[Mb-civic] America's Real Achilles Heel ...&... No Child Left Behind = Class War

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-12/31feffer.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
America's Real Achilles Heel January 09, 2006
By John Feffer 

These days you can get from Seoul to the southeastern tip of South Korea
in less than three hours, thanks to a sleek new bullet train supported by
public investment. The South Korean government has made information
technology a national priority as it works to become the global leader in
broadband access. Government investment in research and development in
such fields as biotech and nanotech has sharply increased. South Korea is
not satisfied with being the 11th largest economy in the world. It wants
to be the major economic hub of Northeast Asia and compete head to head
with China and Japan.

The Asian model of economic development, which seemed to collapse during
the financial crisis of nearly a decade ago, is alive and well. The South
Koreans know an economic secret that laissez-faire enthusiasts just can't
get into their heads. The government can and must play a major role in
fostering economic development. Don't expect the corporate world to
shoulder these responsibilities, because short-term profit clouds their
vision. Only public investment into infrastructure - trains, communication
systems, research facilities, schools and universities - produces
equitable and sustainable growth.

The South Korean approach is far from perfect. There is still too much
unhealthy collusion between government and the business sector. And there
has been great pressure on South Korea from the outside - the United
States, the World Trade Organization - to "open up" its economy. But what
enabled the South Korean economy to rise from the level of Uganda in the
early 1960s to its current global position makes as much economic sense
today as it did then.

Now compare South Korea's approach to that of the United States.

I live in Washington, DC. Here, the subway escalators often don't work, so
commuters have to walk up and down long flights of stairs. The public
schools are overcrowded and dangerous. Medical care for those without
health insurance is either terrible or terribly expensive. In the poorer
sections of the city, there are abandoned houses, crumbling streets, and
too many guns. The rates of murder and infant mortality are appallingly
high.In many ways, the capital of the United States is a showcase city,
with its world-class museums and monuments, impressive government
buildings, extensive parks, and opulent neighborhoods like Georgetown. But
the average tourist sees only this small part of the city.

Like so many American cities, the overall condition of Washington, DC
reveals a dirty secret about the United States. Despite its claim to being
the world's only superpower, America has an Achilles Heel: crumbling
infrastructure. In 2005, declaring that one third of American roads are in
major disrepair and nearly one-third of all bridges are structurally
deficient, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S.
infrastructure a failing "D" grade.

Compared to South Korea's high-speed trains, the U.S. passenger train
system is falling apart and always on the brink of bankruptcy. No one uses
the trains if they have to get somewhere on time.

Or look at education. South Korea, along with Japan and Finland, scored at
the top of the recent OECD rankings in reading, mathematical, and
scientific literacy. U.S. students scored in the middle of the pack on
these tests. Despite spending more on education than most countries in the
world, the United States finds itself with a polarized system of top-notch
private schools that attract students from all over the world and
underfunded public schools that serve the poor and recent immigrants.
Education expert Jonathan Kozol declares that the America's school system
is full of "savage inequalities." In other words, it is not simply the
quantity of investment that is important, but the quality and the equality
of investment.

The United States has long prided itself on its technological advances:
the personal computer, the Internet, biotechnology. But even here,
Americans should be worried. While countries like South Korea are
investing huge sums into information technology so that all citizens can
become netizens, the United States is falling behind in both research and
development and in distributing the benefits to the population. Half of
all government investment in R & D is monopolized by the Pentagon, and the
civilian portion is forecast to decline by another 10 percent by 2009.

It is therefore no surprise that manufacturing has virtually disappeared
from the U.S. economy, falling from 23 percent in the 1980s to only 12.7
percent today. Without public investment in transportation and
communications and research, manufacturing shrivels up.

Wealthy Americans can pretend that they don't live in this crumbling
United States. They don't use public transportation. They don't send their
children to public schools. They live in safe neighborhoods, alarm their
cars and houses, and pay for top-notch health care. Their jobs are not
outsourced to China.

But even the wealthy can remain ignorant of the Achilles Heel of
infrastructure for just so long. As America's infrastructure continues to
deteriorate so will U.S. standing in the world. Without proper education,
the majority of American students will be unable to support a world-class
economy. Without sufficient public investment to support smart growth,
businesses will continue to relocate overseas.

The experience of Hurricane Katrina is a cautionary example. Because the
U.S. government cut funding needed to strengthen the levees in New
Orleans, the city was overwhelmed with water. While the poor suffered
disproportionately, the rich too were forced to flee the city.

If the U.S. government continues to pour money into the war in Iraq and
ignores the educational, social, and physical infrastructural needs of the
country, it will face the equivalent of dozens of Hurricane Katrinas in
the future. It's been over twenty years since Americans looked at the
Asian model of development for inspiration. It's definitely time for a
second look.

John Feffer (www.johnfeffer.com) is the author of North Korea, South Korea
(Seven Stories).

----------

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
By Greg Palast

New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York
will take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind program.
 The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.

Try it yourself.  This is from the state's actual practice test. Ready,
class?

"The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena
won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the
first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the
Williams girls could not seem to lose that year."

And here's one of the four questions:

"The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at
doubles tennis. This probably means when they played

  "A   two matches in one day
  "B   against each other
  "C   with two balls at once
  "D   as partners"

OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat: there's
nothing else about "doubles" in the text.)


My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students
live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.

There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East
Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In
Forest Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have
nearly as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.

Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the
question about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never
played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours
every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro?

Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of
wealth accumulation?

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next
question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not
make this up):

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In
this sentence, a club is probably a

  "F   baseball bat
  "G   tennis racquet
  "H   tennis court
  "J    country club"

Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is
a, "place where people meet." Yes, but WHICH people?

President Bush told us, " By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are
regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options
when schools are not performing." 

But there are no "better options."  In the delicious double-speak of class
war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed,
No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to
repeat the failure another year. 

I can 't say that Mr. Bush doesn' t offer  better options  to the kids
stamped  failed.   Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests,
their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the
law, to transfer to any successful school in their district.  You can' t
provide more opportunity than that.  But they don 't provide it, the law
promises it, without a single penny to make it happen.  In New York in
2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better
schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open. 

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students
eligible to transfer manage to do it.  Well, there' s always the Army. 
(That  option  did not go unnoticed:  No Child has a special provision
requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)

Hint:  When de-coding politicians ' babble, to get to the real agenda,
don't read their lips, read their budgets.   And in his last budget, our
President couldn' t spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents.  Mr.
Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of
primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the
nation's income -- just one-half of one-percent of America 's twelve
trillion dollar GDP -- for primary and secondary education.

President Bush actually requested less.  While Congress succeeded in
prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn' t mean the
extra cash actually gets to the students.  Fifteen states have sued the
federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on
schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No
Child Left.

There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better
uses for them.  The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt
down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a
burden, to educate.

No Child Left offers no  options  for those with the test-score mark of
Cain --  no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding.  Rather, it is
the new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's
loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap. 

Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners
without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to
produce the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale
Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and
pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order.

Class war dismissed.


**********
See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com
**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy. Read his investigative reports at
www.GregPalast.com


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