Re: politics as usual

Jay Lemke (jllbc who-is-at cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Sun, 09 Nov 1997 21:43:55 -0500

Ken Goodman certainly seems to be right that there may be more than just
politics as usual at work in conservative efforts to shift educational
priorities and agendas in literacy education and teacher education. I
certainly hope that I am right that what they managed to do once they are
unlikely to be able to repeat against the weight of inertial forces and
contrary interest lobbies.

I'd be interested to see just how successful any such groups may have been
in shaping the media treatment of the literacy education issues that Ken
refers to. If you have the cites for those newsmagazine articles, I'd be
interested to have a careful look.

One of the issues we have been discussing lately at my own university is
the university's institutional failure to make its expertise on
language-related issues available to policymakers. There is no
institutional channel even available for this. As a public university we
would seem to have some responsibility of this kind, but the faculty are
all too busy doing brilliant research to pay attention to whether anyone
except their own graduate students ever reads it.

I'd be interested to know of other universities, departments, programs,
that have well-organized channels of communication to and access for
government agencies (esp. state and local), local non-profit organizations,
legislators, journalists, etc.?

JAY.

---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
---------------------------