The American Dream Is Dead; Long Live the New Dream (Photo: get directly down / Flickr)The American Dream of upward mobility is dead, thanks to the neoliberal ministrations of capital and government. But a new dream could rise from the mess left by globalization, off-shoring and austerity. The continuation of the economic crisis of 2008 up to the present has driven home a social trend that has been evident since the late 1970s, the decline of what is usually called "the middle class" and the accompanying American Dream. The American Dream is the belief that if you work hard, if you are blessed with at least a modicum of ability and have a little luck, you can succeed. That is, you can rise in society no matter how humble your origin to something better in the way of material well-being, economic security, a settled life and social prestige. It is the dream of upward mobility for oneself, or at least for one's children. Fixing an Overaccumulation Crisis Globalization was "the fix" Witness the decline in entry level wages. Downward Mobility
What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart? Helsinki, Finland High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7. Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Mr.
Humanity Imperiled–The Path to Disaster by Noam Chomsky Image by Synne Tonidas via Flickr Dandelion Salad by Noam Chomskywww.tomdispatch.com June 4, 2013 What is the future likely to bring? Updated: added the videos June 12, 2013 Noam Chomsky – WHAT about the future – 01 infiniteinfiniteinfi·Jun 12, 2013 see Noam Chomsky: Wrecking Nature For Short-Term Profit + Q&A Helen Caldicott: Chernobyl: The Biggest Cover-Up In The History of Medicine If We Love Our Children, Why Are We Dooming Them? Spinning Out Of Control by Lesley Docksey The Last Possible Refuge by Tristan A. Robert Jensen: We Are All Apocalyptic Now: Moral Responsibilities in Crisis Times Noam Chomsky: Two Major Crises Looming: Nuclear War and Global Warming You Can Help Get the Word Out, Please Share
Is It Time We Threw Standardized Testing Out the Door? Dr. Mark Naison is involved in a movement he hopes will change the American education system. A professor of African-American studies and history at New York’s Fordham University, Naison wants to see less standardized tests in the classroom. “You should organize the school experience around what excites and energizes children—the arts, music, physical activity, hands-on science, collaborative learning—and do project-based assessment by teachers and school administrators, with standardized tests on a state or national level reduced to a minimum,” Naison told TakePart. He isn’t alone. At Seattle’s Garfield High School, for example, teachers took the bold step of voting unanimously in January to boycott a series of district-mandated tests. But it’s not just Seattle where protests are occurring. In Rhode Island, high school students dressed like zombies delivered a letter to Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee that criticized the use of an assessment exam as a requirement for graduation.
Transplanting Taxes from Corporations to the Rest of Us (Taxing Economics, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib)Today, corporate profits are setting all-time records while middle class families continue to struggle financially. These trends are intertwined. Whether you’ve clicked to send your tax forms to the IRS along the cyber-highway or dropped your return in the old-fashioned blue mailbox, you’ll be paying extra to cover the growing amount of taxes that the nation’s clever corporations are shunting onto individual taxpayers. Officially, the U.S. corporate tax rate stands at 35 percent, but in practice it’s far lower. In the 1950s, corporations paid nearly a third of the federal government’s bills. Consider Pfizer’s track record. Pfizer’s tax dodging prowess has earned it a gold medal in the sport, but it has also drawn unwanted attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The corporate offshore tax dodge that shifts $90 billion of tax expenses onto individual taxpayers this Tax Day is just that crazy.
The Benefits of Character Education - Jessica Lahey Jessica Lahey When I signed on to teach English at a core virtues school, I had no idea what I was in for. I nodded and smiled in my interview when the Headmaster explained the virtues curriculum, and I parried back with everything I thought she wanted to hear; how I could infuse my lessons on To Kill a Mockingbird with discussions about empathy and courage. I may have even quoted Atticus' line about walking around in someone else's skin. I figured I could tack on some of that quaint "virtue" stuff before getting to the real meat of the lesson, the academic stuff. And for the first year I taught at Crossroads Academy, that's pretty much what I did. I mean come on. Somewhere along the way, someone must have started dosing me with the character education Kool-Aid, because five years in, I have come to understand what real character education looks like and what it can do for children. American schools used to focus on character education and civic virtue.
Level of Income Growth for Most Americans Over Last 4 Decades Is Shockingly Low Income Growth for 90 Percent of Americans Over Last 4 Decades Averaged $59 Posted on Mar 25, 2013 If this viral video on wealth inequality in the U.S. wasn’t enough to convince you that something is very wrong with our economic system, then perhaps a new analysis of data that shows the disparity between income gains of the top 10 percent of taxpayers versus those of everyone else will. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who got his figures from an analysis of the latest IRS data by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, income grew a jaw-dropping $59 on average for the bottom 90 percent of Americans between 1966 and 2011 (adjusting the income for inflation, of course). To put that in perspective, Johnston says that if you were to plot the numbers on a chart, with $59 representing 1 inch, the line for the top 10 percent would go up more than 163 feet. (h/t Think Progress) —Posted by Tracy Bloom. More Below the Ad New and Improved Comments
Common Core In copying the response of Hart Research, I inadvertently copied only part of Guy Moyneaux’s comments. Here is his full response: TO:American Federation of Teachers FROM:Guy Molyneux, Hart Research Associates DATE:May 10, 2013 RE:Methodology for Common Core Survey Following are some facts about the methodology for AFT’s recent survey of AFT K-12 teachers on Common Core implementation that may help to answer the criticisms and questions raised by Mercedes Schneider. Schneider’s objections speak to two distinct questions: 1) does the survey reflect the views of AFT K-12 teachers? In fact, it is likely that a survey of all U.S. teachers would report results broadly similar to what we found among AFT members, for reasons explained below. • The survey employed a standard sampling methodology, used in countless surveys by many polling organizations. • A sample size of 800 teachers is appropriate and common. • The survey sample is demographically similar to the population of AFT teachers.
Why Aren't Americans Fighting Back? Rage in Red. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: _ambrown, Muffet) This is the big question, right? The answer is simple and plausible - but the explanation is a bit more complicated. "If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." All fighting is the same. The majority of Americans, unknowingly, are members of the working class, AKA the proletariat, and will be fighting for the kind of socialism in which sharing, cooperation, volunteerism, and wellness replace the drive for individual profits, competition, ego, and the desire for power over others. That accomplishment will prepare us for the next stage, which will fulfill most of the needs that we "earthlings" currently have. The capitalist class already knows who they are and what they are fighting for, and they are well aware of who their enemy is. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Scrap the MAP! | Solidarity with Seattle teachers boycotting the MAP test We’re #27! | occasional links & commentary The usual excuse, from mainstream economists and politicians, that the U.S. healthcare system should remain mostly in for-profit, private hands is because the outcomes of that system make it the best in the world. But a new study (published in the Journal of the American Medical Association) of the burden of diseases, injuries, and leading risk factors in the United States from 1990 to 2010 in comparison to the other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries reveals a quite different story. So how did we do compare to other countries? Not particularly well. Between 1990 and 2010, among the 34 countries in the OECD, the United States dropped from 18th to 27th in the age-standardized death rate. The United States dropped from 23rd to 28th for age-standardized years of life lost. In other words, the United States spends the most per capita on health care across all countries and falls below the mean for all OECD countries on most indicators.