Obsessing About Conspiracy

by **timboucher** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 2:30 am

This is one of the best quotes on conspiracy theory I've ever seen. It comes from John Taylor Gatto's "Underground History of American Education" (the author's note): <blockquote>Quote:<hr>If you obsess about conspiracy, what you’ll fail to see is that we are held fast by a form of highly abstract thinking fully concretized in human institutions which has grown beyond the power of the managers of these institutions to control. If there is a way out of the trap we’re in, it won’t be by removing some bad guys and replacing them with good guys.<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue8.htm">www.johntaylorgatto.com/u...logue8.htm</a>

by **FourthBase** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 2:38 am

My favorite band, Stereolab: Tomorrow Is Already Here (aka Reich Song) originally this set up was to serve society now the roles have been reversed that want society to serve the institutions originally, serve society, serve society, role have been reversed institutions, alienation

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:03 am

That's a brilliant essay. Gatto is one of my very few heroes- about as close to a guru as it gets, for me. His insights on education are paricularly valuable. Even for someone as determined to pick apart ideas as myself, he's a very, very tough case to try to fade. He's always been basically about self-empowerment and independence...how does one argue against that? And he's paid his dues-repeatedly winning awards as NYC and New York State Public School Teacher Of The Year. Even if someone eventually comes along to trash Gatto and make a convincing case that his recent crop of projects and foundations are con games for money- I have heard no such allegations, unusual for the milieu- his expository prose on the Net is available free of charge. It's excellent and valid advice that can be used by just about anyone.

by **Starman** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:27 am

WoW, Tim -- accolades for a fantasticly insightful, thoughtful, even brilliant analysis of the systemic dumbing-down provided by our schools --John Taylor Gatto strikes a chord and his ideas definitely resonate with me, affirming much of what I've surmised on my own without thinking near as deliberately as he has. Outstanding! --quote-- Alan Bullock, the English historian, said Evil was a state of incompetence. If true, our school adventure has filled the twentieth century with evil. Ellul puts it this way: The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions...Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed...years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion. Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent on group approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be "a small part in a great machine." It broke my heart. What kids dumbed down by schooling can’t do is to think for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girls reveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders. According to all official analysis, dumbness isn’t taught (as I claim), but is innate in a great percentage of what has come to be called "the workforce." Workforce itself is a term that should tell you much about the mind that governs modern society. According to official reports, only a small fraction of the population is capable of what you and I call mental life: creative thought, analytical thought, judgmental thought, a trio occupying the three highest positions on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Just how small a fraction would shock you. According to experts, the bulk of the mob is hopelessly dumb, even dangerously so. Perhaps you’re a willing accomplice to this social coup which revived the English class system. Certainly you are if your own child has been rewarded with a "gifted and talented" label by your local school. This is what Dewey means by "proper" social order. If you believe nothing can be done for the dumb except kindness, because it’s biology (the bell-curve model); if you believe capitalist oppressors have ruined the dumb because they are bad people (the neo-Marxist model); if you believe dumbness reflects depraved moral fiber (the Calvinist model); or that it’s nature’s way of disqualifying boobies from the reproduction sweepstakes (the Darwinian model); or nature’s way of providing someone to clean your toilet (the pragmatic elitist model); or that it’s evidence of bad karma (the Buddhist model); if you believe any of the various explanations given for the position of the dumb in the social order we have, then you will be forced to concur that a vast bureaucracy is indeed necessary to address the dumb. Otherwise they would murder us in our beds. The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the careers devoted to tending to them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my proposition: Mass dumbness first had to be imagined; it isn’t real. Once the dumb are wished into existence, they serve valuable functions: as a danger to themselves and others they have to be watched, classified, disciplined, trained, medicated, sterilized, ghettoized, cajoled, coerced, jailed. To idealists they represent a challenge, reprobates to be made socially useful. Either way you want it, hundreds of millions of perpetual children require paid attention from millions of adult custodians. An ignorant horde to be schooled one way or another. --unquote-- Great article!@ Starman

by **proldic** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 11:54 am

In the "real" world of fighting for a better educational system, I see Gatto having a huge influence on all sorts of influential left-types to abandon the fight to improve the public schools at exactly the time when their help is needed most. Instead they put most of their energy into creating "free" schools, which are lily-white edutopias, excluding 80% of the children in any given community. One summer everyone was reading his books and talking about his ideas. Suddenly 12 great voices that were pressuring the admin for change just pulled their kids out (cause they could afford to) and never returned to a school board or PTA meeeting again. See ya! The next week, the admin and the (previously) minority clique of racists and right-wing anti-edu funding types solidified their power and began a scorched-earth policy against anything progressive or good in our large system. Thank you JT Gatto. Gatto is a representative of deep-cover memes being pushed into the counter-culture at precisely the time when the system began to really push charter schools and privatization. His affect was to convince a huge number of otherwise well-intentioned folks that the public school system was a completely bankrupt system of control and brainwashing. I see the same stuff going on on an intenese level at Waldorf and Montessori schools btw, just from a counter-cultural left spin. I'm sure y'all won't see that as neccessarily bad, but from a "front-line" perspective, I do. I see us returning to the days of pay-to-learn soon enough, thanks to the efforts of al you anti-socialist reactionaries. Do you all forget how the working class fought for educational opportunity for all you smarties, including PUBLIC schools and the right to higher education?

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 2:46 pm

My advice, for public education advocates: concentrate on "grades" K-6, and forget middle school and high school. Basic literacy, numeracy, physical fitness, and that forgotten subject, geography. Higher "grade" coursework in a public school system should be integrated into the community college system, where they don't put up with any Lord Of The Flies bullshit. And if students don't want to learn it, lower the age of getting a GED to more like 14, and put them in the work force. But if you concentrate on students from the ages of 5-12, at least most of them could get basic learning skills. Get rid of illiteracy and innumeracy FIRST. Public education is presently in the process of failing so miserably- especially in low-income, immigrant, and minority communities- that it's time to cut the losses and do some triage. And no excuses. Gatto isn't responsible for the effects of his observations on parents with children in the public schools. If the public schools were resistant to his critique, there wouldn't be a problem. Gatto is also on the record as supporting public school reform, because as a practical matter, that's where most of the action is. He isn't a hidebound Libertarian ideologue, although his criticisms are so acute that he often comes off like one. At least some of the problems in public schools have to do with modernity itself- there's so little "community" in many school districts in the USA that there's very little to build on. Parental involvement is often a joke. ( "proldic", you were at a PTA meeting that actually drew 12 people? Knock me over with a feather... ) There's also the problem that the "middle" or "junior high" grades are where the student body encounters the presence of the Retail Drug Markets engendered by Zero Tolerance Prohibition, which are staffed by their peers. Oft times, making Adult Money. It's oft noted that even children with above average learning skill in the elementary grades get undone by the "pressures of adolescence"- for that, read "initiation into the underground drug economy", more often than not. Not a problem that public school teachers can solve- or any other fix-the-problem-at-the-wrong-end government bureaucracy, for that matter. For that, a radical solution is REQUIRED- some form of incorporation of the illegal drug markets into the aboveground economy. For adults. Regulated. "Impossible"? Then so long, suckers. I'll keep checking back every so often, to see how the destruction and rot engendered by Prohibition War 2 is progressing. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 7/26/05 1:07 pm

by **proldic** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:05 pm

This is a dangerously simplistic overview of things, if not teetering on the verge of what I detect and I'm sure you'll deny -as racist stereotyping. Public education is presently in the process of failing so miserably And you think that is even 1/10th their fault? Where's your perspective , man? Drug dealers? Man, even the presence of drug dealers doesn't in and of itself stop a school from providing a good education. This whole view of street culture and poor folks, especially minorities, is so much a rasisct product. Who's got the bigger pathologies. At least they don't fuck their own kids as much as we whites tend to do, huh? I went to an inner-city high school. The drug dealers weren't the problem. They wanted a good education too, and doors on the bathrtoom stalls, and decent luches. It was the white suburban communities that sucked resources out of the city core And returned zilch except for patronizing and essentially rasict views like yours. Total establishment-inspired blame the victim shit. And totally disconnected from the reality of the politics of education. You don't think blacks and latinos aren't accutely aware of their problems, Cos? "cut the losses", huh? That's what they want! 'Gatto isn't responsible for the effects of his observations on parents with children in the public schools." I'd disagree strenuously, but that's another discussion. If the public schools were resistant to his critique, there wouldn't be a problem. This shows you don't understand the players in the game. LARGELY the administratoprs are intent on destroying public education LARGELY the teachers are good, and the parents in the 4 large urban areas where I have been involved, were just as concerned about their kids, just as invovlved (considering the fact that they had to work 3 shitty jobs) than your average white person. And that's where I get off calling you (subconsciously) RACIST.

by **Dreams End** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:36 pm

Instead of attacking everyone else and calling them names, why don't you put forward the outlines of the reforms you think are important and realistic. Personally, I agree with your general concerns about many of these reform movements being used as excuses to drain resources from traditional public schools...but I also have a daughter in public school and she is miserable. And I don't care how good a teacher you are, if you have 5 classes of 35 kids, there's only so much you can do that's not cookie cutter busy work. And since the schools are run by the state, and the state is run by....well, I think we can agree that it's okay to be suspicious that some of the agenda in public schools is to create conformity. I went to school mostly in private schools. My mom was a secretary at a private grade school so I got to go for free. (They wouldn't accept my sister though...think she has issues to work through...I think they just wanted to avoid two freebies.) I also attended public schools. So I can say with authority that non-public does not equal good. I hated the private schools. Very stifling, discouraging of creativity and elitist. (I actually went to the high school on which the school in Dead Poet's Society was based, though it's not a boarding school). But seriously, at your PTA meetings, do you wait for someone to put forward suggestions and then attack them as racists or victims of "bad memes"? Or do you put forward ideas to make things better? If so, I'd love to hear them. Personally, I can't think of any efforts that will improve my daughter's experience soon enough to make much of a difference as I think the whole system needs to be rethought...and no, that does not mean selling schools to the highest corporate bidder. So while I agree philosophically, I still have a daughter who hates school and, by extension, the idea of learning and intellectual activity. I don't know what to do about that. And I think that analyses that suggest that our very style of teaching and learning in the public schools is flawed do not neccessarily equate to abolishing public schools or putting resources into non-public alternatives. However, ANY criticisms of public schools, however justified, will be used to that effect by people who have that agenda. This cannot mean we maintain silence. And we also know that public education is run by the state, and we know who runs the state, so I don't think it is not illogical to assume that part of the purpose of the public schools is to create "good citizens" using a definition of good citizen that neither you nor I would agree with. So some issues about how we educate our children will be reflected by the dominant ideology of our country and culture. Not a lot of critiques of capitalism in your local high school economics classes. Personally, I think some structural changes (which would cost some money) are preferable to instituting the latest fad..as those come and go. Reduce class size..and reduce school size. Find ways to have diversity and equality in schools without always requiring that the inner city kids have to ride an hour and a half each way to suburban schools (never the reverse, at least not around here. Our high schools start at 7 am...can you imagine that after a 1.5 hour bus ride? And you can just forget about participating in after school activities.) That's one place I would start. While I still think that the whole currrent approach (and I experienced it) is stifling to the natural creativity and desire to learn that students have, it makes working with those natural attributes a little easier for a teacher, even with all of the bureaucratic requirements he or she has to fill. But anyway, I was challenging you to put forward some positive suggestions rather than jumping on other people's ideas. And I"m not just wanting another debate...this is an everyday issue with me and I'm interested in hearing your perspective.

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:38 pm

my observations come from my own 30-year-vintage experience in my largely white high school, as an active participant in the juvenile drug economy. Pre-"gang", pre-cocaine. (and "grass", "weed", or "reefer" was $10-20/oz.- the Big Money hadn't gotten there yet.) But the principles haven't changed. $$$ brings real rewards in this society. The values of being "educated" are less tangible- even unreal, to those who haven't reached a given level of achievement. And my reference to lack of parental involvement also dates from my late 1960s-early 1970s experience in a largely white suburb, working-middle class with a lot of transient military and government people in the mix. "Drug dealers? Man, even the presence of drug dealers doesn't in and of itself stop a school from providing a good education." In high-income schools, the effect is relatively minor. (Not negligible, though- in my opinion, the inculcation of a knowledge of the rewards and consequent tolerance for corrupt behavior is probably the worst of it.) In low-income schools, the effect tends toward the catastrophic. That's a Marxian insight, by the way. I don't reject Marx totally, especially as a cold-eyed factual reporter. And his diagnosis of social ills ifsoften considerably accurate. "The drug dealers weren't the problem. They wanted a good education too..." All I have is my own experience to tell me that's horseshit romanticism. Lip service, is what that is. If not simply more Left rhetoric, pulled from the air. The decayed infrastructure of many low-income school districts is inexcusable. But at the level of teaching basic learning skills, I don't feature material deprivation as being so much of a problem. You don't need computers to teach literacy. (In fact, I think they get in the way.) John Coltrane got a good education in his neglected, segregated school in rural North Carolina, in the 1940s. What's happened in the meantime? (No, I don't think the problem with the deterioration of American schools is "integration." But I doubt that the presence or absence of a school cafeteria is crucial, either.) "This whole view of street culture and poor folks, especially minorities, is so much a rasisct product." "...patronizing and essentially rasict views like yours..." Look man, I started driving cab on the night shift in 1986. Almost 20 years later, I'm still out there. Call race/class bias on someone who doesn't have antibodies to your attempt at guilt-tripping. You don't even know what my "whole view of street culture and poor folks" IS. Speaking of prejudice. "LARGELY the administratoprs are intent on destroying public education, LARGELY the teachers are good" That statement echoes John Taylor Gatto's observations. Incidentally, Gatto didn't spend his entire term as a public school teacher teaching in Westchester County- he was a public school teacher in New York City, in the Bronx. And if you want to critique his ideas, you'll have to use his words and take him on point by point, rather than simply dropping a blanket dismissal on him. A sampler of Gatto's writings on what's wrong with the schools, and how to go about fixing their problems-- <a href="http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html">www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 7/26/05 3:17 pm

by **anon** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:40 pm

Ivan Illich ...we have come to realise that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind concieves of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessable only to those who carry the proper tags.

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:50 pm

..despite the fact of it's publication in the Washington Times, I still think this article has value and validity: <a href="http://www.washtimes.com/culture/20011018-25452588.htm">www.washtimes.com/culture...452588.htm</a> School daze in America By Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES Just what is wrong with America's public schools? This question was being bandied about the country two years ago, after two teen-agers opened fire on their fellow Columbine High School students, killing 13 persons and arousing the grief and indignation of the entire country. After even the most knowledgeable adults confessed to some bewilderment over understanding the mind of the average American teen, Elinor Burkett, a former Miami Herald reporter and college professor, went to work. Choosing Prior Lake High School in suburban Minneapolis, she spent the 1999-2000 school year "in the halls and malls where America's Dylan Klebolds and Eric Harrises spend their days." Klebold and Harris were the two Columbine killers. "I got the kids' eye view," she says. "They think that adults are somewhere between stupid and crazy." These are children who saw the movie "The Scarlett Letter" instead of reading the book. For contemporary fiction, they studied John Grisham instead of the more ponderous Joseph Conrad. "Grisham is faster paced and sexier for them, I guess," she says. Her findings, reported in her new book, "Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School," outline a scenario of frustrated teachers, rebellious students and parents who ignore their offspring's obnoxious conduct. What's more, she writes, high schools operate under a straightjacket of enforced diversity and official niceness that casts a pall on student spontaneity. "There is a malaise, a low-lying depression all the time," she says. "What passes for rebellion is a kind of nagging, unpleasant passive-aggressiveness. There's no life, there's no energy, there's no spark of excitement or interest. But there's a kind of deadening. "I think we have so evangelized these kids, in order to give them this perfect fantasy adolescence, so that they'll have no scars, no emotional problems. They've had careful self-esteem training since they were 2. They're told exactly what to feel about everything and they have to be happy all the time," she adds. Mrs. Burkett quickly earned the students' trust and was named queen of the senior picnic at the end of the year. "I was the coolest kid in the school," she says. "I was this 52-year-old person who moved there from New York and hung on their every word." Teen-agers were bored with their vapid existence, she wrote, and teachers turned a blind eye to the omnipresent student cheating and copying from each others' papers. Students were numbed to banners festooning the walls with sayings like "You Are Unique" and "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste." "I don't want to teach kids what to feel," says Mrs. Burkett, who has a doctorate in Latin American history. "I want to teach them history. Because if we teach them history and we teach it well, they will learn the price of intolerance and they will learn to be patriotic. We don't need to tell them [how to do] that. "We don't have to teach them patriotism, either. Teach them American history, about the world and how rotten most of it is and it's hard not to be patriotic. And teaching them self-esteem? That is a ridiculous concept. Teach them to earn self-esteem so it's theirs," she says. This is not the first time an adult has reported on the parallel kingdom that is the American high school. The 1982 teen comedy "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was based on an investigation by Cameron Crowe into the realities of California's high schools. Mrs. Burkett said real change will come about if teachers give some students the low grades they deserve. But that is unlikely to happen soon, she added, as schools are beholden to parents who provide the votes for bond issues that fund the schools. "The school is captive to the community which is captive to values of society, which is every parent wants the model child — you are your resume — and they all have to have perfect A's," she says. "If the school doesn't give it to them and tells them that's not the truth, then they get mad at the school. "I don't think I had begun to glimpse how incredibly deep the problems were in terms of PC [political correctness]. There are cheerful little signs posted about diversity, but there was no diversity. The school has only white people, other than one or two black kids and some Koreans. There were no Jews in this community. The message the kids get are that adults are hypocrites." American education is mindless, she says, compared with the tough academic standards in Bishek, Kyrgyzstan, where she is spending the year teaching college journalism on a Fulbright scholarship. "I'm sitting with my students in Bishek and from the beginning of this crisis, they have asked these incredibly good questions and made these amazingly perceptive comments," she says. "Kyrgyzstan is a Muslim country and they say Islam is going through the equivalent of the Enlightenment and how there's this struggle with traditionalists. They ask intelligent things. "And I kept on flashing back to moments in 'Another Planet' where the kids were asked where Jamaica was and they said, 'the Pacific.' The students in Kyrgyzstan are very poor. They barely have blackboards. But they know stuff: geography, geopolitics and basic European history, even though they don't live in Europe. And the kids at Prior Lake know nothing," she says.  "One of the kids in the book is in the Marine Corps. He is on notice he might go to Uzbekistan. He sends me an e-mail asking, 'Where is that?' "My heart breaks for these kids. It was easy to indulge ourselves in not educating them much when we thought they could grow up in the same complacent suburbs and have nice hot tubs. They need to be able to analyze what the president is doing and understand why he's doing it in order to agree or disagree," Mrs. Burkett says. "We're going to have to count on these kids to help us figure the way out of the next Afghanistan," she adds. When she brought up her concerns on geography to a group of English teachers in the faculty lounge, "We don't consider geography to be very important," they told her. "We don't believe in teaching kids to memorize. That's rote learning. We teach kids to reason." She retorts, "Like you can't teach kids to reason and memorize at the same time? "I asked them, 'How do you learn irregular verbs in French if you don't memorize them?' They said, 'Maybe they don't need to learn them.'" She says, "We're treating these kids like idiots. They know how to memorize. They memorize the names of their favorite rock stars, they memorize all kinds of things for video games. They memorize with no problem. How do you learn to analyze if you have nothing to analyze — if there is no information?" Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 7/26/05 1:55 pm

by **anon** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:55 pm

To deschool means to abolish the power of one person to oblige another person to attend a meeting. Ivan Illich A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. Ivan Illich Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973: 9)

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:07 pm

...is a little too abstract for me. I think his ideas have value mostly for educated adults doing self-criticism. Gatto's been in the tranches, and he's paid his dues. I think his insights are more practical.

by **proldic** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:25 pm

Dreamsend, the ultimate gatekeeper. Dreamsend: I am unable to respond in the way you demand at this time. I want to learn here as well, but supporting Gatto and paganism is not learning for the better. I have a lot to contribute to this discussion board, and I feel like RI has alot to give to me, (esp you guy). But it's all been a 5-day lesson in my own limitations, and the incredibly hard-wired nature of some deep memes that effect you and many on this site, and somewhat a cynical cold shower. I ask you, and I've been reading this board and others as a troll for awile, where else has this side of the coin been brought up? I'd really like to know. I know, I probably should stop, breathe deep, concentrate on one item at a time, and flesh out my case(s) better, you say, right? I agree that would be ideal. But if I had done that, I couldn't have sparked all these seperate (I think connected) little brushfires, huh? I feel like I'm in 1 vs. many street fight on this site, and of course all my punches are not going to be very hard, but I've got to keep swinging wildly just to keep standing. I appreciate the challenge you present, to a degree. Maybe someday I will spend the 2-3 days time it would take me to really put something together that I think would be worthy of you (no sarcasm intended at all). Until then, let me drink my coffee, drop my little bombs, and then I'll go off to work. Anyway, is this anything more than a hobby to you guys? Why not, sticks and stones, huh? A little harshness is ok, surely I can take it. What is this, you demand high-society politeness? Instead of driving me away for my generalizations and accusations on the level I'm working on, why don't you work on driving away the bad meme-spreaders like, um, the little Jew thing going on, or, um the political quietism spread by the influence of new-age thinking? Or am I, the lonely outgunned little marxist, the greatest threat to the depth-level of this board? Why can't you see me for who I am, and take these little heresys like a man? Hey, maybe even run w/ them a little for once? I'm not disrupting your great efforts at social change by challenging your "alternative" gospel, am I? I assure you my motives are pure. Spend some time to consider the actual truths in my arguments a little. And trust that my experience is real and reflects a general reality that is widespread, not just in the 'hood so to speak. Dreamsend, you are a master at rhetoric. (But I'd like to see you hold your own in, say a sophisticated Marxist discussion board. I don't doubt you'd do well, but you might not be so sure of yourself if you didn't have the "little people" cheering you on from the sidelines). You effectively manipulate "the rules of logic" to stymie inquiry into any opinion that is not as well-stated as yours. That doesn't make you RIGHT. Nor does stating my opinion, forcefully "dropping bombs", make me right either. And it's on me to consider the other side, and believe me, I did and do. I'm reading your posts. Mine haven't been as well-stated, so the truth you don't have to consider. You are not considering my side fairly at all. I used to believe in all those things like paganism and free schools. I'm sorry about your daughter, and I don't expect you to sacrifice her to the "public good". But the fact that just because she is experiencing what we all have experienced to a degree or another, doesn't change the basic pooints I was making. I admit it is a tough one. What's a parent (who can afford it) to do?. I'm glad to see your toughing it out though. Believe me, she'll probably be better off for it. I went to both private and public schools, and I can tell you my experience in the private schools confirmed my worst ideas about the wealthy, and my time in public schools was the greatest thing that ever happened to my (social) education, even if I did end up dropping out. Yeah, I don't even have a complete high-school education, not to mention college. I'm entirely "self"-taught. But I read a book non-fiction every three days, and run my own energy-intensive business (gasp!), and research extensively, and produce local media, and participate in political activism. Now I've tread into another realm, and it's unproven and unsteady ground and I'm the wrong (intellectual) man for the job. But each time I cite good examples, and real truths, you focus on the soft parts, on my frustration, on my style, - what's easy - and ignore the hardest-hitting points. I may be a less-sophisticated debater than you, but I know it's more real compared to the "where" that you're defending (although I get the feeling, maybe wrong, that the "where" you are defending is not really the "where" where you are at - and that 's why I get off calling you a sophist - yeah, I'm saying "shame on you, dreamsend, for being so smart yet being so ughh- something [c'mon, you tell me smart guy] at the same time) and that just pisses you off to no end now, doesn't it) We can see you are a very intelligent person. The speed at which you respond to these posts in such detail is amazing, and tells me at the very least that you got a good education, (and have alot of free time). But, as I said in a recent post, so were the scientists on the Manhattan Project. Being intelligent is one thing - being smart, having common-sense, is entirely another. I know I am hitting something with you, otherwise why keep responding? I just wish you would apply as much of your smarts as you apply constructing hard-hitting arguments against my little bombs to really challenging your own opinions more. Don't just dismiss what I am getting at, however crudely, here. You know it's one big point I'm arguing that I haven't even figured out yet. Of course the Witch discussion was deep, but not deep enough, (and so unfinished), unfortunately, as I often do, I lost it and went off on a rant that I thiought would be more back-door. I know you, and I see you better than you see me from your background as you describe it. Your last response in that thread really touched me in a deep way. Believe me, I am not the person (I think)you think I am. Your reversion to accusing me of sectarianism and equating me w/ the RCP-types is way off base. Think pragmatism, principal, and parapollitically aware - and apply that to everything. Does that sound like ULTRA-LEFT? In fact, I'm trying to fight the influence of groups like ANSWER (see my other posts). I could use your help buddy. I grant you, my background is unique, as are my views. I would suggest if you want to move forward you start to accept heresy from your own peeps. Robert: consider why "Kyrgyzstan" has such as stong edu system. Might it have something to do w/ socialism, i.e.:PUBLIC FREE education, perhaps? The Washington Times quotes approvingly a fucking Fulbright Scholar saying it's because the Muslim world is undergoing an enlightenment. Yeah right. The background you describe confirms to me you would have underlying racist views that are influencing your thinking on a macro-level. I obviously come from the city, and I know someone who has driven a cab for that long, or owned a store in the ghetto or something, would be hard-pressed not to be a little bit prejudiced. Sorry 'bout the judgements...

by **robertdreed** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:42 pm

"...the background you describe..." ??? proldic, you've read practically nothing about me, and know practically nothing of my experience. You seem to feel that my membership in a "group classification" provides sufficient explanation of my experience and views that they can safely be dismissed, rather than addressed. You don't even know my attitudes toward black people. Guess what, I don't have just one. There are more of them out there than that. That's the way I think- not dumbing myself down by resorting to some vulgar Marxist shorthand, when bereft of other argument. "I obviously come from the city, and I know someone who has driven a cab for that long, or owned a store in the ghetto or something, would be hard-pressed not to be a little bit prejudiced." Why do you say that? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 7/26/05 3:50 pm

Obsessing About Conspiracy

Obsessing About Conspiracy

Re: Obsessing About Conspiracy

John Taylor Gatto

Brilliant take on Sheeple Academy ...

Gatto in the real world

Re: Gatto in the real world

Gatto

schools

proldic...

quick, where's Illich

Excuse the source...

more Illich clarity

Illich...

I'm a frustrated and way out of my league

Re: I'm a frustrated and way out of my league

Who is online