The GOP War On Knowledge…or how the skids are being greased for America’s decline and fall.

[babylonsister]

The GOP War On Knowledge…or how the skids are being greased for America’s decline and fall.
Thomas Levenson


I’ve got a backlog of stupid and dangerous ideas and claims out there I want to blog about — one of the nice things about being a self-selected watchdog for duplicity and useful ignorance on the web means I’ll never lack for targets — but I want to highlight a theme that links a lot of what I’m raging about these days.

That would be the escalation in the Republican and right wing’s Thirty Years War on the idea of knowledge and the significance of expertise in public life. You can see it everywhere these days, and I’ll be blogging over the next several days about the latest forays in this from all the usual suspects in this, from the incomparable (and I don’t mean in a good way) George Will, to that genial tribute to mediocrity in high places, David Brooks.

Those two — and many others — share this particular incoherence: they stake their claim to authority through an assertion of a peculiar kind of expertise, in particular, the ability to interpret technical knowledge and to divine social patterns, while at the same time decrying the authority of the more specialized skills that produce facts and interpretations with which they disagree.

More simply: no one knows anything except me.

The animating motive behind such bathos is not simply self-aggrandizement (though that is surely a feature and not a bug). Rather it is aimed at discrediting genuine expertise, actual specialized knowledge and/or craft skills. Both men (and many others) are actively and overtly trying to reclaim power for an aristocracy of birth, institutions, or certain interests, and hence find claims of authority independent of unearned descent or association a deep threat.

more...

http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/the-gop-war-on-knowledge-or-how-the-skids-are-being-greased-for-americas-decline-and-fall/

[Craftsman]

1. Considering the cuts to the space program proposed by the administration

we are losing room to talk. One of the greatest errors of this country was stopping the job and knowledge creation engine that was NASA in the 1970's. Now we are repeating this error.

[babylonsister]

2. I think there are more fruitful programs to dump money into than NASA,

but that's my opinion.

[Craftsman]

6. The Apollo Program

has returned over $9 in economic developement for every $1 spent. Velcro, microchips are just 2 of the inventions that were eveloped for NASA. Obama has turned his back on science and engineering, we need jobs and inovation to get teh economyh moving again NASA provides that. Hopefully congress will not cut the funds.

[mbperrin]

7. Solar panels, medical detection equipment of all sorts, all microtechnology,

lots more. I would think that it would be much higher than $9 per dollar after all.

The truth is, even if there were nothing to learn from being in space (and there is), it would have been worth the program just for the solutions to leaving the earth for a while and returning alive.

Want to know the difference between our standard of living and the Russians? The Russians developed big boosters quickly, didn't need miniaturization. Later, when we could build big boosters, too, they were packed with equipment for much higher returns on knowledge per flight.

Reducing NASA is one of the dumbest moves. Ever.

[Craftsman]

9. Agreed to the nth degree.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Thank you.

K&R

[handmade34]

4. quoting Ogden Nash

Seeing Eye to Eye is believing

...I believe that people believe what they believe they
believe.

When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not
because it is a truth or an untruth that they
reject it.
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the
first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and
refuse to inspect it.

Likewise when they embrace a truth or an untruth it
is not for either its truth or its mendacity,
But simply because they have believed it all along
and therefore regard the embrace as a tribute to
their own fair-mindedness and sagacity.

These are enlightened days in which you can get hot
water and cold water out of the same spigot,
And everybody has something about which they are proud
to be broad-minded but they also have other
things about which you would be wasting your
breath if you tried to convince them that they
were a bigot.

And I have no desire to get ugly,
But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a
bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only
result of the pressure of facts upon it is to
close it more snugly....

[snot]

5. I agree in general.

In the years since the 60's, conservatives have made deliberate, successful efforts to eviscerate effective media and education.

Even much of NPR now seems to think exploring a topic means having journalists interview each other.

Our main hope re- the media, the internet, has already been considerably undermined; and the destruction of public education is proceeding apace (see info assembled at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7802599) -- all with virtually no notice in the media.

"A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking."
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

[Dr.Phool]

8. Our local PBS affiliate in Tampa, WEDU in Tampa is just as bad.

In 2006, they hosted debates with the congressional candidates against each other. If one side decided not to show up, the full hour for the debate was spent interviewing the other candidate. If you don't show up, you lose.

In 2008, they decided to get all the candidates, from all the races together, and give them 3 minutes each to speak. Then two ass clown political reporters sat around for the next couple of hours, discussing the candidates.

Just the way to keep the electorate informed, ass clowns.

[Igel]

10. I agree in general, and completely disagree.

It's handy to be able to say, "A pox on both their houses."

While we've had a massive assault on education, education spending has soared. Where it's soared the most we see fairly small gains. Where it's soared the least we see small gains. The correlation is slight, but people insist on pointing out non-average examples to make their case. The side for more funding points to schools with more funding and vastly increased scores and schools with scant increased funding and no or negative increase; the side for less funding points to schools with vastly increased funding and no or negative increase in scores, but points to schools with small funding increases and greatly increased scores.

Or they say that scores aren't the point, after all, we just need to increase (or not increase) school funding, increase teacher qualification, increase administrator qualification, revise the curriculum, introduce new discipline models. Or something else.

The repubs are horrible. They claim special expertise and claim that the only reason we're not in an educational nirvana is that we haven't applied their expertise or applied it incorrectly. The dems are wonderful. They claim special expertise and claim that the only reason we're not in an educational nirvana is that we haven't applied their expertise or applied it incorrectly. Of course, "wonderful" and "horrible" have the same meaning, sort of a staticky, white-noise-ish kind of sound.

When I was an undergrad, I looked at education. I was impressed by all the scholars saying that now, for the first time--and in the nick of time--they had truly achieved a scientific, rigorous understanding of how to teach. Everything they thought they knew from the '60s and '70s was bunkum. That was in '80. I read a bit, decided that I didn't want to stay in school long enough to be certified. Then when I took ed classes in '89 and '90, I heard that now, for the first time--and in the nick of time--they had truly achieved a scientific, rigorous understanding of how to teach. Everything they thought they knew from the '70s and '80s was bunkum. But I got sidetracked into grad studies and didn't apply to the ed program.

Then I went into an ed program. I heard that now, for the first time--and in the nick of time--they had truly achieved a scientific, rigorous understanding of how to teach. Everything they thought they knew from the '80s and '90s was bunkum. We had a new methodology that will finally make all kids, though they dig ditches for a living, trilingual in discussing the use of tensors in cladistic analysis of genomes. Uh-huh.

Now, these are the tenured education-school faculty. They're almost entirely left of center and have been since before the '60s. Many are "Democratic" simply because there's no other major party to the left of the DP. They claim special expertise, and claim that the only reason we're not in an educational nirvana is that we haven't applied their expertise or applied it incorrectly--however today's expertise may deny the use of last decade's expertise. They point to non-average examples--where a specially selected, monitored, or supervised cohort of teachers, given specially prepared materials and enlisting a lot of special help from the parents (who dive in headfirst, because they're getting lots of special attention and outreach, and feel important), does great things. Oddly, all the "bunkum" from the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and the '00s achieve pretty much the same end results with completely different methodologies and views; liberal and conservative, English-only and two-way bilingual immersion, all the test cases lead to about the same results if you have a big enough sample or if you have a small enough sample. Largely because they achieve the same immediate affect while being developed and the same failings in widespread application: (lack of) motivation, effective discipline, worthwhile supervision, adequate feedback, appropriately high parental involvement, and a feeling on the part of students and parents that learning is important and worthwhile whether in Compton or in Beverly Hills. New buildings, new texts, new methodologies all dick around the edges of educational achievement when applied outside the research hothouse, but that's where everybody looks.

As far as I can see, the assault from the Right has been fairly meaningless, as has been their special expertise. On the other hand, all the help from the Left has been fairly meaningless, as has been their expertise. In fact, if you replace "assault" with "help" (and vice-versa) it alters the semantic content of the sentences not one whit.

Now we're facing yet a new, fashionable, hip trend that will again--as did ed reform in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00--totally refashion what we think of education as being, make public schools into an educational wonderland: 21st Century Skills. It will take massive amounts of funding for research, for teacher training, for construction. Odds are it'll have no effect, but will amply achieve its goals: Tenure, research funding, school board elections, raising school administrator salaries, and buttress claims that even more money has to go for schools.

As for the massive assault, I keep wondering about that. But this post is already too long, even by my bloated standards.

[bertman]

12. I've often wondered about the education system you describe, Igel. After seeing all of

the modernizing of education that has taken place since I graduated from high school in '65, I assumed that we are now graduating scholars the likes of which the world has never known. Then I read that we are sliding farther down the scale of whose population is well educated in the world and I hear that we still cannot get our minority students up to the not-so-great testing levels of our main population of (white) students and I wonder WTF!

So, where's the disconnect? I'd like to hear your opinion on that.

[yurbud]

11. too bad Obama's sec of education is pursuing GOP K12 policires

Privatization through charter schools and endless testing instead of giving teachers freedom to do their jobs and smaller class sizes.