Sunday, November 30, 2003
By Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Just a couple of generations ago, it probably seemed that there was a school board on every corner. Neighbors bumped into their board members in the grocery store, sat with them in church and debated with them about the football team across the backyard fence.
That was certainly the case in 1933, when there were about 127,000 school boards across the country.
Today, that number has shriveled to 15,000 as America has moved from having a school board for every political ward or school to electing boards that govern larger districts.
If you're Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, the disappearing school board could make you nervous. "In a democracy, school boards are the closest thing to the ground," ensuring that parents and other voters have an impact on public schools, Bryant said.
THE DISAPPEARING SCHOOL BOARD
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Martha Rial, Post-Gazette
When meetings get acrimonious, school board members can resemble the children they were elected to lead. Members of the Moon Area School Board had a relatively quiet meeting last week. But a session last month was marked by name-calling and shouting.
But if you're renowned conservative education researcher Chester Finn, you ask: Who cares?
"School boards are an aberration, an anachronism, an educational sinkhole," said Finn, former assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration. "Put this dysfunctional arrangement out of its misery."
Fertilized in ward politics a century ago, school boards were ubiquitous and had few real responsibilities. Today, the world of education has become much more complex.
While the earliest school boards generally had one duty -- finding teachers -- today's board members are asked to serve on committees that include budget and finance, buildings and construction, policy, technology, negotiations and personnel. At the same time, voters are increasingly apathetic and qualified board candidates are harder than ever to find.
That has more people asking: Do we really need school boards?
wande-
Surely I denied having any feminine side to be in touch with. I can't see me having let that go without correction.
spendius wrote:wande-
Surely I denied having any feminine side to be in touch with. I can't see me having let that go without correction.
This is the response that you posted in March 2005:
spendius wrote:wande:-
Me? A feminine side?Don't be so ridiculous.
They've not got at me then have they?
quote spendi "Is artificial birth control, including abortion, a denaturing of women in the service of male gratification? Or not?"
I prefer to think of it as female empowerment. Only fair
Now; should I feel used
wande-
I found this gem-
Quote:Welcome to the official Web site of the City of Rio Rancho, New Mexico! We invite you to visit our "City of Vision" and explore our Web site as we take Rio Rancho into an energetic and exciting new future.
That's their first shot at you when you click on.
And that's their elite after going over what to say for a few weeks.
Looks like English education is a bit in the doldrums and you can't do science without a proper language tool. And the quote is gibber-gibber.
What books do the school board approve of regarding English fiction. It's a very responsible job to be recommending the fiction to be studied under a teacher who the board approves of. I doubt there would be any of my choices.
They have "illegal" garbage dumps in Rio Rancho. We don't have any of those now. We used to of course but we decided after a few problems, like Aberfan, to pay up and sort it out. I wonder if it means that there's a load of **** up every dark alley.
Punctuated Equilibrium is a hypothesis, not a theory, mainly because evidence to dispute its claims has been mounting from field data that has carefully looked at some of the strata that he and Gould studied.
It has a contrary hypothesis of "constrained stratigraphy"
I once tried that fm and it worked okay but was nothing to get worked up about and it cost me eight gin-and-tonics plus having to listen to the most atrocious prattle for what seemed like eternity.
Punctuated equilibrium on the other hand is quite nice as long as you take a weekend over it.
ACtually thats a lot better spendi. Well have you doing stand-up comedy in a bugs age. Next step is to enroll you at the Gus Ratzenhofer Institute of Puns and lytotes (GRIPL)
fm-
Your spelling of "lytotes" shows a highly refined skill of no mean proportions in the use of our beloved language.
Quote:Review: Huxley: Evolution's High Priest, Adrian Desmond, Pp.370, Michael Joseph, London, £20..
How apt, then, that Professor Desmond sub-titles the second volume of his biography of Huxley, Evolution's High Priest. For Huxley was the perfect exemplar of the reformed spiritual power or secular priesthood of scientists and technicians, anticipated by Comte. His approach to governance and to social problems, like Comte's, was essentially technocratic and non-political. Only encourage men to think rationally, he argued, and they will see that capital performs a no less essential function than labour. And that it is the interest of every class to co-operate to exploit nature's resources. State funded education was the perfect antidote to socialism, in Huxley's estimation.
In The Devil's Disciple, Desmond described Huxley's "ignominious beginning" over a butcher's shop in Ealing, the youngest son of a impecunious schoolteacher. There is something of a parallel, then, between the careers of Huxley and that of his hero Carlyle. Both were born in obscurity. Both rose to vertiginous heights by force of intellect alone. Their lives seem to confirm the idea that history is about the deeds of preternaturally gifted individuals.
On this latter point, however, Adrian Desmond demurs. For Evolution's High Priest, as he portentously informs us, is "a book about Class and Power". The old history of ideas, he insists, tended to displace "
the person, made him or her a disembodied ghost, a flash of transcendent genius". Desmond's conception of history is that of Plekhanov, for whom individuals were mere corks thrown up and tossed about by contending social forces. Desmond's avowed goal is the "embedding" of Huxley in the society to which he belonged (a not inapt simile, considering Huxley's contributions to palaeontology).
The big idea of Evolution's High Priest (if I have grasped it) is that Huxley was the representative of particular social forces. The conflict between evolutionary science and Anglican theology, in which he played such a prominent role, should not be taken at face value, Desmond suggests. For this conflict was an ideological reflex of a power struggle between circulating elites (to quote Pareto's inimitable phrase).
On the one side was the traditional ruling order (the landed aristocracy and gentry) virtually monopolising the higher professions, the state and the Anglican church. On the other, the new manufacturing elements, closely associated with Dissent and therefore (wealth notwithstanding) critical of established institutions.
An identity of outlook between the Victorian industrialists and those members of the scientific community unwilling to tailor their conclusions to fit Anglican orthodoxy is perceived by Desmond (the inconvenient fact that neither Huxley nor Darwin, unlike Herbert Spencer, had direct roots in Nonconformity is brushed aside). Both groups were aggrieved that university curricula were subservient to classicism and downgraded the profession of science and "useful knowledge". Not surprisingly, the new industrial barons provided much of the money for an expansion of higher education (especially scientific education) free of Anglican influence. Desmond notes that Huxley, who had excellent contacts in the world of manufacturing, played the role of intermediary in this process.
"The conflict between evolutionary science and Anglican theology, in which he played such a prominent role, should not be taken at face value, Desmond suggests. For this conflict was an ideological reflex of a power struggle between circulating elites (to quote Pareto's inimitable phrase)."
Circulating elites eh? Not to be taken at face value eh?
Precisely.
wande-
It is impossible to make any intelligent comment on your last paste job because it hardly contains a sniff of any seething personal animosities which might have been current within the TEA brought about by matters completely unrelated to the purported subject which can easily become a stick to batter one's opponents with.
One of the main problems with all your quotes is that they are sterilised of the real human activities which we all know are daily grist to the mill in the workings of the top end in bureaucracies.
Essentially they are congruent with a totalitarian outlook which downgrades humans to the status of stereotypical objects as properly befits materialist explanations.
That is why journalism distorts perceptions and results in the employment of abstractions and cliches in both verbal expression and thought processes.
To engage with journalism in the precious time one might study instead the great works of literature is attractive because it is easy and the ideas contained in journalism are simple to follow and get married to. They are also controlled by "circulating elites" of which the victim of such brain patterning has hardly the faintest notion.
In fact, as we have seen when I have asked who owns such and such a newspaper, the victim seemingly doesn't wish to know as he would rather not have the certainties he has embraced subjected to criticism.
wandel, the "appearance" of not maintaining neutrality on such an issue is actionable IMO. The fact that she gave the appearance of criticizing ID is perhaps a new battlefield. By giving credibility to ID by not assailing it as "bogus science" when it is actually being posed as science is something out of Lewis Carroll.
Maybe the TECs logic is good enough for our English sound maker, but since we successfully disposed of them 240 years ago, they have no vote in this fight.spendi[quote]It is impossible to make any intelligent comment on your last [/quote]Why begin seeking excellence now? youve got almost 2 years of drool to maintain. Go for it.
fm- are you suggesting that "circulating elites" biting at each other's arses are not a factor and that we should take everything we read at face value?
I suspect you yourself are involved in some sort of bureaucratic battle somewhere vying for attention and influence.
I might not have a vote in this fight but I might influence some who do have. If so, that's better than an itsy-bitsy vote. You have quoted plenty of people who have no vote either.
You'll say anything but your prayers.
The Texas Republican Party Platform is an interesting read...
2006 voysion
http://www.texasgop.org/site/PageServer?pagename=library_platform
Mr George Walker, a great-grandfather of President Bush, was educated by Jesuit priests at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. It is the most prestigious Catholic boarding school in England. I have drunk port within its illustrious portals.
In Desmond and Moore's book on Darwin I found this snippet-
Quote:....evolution bestowed scientific dignity on lowly parentage and promised better things.
Perhaps that explains the emotional attachment of anti-IDers to evolution and their convoluted and naive sophistries in support of it.
It cannot possibly be anything to do with their search for truth. One only need read their literary efforts to disabuse oneself of such a foolish notion. No: it's sentimental. Nobody disputes science with anger and contempt without a sentiment being in the back of it.
Bernie wrote-
Quote:"Music is the only religion that delivers the goods."
Frank Zappa
He did of course mean Faustian music. Developed in monastic surroundings for performance in religious ceremonies and played on instruments which could not have even been envisaged in any other culture and which were dependent on science. The primary purpose being to fill space, our prime symbol, unending space, with sound as also with light managed in our specifically Christian manner and dedicated to the glory of our God.
Seeing Bob Dylan sing Ring Them Bells in Okinawa with a full orchestra symbolises our taking it to the world who look ready to receive it. Bells ringing out over the world rather than over the meadows around the village. It can be seen on You Tube.
If you do pump up the volume like the good Faustians you all are underneath that veneer of special pleading and barrack-room lawyerism.
spendi could use a good editor
