Tangent: intellectual detritus

1) Citizenship rhetoric & education (continued): As previously discussed, schools are about creating the next batch of citizens; thinking about that in light of other previous thoughts about immigration, made me start to play the analogy out (something I do lots of; hence my interest in "reframings" and other ways to further inform the debate through tilting it on its side)...does this then make home schooling the equivalent reaction of the xenophobe? (We can't control the larger world, and it's all going to ruin, so we have to "seal the borders" and only deal with taking care of our own.) Is home schooling essentially the paleo-con position? If that's true, is public schooling essentially a neo-con construction? I suppose it could be, or it could be a liberal construction (if education is conceived as creating a new collaborative culture rather than imperially imposing culture upon the next generation--a la the neocons).

2) The rhetoric of NAR takes on media consolidation: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre [media environment] that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in [media diversity] made in the wake of the [the advent of public broadcasting in the US]. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral [intellectual] disarmament." Does saying it that way make my thesis more compelling?

3) Motivation & GEC: In my day job as a marketer, I got a copy of Motivation Strategies, a trade publication about using promotional items to motivate sales teams, etc. I found this interesting:

Including luxury brands in an incentive program can be a great way to dress it up and give participants something to stretch for--believing that if they just work a little harder they might have a shot at earning that high-quality, luxury item. But incentive end-users should also make sure the luxury item fits the demographics and profile of participants.
But don't let your luxury item become the be-all and end-all of your program, says Dana Slockbower, Director of Marketing for Rymax. 'You need to have quality branded products at price points for everyone,' she says. 'Some people will be driven by that aspirational luxury item they can work towards, but others need to feel they can actually achieve their goals and get something of value in return.'
It becomes demotivating, in fact, 'to offer rewards that cannot be reached,' says Norma Jean Knollenberg of Top Brands, 'regardless of the brand or the perceived luxury value of the brand.' ("Living in the Lap of Luxury (Brands)", Motivation Strategies, Vol. 11, Issue 4, Fall 2007. p. 22)

So why is this interesting? Not because it's particularly insightful--if one remembers the chapter from high school psychology class, one can probably resurrect that page about the rats in the cage with the electrified floor and learned helplessness. What's interesting is that it's coming from what can only be called "the heart of the GEC beast"--capitalism at its finest, where competition is celebrated, and good citizenship is a PR strategy, not a responsibility (previous issues have talked about how companies perceived as "green" are rising in popularity without any need to address the issue of being green vs. being perceived as green).
Yet even here, there's a recognition that "offering rewards that cannot be reached" can be demotivating. Yet the quintessence of the GEC paradigm is the understanding that education serves the purpose of increasing one's success in the marketplace. It has no "backup plan", no "quality branded products at price points for everyone" for someone who looks around h/erself and doesn't see people succeeding in the marketplace; it has nothing to say to someone who recognizes that h/er job opportunities are limited by factors that have little to do with education. It has only that dream to sell; anyone who doesn't believe is accused of not dreaming hard enough. There is no recognition (in the education policies proposed in the GEC paradigm) that there needs to be a reason to attend school that helps students "feel they can actually achieve their goals and get something of value in return."

And nevermind the idea of being first in the world in all subjects and all elements of the global economy is to offer "rewards that cannot be reached", no matter how "luxury" such an idea might seem. From reading articles like this, it seems apparent that even the business community (which educationists are supposed to be falling over themselves to emulate) recognizes that not everyone is the top salesperson; motivation strategies exist to help improve the overall efforts and effects of the sales staff, but not everyone can (or wants to) "achieve at world-class levels". Yet, to point out such a fact in education policy is complete heresy--seen as proof that one recognizes others as categorically inferior, rather than proof that one recognizes the belief that "everyone wants a Rolex" is a categorically inferior belief.

Tangent: clarification of excellence rhetoric

OK, I totally admit that this is just me being pedantic and cranky, but the fact that "excellence for all" doesn't seem to ever be pointed out as a linguistic oxymoron drives me crazy. "Excellence" has become some strange signifier, along with "world class standards" and other signifiers designed to create some sense of American exceptionalism (a Lake Wobegon where "all the children are above average") while at the same time acquiescing to American egalitarianism. This is most evident in the "all children can learn" mantra...100 years ago Pavlov taught us that dogs can learn, so what are we really saying there? That everyone--no matter what else is going on in their lives--can learn this stuff...it's just that easy? Who's advocating for that position? If everyone can learn "at world class levels" or whatever, then what are special ed classes all about? Do we seriously believe that all babies can master any curriculum we throw at them by the same stage in life? Anyone who knows anything about children knows how crazy that is. Yet we act as if this is sound education policy.

It's like "reading at grade level": grade level (used to) mean(s) that in a typical classroom, 50% of students of a given grade would be reading above that level, and 50% would be below that level...so how can "all students read at grade level"? And why will no one point out that this is just asinine education policy?

Unless statisticians are willing to give up their beloved bell curve (which they've gone so far to call a "normal distribution") and rethink the entire concept of a range of abilities, unless we're prepared to really believe—against all logic and evidence to the contrary—the "we're #1" jingoistic rhetoric that every one of our kids is smarter than than the smartest kids in every other nation (thereby leaving them to fill out the other standard deviations of the bell curve), we need to describe "excellence" as what it really is: a minimum level of competency.