The Gang of 40
Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Wed, 15 May 1996 23:29:10 EDT
After some behind the scenes discussions, it seems that
the documents re the Massachusetts branch of the language
education political controversy are already available on
the internet somewhere (a prize to whoever finds them!).
The question was also raised whether in expending effort
responding to these pseudo-issues of the right, beyond what
it may take to neutralize actual influence they may have
in schools, etc., we are not allowing their perverse way
of defining the issues to become also the grounds on which
we enter the debate. Since I believe that some combination
of 'phonics' and WL (i.e. of practice at systematic recognition
of orthographic/phonological correspondences and ... a lot
missing in between ... use of written language in meaningful
contexts) generally makes for a useful recipe across various
kinds of students with different backgrounds and needs, and
various kinds of teachers with different training, strengths,
etc., for me the real issue is keeping politicians' unprincipled
hands off of the curriculum. I'd rather debate the relative
influence students, teachers, various sorts of experts,
parents, etc. ought to have and how to arrange things so
the people at risk (the students) and the people who have a
lot of experience trying different approaches (teachers,
some researchers, occasionally overlapping as categories)
can get help from other, and help each other, without
being subject to 'mandates' from ANYONE, and certainly not
from bozos who have nothing but their IDEAS and VALUES
to go on ... right or left, political or academic ...
both of which are, in my experience, highly overrated as
bases of good practice at ANYTHING! (And remember, I'm
mainly a theorist!)
So, I'm still in favor of us academics having more political
clout in general, and addressing ourselves to educational
issues where we actually know something useful ... and doing
so in public forums. But I think I'll heed the warning not
to let others entirely decide the terms of the debate. The
right seems to be very good at goading the rest of us into
fights we really don't want. While the public forum is
thunderous with arguments on abortion, gay marriage, and
phonics ... where are the debates about worker control of
enterprise policies (ala Solidarity in Poland, remember them?),
patching the big holes in the social safety net for abused
kids et al., getting some public sunshine in the management
decision-making of corporations, reining in the right to buy
your elected representatives, debating the relative monetary
value of labor and capital investments, or the rights of
students to learn what they want how they want and tell their
teachers and parents to go to hell?
There are a lot of things I'd like to hear in the public
forum -- including what a lot of very different sorts of
ordinary, not-usually-envoiced people think _really_ matters
to _their_ lives, instead of what a few hellbent on controlling
the rest of us think we ought to be talking about. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU