raising the bar" increases students' ability to clear it, that before the standards movement there were no standards, that the talent wasted by one-size-fits-all programs is not worth developing, that students who will be turned into "failures" by the standards will not present a serious problem, that standardized tests tell us something really important, that market forces have a magical ability to cure the ills of education, that extrinsic rewards are dependable motivators, and so on. However, behind the standards juggernaut and impelling it forward is the single, primary, simplistic, and unexamined assumption that what the next generation most needs to know is what this generation knows. Surface that assumption and carefully examine it, and every other Standardisto assumption will begin to show itself in a different light.

Teaching to lists of what is "important" that have been devised by the elders is the ultimate "back-to-basics" program. If we proceed down the road we are now on and succeed in replicating ourselves, we will have an America in which everyone understands and is comfortable with everyone else -- as we slide toward oblivion.

AMERICANS SUPPORT LEGAL MARIJUANA

Don Hazen, AlterNet - Recent polling by Zogby in May demonstrated that a majority of Americans, say it "makes sense to tax and regulate" marijuana. The Zogby poll, commissioned by the conservative-oriented O'Leary Report, found 52 percent in favor of legalization, only 37 percent opposed. As Ryan Grim reports on the Huffington Post , a previous ABC News/Washington Post poll found 46 percent in support. In California, a Field Poll found 56 percent backing legalization and as a result California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for an open debate on legalization, all which suggest that American society may be reaching a tipping point when it comes to legal pot. . .

An array of new circumstances -- Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border -- support the growing public support for legalization of pot.

Anther element perhaps pushing changes to our pot laws is the gaggle of strange bed fellows who are outspoken on the issue. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and the late conservative economist Milton Friedman have been for legalization for years. But recently Fox News' latest conservative wild man Glenn Beck and CNN's much more reasonable Jack Cafferty have publicly questioned the billions spent each year fighting the endless war against drugs. They are joining the growing chorus that suggest it now makes more financial and social sense to tax and regulate marijuana

U.S. LAWS SUPPRESS MUSLIM CHARITIES

NY Times - The fight against terrorism has dealt a harsh blow to Muslim charities and interfered with their donors' religious freedom, a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union concludes. The report says statutes that it describes as overly broad and enforced in a discriminatory manner, coupled with a lack of due process, have starved Islamic charities of money and impeded Muslims' ability to fulfill zakat, their religious requirement to make charitable donations.

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 Muslim community leaders as well as experts on antiterrorism laws and regulations. Though it gives no estimate of the decline in donations to Muslim groups, it says a total of nine Islamic charities have closed as a result of government action against them since the Sept. 11 attacks.

That action ranges, it said, from declaring a group to be under investigation to designating it a terrorist organization and freezing its assets.

"While there is a legitimate concern about the use of charitable funds to finance terrorism, it does not outweigh the rights of American Muslims to fulfill their religious obligations or override constitutional requirements for due process," said the author, Jennifer Turner, the A.C.L.U.'s human rights researcher.

AUSTRALIA ADOPTS DICTATORIAL INTERNET CONTROLS

Sidney Morning Herald - The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

"The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand's internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions. . .

Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its "watch list" of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information.

NETANYAHU CALLED FOR 'LIMITED PALESTINIAN STATE' 6 YEARS AGO

Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss - AIPAC has hailed the Netanyahu speech as a "bold" step. But six years ago Netanyahu wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he called for "a limited Palestinian state." Bibi in June 2003:

"The guiding principle is this: The Palestinians would be given all the powers needed to govern themselves but none of the powers that could threaten Israel. Put simply, the solution is full self-government for the Palestinians with vital security powers retained by Israel. For example, the Palestinians would have internal security and police forces but not an army. They would be able to establish diplomatic relations with other countries but not to forge military pacts. They could import goods and merchandise but not weapons and armaments. Control over Palestinian daily life would be in the hands of the Palestinians alone, but security control over borders, ports and airspace would remain in Israel's hands. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed these ideas last year, and most Israelis sup

NEW MONTANA GUN LAW PART OF MOVE TO REVIVE TENTH AMENDMENT

Washington Times - A new Montana gun law puts the state at the forefront of a national bid to restore states' rights by attacking up to a century of federal court decisions on Washington's power.

Two other states - Alaska and Texas - have had favorable votes on laws similar to Montana's, declaring that guns that stay within the state are none of the feds' business. More than a dozen others are considering such laws, and more-general declarations of state sovereignty have been introduced this year in more than 30 legislatures.

The federal courts may not respond well to these laws in the short term, but backers who acknowledge this say that regardless, they intend for the laws to change the political landscape in the long term. They hope these state laws will undercut the legitimacy of contrary federal law - as has happened with medicinal marijuana - and even push federal courts to bend with the popular wind.

"What's going on is that people all over the country have decided, 'Enough is enough,' " said Kevin Gutzman, a professor at Western Connecticut State University and the author of "Who Killed the Constitution?" "This is supposed to be a federal system, but instead Congress seems to think it can legislate anything it wants.". . .

According to the act's supporters, if guns bearing a "Made in Montana" stamp remain in Montana, then federal rules such as background checks, registration and dealer licensing no longer apply. But court cases have interpreted the U.S. Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause as covering anything that might affect interstate commerce - which in practice means just about anything.. . .

"The Interstate Commerce Clause has grown and grown until the government asserts authority over everything under the sun," said Mr. Marbut, who wrote the original firearms legislation. "How much water you have in your toilet. Almost all environmental laws. Maybe one-third of all federal regulations are asserted under the Commerce Clause.". . .

The federal government, said Mr. Marbut, "is a creation of the states, and the states need to get their creation on a leash."

FEDS FAIL TO REGULATE HEDGE FUND GAMBLING BUT ZAPS ONLINE POKER PLAYERS

Poker News Today - Late last week, the federal government ordered five banks to freeze a total of $30 million in payments owed to the players from companies that process payments from two offshore gambling sites, according to the Poker Players Alliance, a group that represents the interests of the companies and players. . .

According to the alliance, federal prosecutors working out of New York's Southern District ordered Citibank, Wells Fargo and three smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to Allied Systems and Account Services, companies that process funds for the poker sites. Some affected players who gamble at the popular sites FullTiltPoker.com and PokerStars.com first realized they could not access funds in their accounts over the weekend when checks issued from the companies bounced.

Online poker, a $9 billion to $12 billion a year industry, is legally a gray area, experts say. Washington is the only state with a law on its books that bans residents from playing on the Internet. The sites themselves, however, are not allowed to operate in the United States and are all registered overseas.

"There is no legal precedent for what the government is doing," said John Pappas, executive director of the alliance. "We contend playing online poker is not unlawful. The government is going after the players' money, not the sites'. The fact is, there is no federal law against playing online poker," he said. Though the government maintains that online gambling is illegal, the U.S. attorney's office in New York would not comment on the case or confirm an investigation was under way. . .

Both FullTiltPoker.com and PokerStars.com have reimbursed players who tried to cash out and were unable to.

BULLYING THE DEALERS

Washington Post - Many jilted dealers have described it more as a crash landing. After all, they still remember the Call.

It came on Thursday, Feb. 5. Thousands of Chrysler dealers across the country dialed in to hear another in a string of pitches from [deputy chief executive Jim] Press and Steven Landry, Chrysler's executive vice president.

With the passion of a street preacher, Press implored the dealers to order as many cars as possible to help the company as a deadline loomed to prove its viability to the U.S. government.

"You have two choices," Press told the group, according to reports. "You can either help us or burn us all down."

Many dealers would long remember the warning that followed to those who refused to order their whole allotment of cars: "If you decide not to do that, we've got a good memory."

"Our jaws dropped," said Alan Spitzer, who appeared before Congress on and until last week owned eight Chrysler-brand franchises in Ohio. "It was clearly a threat. There was no other way to take it."

Chrysler officials dispute that view, saying executives were simply working to save the company and had no plans to go into bankruptcy at the time.

But the Call has become part symbol, part rallying cry for the hundreds of Chrysler dealers who say they have endured a litany of indignities at the hands of the struggling automaker. Referenced by dealers in numerous interviews and during Chrysler's recent bankruptcy proceedings, it offers a window into the carmaker's increasingly frantic final months, as it sought to bolster its bottom line by pressuring dealers to buy more inventory, even as their showrooms overflowed with cars they couldn't sell.

More important, it highlights how the best-laid plans of government -- a quick, "surgical" bankruptcy of an American company -- can unfold slowly and messily on the ground.

OBAMA MISLED ABOUT PRIVACY UNDER NEW DEFENSE CYBER PROGRAM

NY Times - A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries' computer networks.

President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama's assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons. . .

There is simply no way, the officials say, to effectively conduct computer operations without entering networks inside the United States, where the military is prohibited from operating, or traveling electronic paths through countries that are not themselves American targets.

The cybersecurity effort, Mr. Obama said at the White House last month, "will not - I repeat, will not - include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic.". . .

Military officials say there may be a need to intercept and examine some e-mail messages sent from other countries to guard against computer viruses or potential terrorist action. Advocates say the process could ultimately be accepted as the digital equivalent of customs inspections, in which passengers arriving from overseas consent to have their luggage opened for security, tax and health reasons. . .

OBAMA DISSES GAYS AGAIN

ACLU, GLAD, Lamda Legal and others - We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act against Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits. The administration is using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used. These arguments rightly have been rejected by several state supreme courts as legally unsound and obviously discriminatory.

We disagree with many of the administration's arguments, for example that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress's power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental.

We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be "neutral" with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states. There is nothing "neutral" about the federal government's discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of "neutrality" ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.

When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

America Blog - Andrew Sullivan discovered that one of the three Obama Justice Department attorneys who wrote and filed the anti-gay DOMA brief is W. Scott Simpson, a Mormon Bush holdover who was awarded by Alberto Gonzales for his defense of the Partial Birth Abortion act. . . No wonder the brief was so filled with hate and bigoted religious right talking points, such as comparing gay marriage to incest and pederasty.

EMPLOYED HIT HARDER THAN ANY TIME SINCE THE DEPRESSION

Dennis Cauchon, USA Today - People who still have jobs are faring worse than at any time since the Great Depression, a USA Today analysis of employment data found. Furloughs, pay cuts and reduced hours are taking a toll on workers who so far have escaped job cuts.

The employed worked fewer hours in May - an average of just 33.1 hours a week - than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began counting in 1964. Part-time work is at a record high. Overtime is at a record low.

The magnitude of job losses - 6 million jobs gone, a 9.4% unemployment rate - has overshadowed the groundbreaking nature of the nation's employment troubles, especially the financial decline of those still working.

"You can rip a whole chapter out of your Economics 101 textbook because the job market isn't behaving the way we were taught," says David Rosenberg, chief economist at money manager Gluskin Sheff and Associates.

Businesses cut total wages at a 6.2% annual rate in the first quarter. Federal, state and local governments increased spending on wages by 6.1%, offsetting some of the decline.

The use of pay cuts - the last choice at most companies after hiring freezes, salary freezes and layoffs - shows how the recession is unlike any since the Depression, says Laura Sejen of compensation consultant Watson Wyatt.

"The recession has been broad, deep and long. No one has been immune," she says.

Baby boomers- 79 million people born from 1946 to 1964 - have been hit particularly hard.

NEW PLANE MATERIALS REMAIN SUSPECT IN 447 CRASH

James Ridgeway, Unsilent Generation - I've written several times about the possibility that composite parts may have played a role in the disaster. This prospect has dire implications for the future, since these lightweight, fiber and resin materials are increasingly replacing aluminum in aircraft construction. AF 447 was an Airbus A330-200, a plane a body fuselage built of metal, but significant levels of composite in its other parts–most importantly, the wings and the tail.

Now, wreckage recovered from the crash shows that 447 may have broken up in midair–which raises new questions and offering new clues on this subject of composites, according to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor.

"There is a very compelling need to find the wreckage," says Richard Healing, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board and an aviation safety consultant. "We need to know if some of the composite parts failed, whether they failed at a point that any other material would have failed."

Some of the biggest pieces of debris found so far appear to be the plane's tail fin and vertical stabilizer. These parts are made partially of composite materials, and their failure has contributed to several crashes in the past. In the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus 300 with a similar design to the A330, the vertical stabilizer snapped off in severe turbulence. One of the first questions investigators addressed was whether the composite materials used in the component contributed to the crash, according to Mr. Healing.

"The tail that broke off was a composite structure and was attached to the aircraft in six places. The bolts [some made of composite materials] holding it into place failed," he says. . .

Boeing has hung a good part of its future on its new 787 Dreamliner, a midsized passenger jet built from over 50 percent composite materials, by weight. The Dreamliner is about to begin flight testing, and is supposed to be released next year. The lightweight construction of the 787 and other high-composite aircraft promises big savings to airlines in fuel costs. But with even a possibility that composites contributed to the 587 and 447 disasters, more testing and strict federal oversight, at the least, are needed before this new generation of aircraft begins flying. .

The Dreamliner was supposed to be the highlight of the Paris Air Show, which opens up next week under the twin clouds of global recession and the 447 crash, but Boeing now says its first flight will be delayed. In fact, the plane is well behind schedule, placing Boeing is in competition with Airbus, which is working on its own high-composite jet.

It will be up to the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that public safety comes before private profits–not something the FAA has been known for.

KEY LAWMAKERS DECIDING HEALTHCARE POLICY HAVE $11-27 MILLION IN HEALTH INDUSTRY

Washignton Post - Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate.

The list of members who have personal investments in the corporations that will be affected by the legislation -- which President Obama has called this year's highest domestic priority -- includes Congress's most powerful leaders and a bipartisan collection of lawmakers in key committee posts. Their total health-care holdings could be worth $27 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms require reporting of only broad ranges of holdings rather than precise values of assets.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), for instance, has at least $50,000 invested in a health-care index, and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a senior member of the health committee, has between $254,000 and $560,000 worth of stock holdings in major health-care companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.

BREVITAS

OBAMALAND

Ryan Grim, Huffington Post - The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said. "We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen. . . White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says Woolsey's charge is not true. Woolsey said she herself had not been pressured because the White House and leadership know she's a firm no vote. But she had heard from other members about the White House pressure.

CRASH TALK

Over twenty of Michigan's 83 counties are turning some paved roads into gravel ones to save money. Some 50 miles have been affected. Gravel roads cost about one tenth as much as paved ones.

WAR DEPARTMENT

BBC - Global military spending rose 4% in 2008 to a record $1,464bn) - up 45% since 1999, according to the Stockholm-based peace institute Sipri. . . The US remains the biggest spender, accounting for 58% of the total global spending increase during the decade, though China and Russia have reduced the gap. Both tripled military spending over the decade, and Russia "is maintaining plans for further increases despite severe economic problems".

MID EAST

Mondo Weiss - The Israel Project has been conducting a periodic running poll, asking American registered voters questions about Israel. Consistently, the polls' results - those that were published - have so far shown a steady, sturdy level of support for Israel as a peace seeking country. That has changed, quite dramatically, now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to get on board President Obama's two-state peace push. And that change is probably why the Israel Project has not published its poll. According to the poll, conducted among a rather large sample (800 registered voters) between June 9 and June 11, there has been a 20% drop in the perception of Israel's government as peace seeking. Here are the data. The question asked was: "And, how committed do you think the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is to reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians?" A similar question ("How committed do you think the Israeli government is to reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians?") was asked in December 2008 and in March 2009. In December and March, the results were almost identical: 66% said it was committed and 29% (in December) and 30% (in March) said it was not. This month, however, in the light of the open conflict on Israeli-Palestinian peace between Bibi and Obama, only 46% say Israel is committed and 39% say it is not. Furthermore, there is a steep decline in the percentage of Americans who say that the U.S. should support Israel. That has dropped from 71% in March 2008 (at the time of the Annapolis process) to only 44% now. Israel Radio reported that the Israel Project confirmed the validity of the poll and the data, but said they were "not final."

MEDIA

Zogby - As broadcast television network newscasts continue to lose viewers by the month, a new online survey by Zogby Interactive shows that the Internet is by far the preferred source for information, and that it is considered the most reliable source as well. A majority of adults nationwide - 56% - said that if they had to choose just one source for their news information, they would choose the Internet, the poll shows. In a distant second place was television, as 21% said they would prefer that medium over online sources. Ten percent say newspapers.

TORTURE

David Jones, Daily Mail - In this deeply disturbing interview, the torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 more torture photos that could rock the White House. . .

THE MIX

Weird Nuz - The U.S. Air Force has spent an estimated $25 million training combat pilot Lt. Col. Victor Fehrehbach but is about to discharge him involuntarily because he is gay. Born of military-officer parents, Fehrenbach has earned 30 awards and decorations, with tours flying F-15Es in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and was one of the elite fighters called on to patrol the air space over Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. Also about to be discharged solely for being gay is Army infantry officer Daniel Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic speaker, who would be (based on a 2005 Government Accounting Office report) at least the 56th gay Arabic linguist to be dismissed from the U.S. military since the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

ORWELLANDIA

Boing Boing - In Britain, cops have the power to search you if you take a picture of a "sensitive" area, but they won't tell you which areas are "sensitive," because they're so "sensitive." . . . The Home Office has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the BJP regarding the disclosure of the list of all areas where police officers are authorized to stop-and-search photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. . . While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London [the City of London is a one-square-mile financial district], at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by the legislation, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers. . .

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