[Marxism] [league-discuss] education and poverty

[Mark Lause]

I think this was the study was highlighted a few days back in the WALL
STREET JOURNAL.  It was authored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a
right-wing student-faculty-boss operation that wants to reform higher
education by getting rid of all the "politically correct" professors.  For
that reason alone, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

As to the goddamned liberal whining about how there's blame to pass out all
around and we're all guilty, STOP, please!  I'm gagging over the keyboard.

There are lots of contributing factors (as always), but the biggest one is
obvious.  Hint: Why is this problem particularly acute for the community
colleges and low end institutions who are continually screwed when it comes
to funding?

Answer: These same institutional bodies that are pissing and moaning about
the problem and proposing policies to correct them are the same ones that
proposed the policies that made the mess.

Some decades back--last time it was a right-wing fad to have kittens over
the state of the community colleges--the government offered grants to study
the process and make proposals.  The elite universities who shaped the
hierarchy of higher education, benefit from it, and maintain it asked for
boatloads of the moolah.  So did at least one community college in Ohio.

Guess who got it.

Btw, the other day, the new Secretary of Education was interviewed on NPR.
She praised the successes of the Bush administration in correcting the
problems of the elementary schools and the secondary schools and put out
their plans to straighten up higher education the same way.

Think it's an accident that vermin like the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute are trying to work up a good itch?

ML