wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Heard program live yesterday, but only had time to reply now. Re: no child left behind.

Admirable goals, and I fully appreciate how and why policymakers push it with such urgency. But until the educational orthodoxy recognizes the fallacy of do or die standards, there will be plenty of students for whom the policy will destroy their motivation and development.

Neither of my children were served by the policy, for different reasons. My son, 15, has always despised school, with its constant testing, "busy work" and repetitive tasks. His "average" is somewhere in the low 70's. But he is also currently taking two summer college classes, and pulling A's in both. Why? In depth questioning and discussion, classes of 8 students, projects that mean something, and the time and respect to express his opinions, revelations and challenges. An English teacher of his in HS asked us why we thought he could handle college work. The answer is that our son, like lots of other students, feels smothered at the mind numbing regurgitation of the already known in a proscribed fashion, in order to please his adult minders and ensure their employment. He's not playing that game, and I admire him for it.

I could go on about my daughter, but this is too long already. Lets see imagination, creativity and curiosity rewarded with attention and resources please. How about the sky is the limit policy?

i echo post 2, hearing it on the repeat, and walter isaacson did say 4years ago after the gulf war, he left cnn. Just realized...He must mean after the invasion of baghdad and the whatever you want to call it that defeated sadam. This is what he calls the gulf war. For most people the gulf war was in early 90's. Strange

What about a New York ideas festival which is inclusive of everyone besides just the various NYC Economic Development agencies (some of them former developers). An example would be the Eminent Domain protest at Willets Point. Why aren't these current business people being considered for some other options. Same for the Yankee Stadium project and the request by Team Yankees for more funding. Can't there be a forum for ideas from other New Yorkers besides these interests?

Colin Powell? He lied to the U.N. to enable Bush to wage the Iraq War? Who cares what these people have to say? This meet-in-the-middle let's-get-everybody's-side-on-everything is the reason we're in Iraq. It's the reason we've done nothing about global warming. It's the reason why the top 1% are doing better than they even have. It's the reason that they're coming for our Social Security money next (cf. G. Carlin). They want it back. We're screwed.

Did he just say he left CNN "4 Years ago AFTER the gulf war?"

Big ideas? (Americans love their newspeak.)

Walter Isaacson

- so committed to ideas that, in his biography of Einstein, he couldn't bear to discuss Einstein's socialist or pacifist thinking.

- okayed CIA plants in the CNN newsroom.

- wrote in a 2001 CNN memo, "It seems too perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan."

--

Margaret Spelling

- criticized a PBS program for covering a lesbian family (getting PBS to cease distribution).

- protege of Karl Rove

- appointed a "Commission on the Future of Higher Education" which, among other things, is
part of an effort to lean on universities to go more conservative.

- has refused to improve oversight of student loan companies despite evidence of corruption.

- has continued to support No Child Left Behind even as the evidence has mounted that the program is a gross failure (including reports by people in the Department of Education).