OlsonOnline

School board committee "cautions" Winterhaven whiners

Sure, the committee recommended a year's reprieve for Winterhaven in the proposed move to Clark Elementary in outer Southeast Portland.

But it also "warned" the miffed Winterhaven parents that's it's Vicki Phillip' decision, and hers alone.  It then slapped them with these cautions:

" 'There has been a kind of Lone Rangerism on the part of the Winterhaven community,' committee member Doug Morgan said.

"Committee member David Wynde told Winterhaven parents that he sees no mandate for magnet programs to be centrally located.

"Both Wynde and Morgan cited Winterhaven's low populations of students other than whites and students eligible for subsidized lunches. Morgan asked the school to think about how it could attract a more diverse population."

I normally don't agree with Morgan's board stances, but I gotta love his "Lone Rangerism" characterization of the Winterhaven community.  Until he elaborates, I translate the term this way -- "elitism".

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In other school news, a new blog I came across today suggests a plan for rebuilding Portland Schools:  Put Halliburton to work!

"These are just a few of the 847 schools being rebuilt and/or rennovated in Iraq [by Halliburton]. Altogether, these schools will hold 330,000 students, for an average of 389 per school. Ironically, that puts their average below the Portland threshhold of 400-600–the minimum enrollment number a school must hit in order not to be a target for closure."

Great idea from a generally apolitical blog.  And another reason to oppose the war in Iraq, Bush's proposed escalation  of the war, and the continued squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars in a country far, far away.

We can put the money to far better use here at home. 

Bush's mea culpa?

Hardly.

Here's the admission of responsibility:

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

The dependent clause --"Where mistakes have been made..."-- is a carefully calculated passive structure which effectively distances Bush from the botched  invasion and occupation of Iraq.  It's like saying, "The lamp got broken", rather than the straighforward admission, "I broke the lamp."

Moreover, the "where" of the clause sounds suspiciously like "if", leaving some doubt as to whether Bush is actually acknowledging any errors, tactical or strategic, in the conduct of the war. 

His fundamental "mistake", however, was the decision to invade Iraq in the first place.
You can be sure that Bush will express no mea culpa there.

Locally, Russ Dondero had this to say about the Bush speech:

"The central point of the so-called experts, all who acknowledged that the 'surge' strategy is high risk with no guarantee of success, is that the focus is to stabilize the political dynamics within Baghdad and Anwar province, neighborhood by neighborhood with a 24/7, as opposed to drive by, presence of US and Iraqi troops.
    
"Such a concept was tried and failed in Vietnam - the so-called strategic hamlet experiment.  So now we have a strategic neighborhood policy it seems. But the political dynamics which energize the insurgency and civil war in Iraq cannot be changed by such a policy."

And Jeff Alworth wrote

"...that temporarily bumping up the troops will do nothing except kill more Americans and delay the inevitable. ...

"If Bush can't let go of his meta-fantasy about the role of Iraq in the war on terror, he's also not willing to give up his fantasy about joining Roosevelt in the pantheon of American royalty. His vanity pollutes whatever purer intention he might have taken into the war, and it's indecent for him to imagine the rich reward of history now, when American kids and Iraqi civilians are dying for it."

Yeah.

Slacktivist

What's a slacktivist?  I dunno.  Probably a cross between a "slacker" and an "activist".  But whatever else it might be, it's for sure a great blog.

Here's slacktivist on Bush's troop surge --and Vietnam:

"The idea of a troop surge -- it's never clear what these new troops would be doing -- arises from the enduring myths about Why We Lost Vietnam. We coulda/shoulda won, the myth says, if we hadn't lost our nerve, or if we'd committed more troops, or more bombs, or moremoremore of, you know, that stuff we coulda won with if we'd only used more of it."

What more could we have done?  For one, what we did in the Phillipines:

"Trouble with insurgents in a village? Kill all the adult males. Create gulags and ghettos for the pacified civilian population. Kill 50 civilians for every one of your own soldiers slain. It's not pretty, but it is effective."

In short?  Commit

"More crimes against humanity."

Just don't call it that. 

Curious about that photo to the right?  Here's the explanation:

A Brave Feat of Arms

Washington, D. C., March 9th, 1906.

Major-General Leonard Wood,

Commanding the Philippine Division, U.S.A.

I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brave feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag.

Theodore Roosevelt.

 

Some are too stubborn (or stupid) to learn the lessons of Vietnam

Forgive the harsh language, but chauvinism and ideology tend to dull the mind and blind the eye.  It astounds me that some can still speak of "losing" Vietnam --and by implication Iraq-- due to a lack of political "will".  (See Rich Lowry's latest column, or this one on Democratic "defeatism".)

The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, while not perfect, are clear.  What Bush has been saying about troop levels in Iraq --"when they (the Iraqis) stand up, we'll stand down"-- is precisely what Nixon said about Vietnam in 1969:

"The day the South Vietnamese can take over their own defense is in sight. Our goal is a total American withdrawal from Vietnam. We can and we will reach that goal through our program of Vietnamization if necessary."

It took five more years to achieve the goal of "total American withdrawal" from Vietnam.

Our "defeat" in Vietnam, I've argued, turned out to be a good thing.  Our defeat in Iraq --a fait accompli, regardless of what you read in the right wing press and what you'll hear tonight from George W. Bush -- could also turn out to be fortuitous, if only to finally convince saber rattlers that war as an instrument of foreign policy has its limits, and should never supplant diplomacy to further whatever geopolitical interests America sees as important.

The Bush doctrine of preemptive war should be buried along with the hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq.

Henry Kissinger, as evidenced by this memo, viewed troop withdrawal as "salted peanuts" for the American people.  He may be giving the same advice to Bush, in effect urging him to learn the lesson of Vietnam --the wrong lesson, unfortunately.

In a speech yesterday, Sen. Ted Kennedy, argued that

"We campaigned as Democrats in 2006.  And we must govern as Democrats in 2007."

He also directly linked Iraq to Vietnam:

"There was no military solution to that war. But we kept trying to find one anyway. In the end, 58,000 Americans died in the search for it.

"Echoes of that disaster are all around us today. Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam.

"As with Vietnam, the only rational solution to the crisis is political, not military. Injecting more troops into a civil war is not the answer. Our men and women in uniform cannot force the Iraqi people to reconcile their differences."

To those who accuse Kennedy --or me-- of isolationism, I say that diplomatic engagement is quite the opposite.  It is the only "rational" solution to our problems in the Middle East.

 

Home schooling, standardized tests, and the abrogation of free speech rights at Jefferson High

Not that I disagree with home-schooling parents' disdain of standardized tests --I too think that such tests are inadequate measures of student learning.  But on the other hand, if public schools must be held "accountable" with test scores, why not home schools? 

The state has a legitimate interest in demanding that school-aged children be provided an education sufficient to make them functioning members of a civil society.  That's why we have compulsory education laws and truant officers (or at least we did.)  Are we supposed to accept a parent's word that the children they keep at home are actually learning something of value as opposed to, say, merely being locked safely away in some back room?

Home-school parents plead that they're providing a private education for their children.  Maybe so.  But private schools, whose students have no testing mandates, should also be held to the same accountabliity requirements as public schools.  If the local parish elementary school wants us, the citizens of the state, to believe that it provides its students an adequate education, it should have to provide evidence of it.

Just like its neighboring public school.
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In other news from the Trib, it appears that Vicki Phiilips' mistake of a principal at Jefferson, with help from district mucky-muck Cynthia Harris, has imposed a "gag order" on teachers to prevent them from talking to reporters. 

That's real educational leadership.  I'm sure that Jefferson teachers will now be even more inspired to jump through Leon Dudley's idiotic hoops. 

Here's an idea:  Why doesn't the Trib's Jennifer Anderson (author of the excellent home schooling piece)  rush over to Jeff right now and talk to some of those chastened teachers? 

Are you listening Jennifer?  It was undoubtedly your article that prompted the gag order.  We got us a bona fide First Amendment issue right here in P-Town. 

Once more, American complicity in Saddam's crimes

That means all of his crimes --except the one he was hanged for. 

Those crimes include the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja in March, 1998, which was used repeatedly by George W. Bush to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq --a sovereign country-- and the deposal of Saddam Hussein.

Responses to my initial post accuse me of using the term "complicity" too cavalierly.  And of blaming America first. 

Here's what I know.  Or, more precisely, what others purport to know to support the charge of American complicity in Saddam's crimes. 

First, syndicated Canadian journalist --and Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern history-- Gwynne Dyer:

"With all of Saddam’s other crimes to choose from, why on earth would you hang him for executing the people suspected of involvement in the Dujail plot?

It’s because the US was not involved in that one. It was involved in the massacre of the Iraqi Communists (the US Central Intelligence Agency gave Saddam their membership lists).

It was implicated up to its ears in Saddam’s war against Iran — to the point of arranging for Iraq to be supplied with the chemicals to make poison
gas... ."

According to Dyer, the U.S. was "complicit" in supplying the materials used to gas the Kurds in 1988, which occurred immediately after the cessation of hostilities with Iran.  In another article written last March, Dyer wrote that to try Saddam for any of his "big" crimes

"...like the wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait and the massacres that accompanied them, would have implicated the United States in one way or another."

Jon Wiener in The Nation uses similar language to explain the hanging of Saddam on a relatively "minor" charge :

"Saddam Hussein's execution on Dec. 30 prevents him from being put on trial for his most serious crimes – genocide against the Kurds and the use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war."

Last February, Paul Rockwell provided the specifics:

"Last month the Iraq Weapons Inventory included a long list of Western and U.S. companies (Union Carbide, Honeywell, Dupont, SpectraPhysics, Bechtel are some mentioned in The Nation, 1/13/2003) that supplied Saddam with deadly and dual-use material. Hoping to disguise its own culpability in Iraq's past war crimes, the U.S. suppressed the list, but the dossier was leaked to a German newspaper, Die Tageszeitung."

He goes on to say:

"The main facts are no longer in dispute. In violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (which outlaws chemical warfare), the Reagan-Bush   administration authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, from anthrax to bubonic plague, throughout the '80s. In 1982, while Saddam Hussein constructed his machinery of war, Reagan and Bush removed Iraq from the State Department list of terrorist states."

To me, that's "complicity." 

American complicity in Saddam's crimes

Peter Galbraith writes in today's Oregonian that Saddam's rushed execution "denied justice" to many of his victims, including the target of his well-documented genocide, the Kurdish population of Northern Iraq. 

Galbraith should know.  He helped uncover the atrocity with "14 tons of documents" handed over to him in 1991 by Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish President of the current Iraqi government.

But he also notes that the failure to try Saddam for his crimes against the Kurds prevented the embarassing disclosure of American complicity in those crimes.  Galbraith says that a Kurdish trial "...promised to shed light on a deeply amoral period in western diplomacy where the major powers, including the United States, chose to overlook genocide for strategic and economic reasons." 

For that reason, as I wrote recently, the rush to judgment may have been an intentional effort to protect these culpable Americans:

• Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan's envoy to Iraq and Saddam Hussein during the war with Iran.
• Colin Powell, who, along with Rumsfeld "...played down the significance of Iraq's use of poison gas, including... against the Kurds."
• George H.W. Bush, who "...doubled US financial assistance to Iraq" after the gassing of the Kurds.
• Dick Cheney, who apparently encouraged the increased assistance to Iraq.

The rushed execution of Saddam Hussein may have indeed denied justice to his many victims.  But the silence surrounding America's collusion with Saddam by many of the same people who took us to war in Iraq, at the cost of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, is also a grave injustice. 

And one that can yet be remedied. 

 

Winterhaven whiners and other school issues

It occurs to me that the response to my rants about NCLB narrowing the curriculum by focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic might go something like this:

"If you can't read --or do math-- how can you expect to learn civics, history, science, or literature?"

That makes sense to those who buy into the skill-based, or sequential, model of learning, the model that stresses phonics as the foundation for literacy.  But "progressive" educators say that's not how kids learn.  They believe that:

• Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
• Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must be understood in the context of wholes.

That's a good rebuttal to the Portland district's drive to standardize the curriculum.

Kids start learning well before they enter school by trying to make sense of the world around them.  In other words (and I surely do not mean phonetically sounded out "words"), they "search for meaning". 

Which is why I believe that science, history, civics, and literature are wonderful vehicles for teaching reading --and math.  Even before kids enter a classroom.  And, perhaps more importantly, especially for poor and disadvantaged students, after they begin formal schooling.

Educational fundamentalists dismiss "progressive" educational ideas as new-fangled, faddish, and unproven.  But they're wrong.  "Constructivism", the fancy word for the learning theory mentioned, has deep roots in philosophy and educational psychology.  There's nothing new or faddish about it, unless you're inclined to dismiss Jean Piaget as a quack.

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Meanwhile, back in the real world of educational politics, it appears that many "angry" Winterhaven families may go elsewhere if the science and math magnet is relocated to outer Southeast.  Just exactly "where" they'd go is open to speculation.  Hopefully back to their neighborhod schools.

Why the anger?  They say it's the long commute.  I say it's the price they pay for "choice".  All magnets and focus options, in stark contrast to neighborhod schools, require a "commute" for most of their students.

But the underlying issue is socioeconomic.  The Brooklyn neighborhood, Winterhaven's current location, used to be a "poverty pocket" back in the late 60's and 70's.  Now its an up and coming yuppified residential area, a desirable place to live, not too far from other desirable residential areas like the near West side, Eastmoreland, Sellwood, Colonial Heights, and Ladd's Addition.

Not so the Clark Elementary neighborhood in outer Southeast.  The telling bit of information in the Oregonian article is that while the majority of Winterhaven students live in the adjacent "three ZIP codes",

"No students live in Clark's zip code."

That speaks volumes about the economic stratification caused by Portland's love affair with school choice. 

Bush pushes for the reauthorization of NCLB

I stumbled across this blurb in today's O:

"President Bush plans to meet with lawmakers next week to jump start talks over the renewal of the No Child Left Behind edcuation law... ."

Of course the 22,000 plus signers of the petition urging Congress not to reauthorize NCLB, and that includes me, sincerely hope that Bush, the self-described 'C' student with little evident interest in learning and scant intellectual curiosity, fails in his efforts to persuade the Democratic majority to back another version of NCLB. 

There is no evidence to show that NCLB has achieved even its own narrow goals of improving the literacy and numeracy of the nation's public school students.  In fact, recent studies point to its failure,  unless you factor in what some consider the real purpose of NCLB --discrediting our 'failed' public education system.  In that regard, its success has been overwhelming. 

Richard Rothstein and Rebecca Jacobson, writing in the Phi Delta kappan, point to another unintended consequence of NCLB --the law "...has begun to shift how we think about what schools should do":

"Thus, although NCLB aims to narrow the achievement gap in math and reading, its unintended consequence is to widen the gap in other curricular areas."

Rothstein and Jacobson include in their piece this observation from retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor about NCLB's impact on one of the bedrock functions of American public education:

"...as civic learning has been pushed aside, society has neglected a fundamental purpose of American education, putting the health of our democracy at risk."

You can't blame Bush for pushing NCLB to the fore.  The education bill is popularly perceived --albeit erroneously-- as one of his successes, perhaps his only success. 

What else has he got?  The record is otherwise pretty dismal.  Even, considering Iraq, disastrous.

Bad Rap

It all started with this post by local celebrity blogger Jack Bogdanski, which in turn prompted this response from the Mercury, followed by this one about a supposed "jihad" --Jack's word-- by the Merc against Jack's blog. 

The way I see it, what it all comes down to is this --an aversion to, and demonization of, hip-hop music.  And hip-hop --or "gansta"-- culture.  I know, because I've been there.  Maybe I still am.

A couple of the early comments on Jack's post --"Happy New Year, bang, you're dead"-- take dead aim (yeah, pun intended) at hip-hop music:

"The 'victim' had a gangsta-style mug shot... ."
******

"I think that these hip-hop bars are to blame."
******

"Oprah, of all people, says most inner-city kids hate school, hate learning and only wanna be gangstas with the newest iPod hanging from their necks.

"That's why Oprah refuses to visit inner-city schools in the USA because all the kids wanna do is smoke blunts, beat their womyn and sling baggies all day long. ...

"You know hip-hop. That's for singers who can't, uh, sing."
******

"Anyway, it sounds like this guy had it coming."

Jack didn't write those words, but his post invited them.  In fact, much of what Jack writes seems intended to inflame his readers who predictably respond with intolerant, and often idiotic, remarks.  Even though he deleted that first "racist" comment, Jack bears some responsibility for setting the tone for what followed.

My son, a 23-year-old, listens to nothing but rap.  He calls rapper Nas --born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, the son of a jazz musician --  a brilliant lyricist, a poet.  Same for Jay-Z.  And maybe he's right.  It's a generational fault line, much like the stark demarcation between the soft pop of Pat Boone or Dinah Shore and the hard rock and roll that emerged in the mid '50's.   Some may recall the revulsion of the older generation to the hip-swiveling Elvis Presley. 

To me music is melody, so I'm not particularly enamored of rap.  But I must admit, after listening to a fair amount of it, that rap is genuine and gritty and real.  It's the protest music of our time, confronting the lingering racism and economic disparities that are real issues to a large number of Americans, especially dark-skinned Americans. 

To dismiss it as dangerous or culturally destructive is both wrong and beside the point.  Like rock and roll, hip-hop is quite likely here to stay.