The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 11 Issue 36…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…September 7, 2008

Intuit's Vibe

Divided World

By Sam Kellaway

Empty streets of desolation

Boarded up houses standing alone

Factory buildings padlocked and empty

Forgotten men recalling better times

Times when they had a future

a job, some money to spare

Engineers and skilled workers

Head bowed and forlorn

Lining up for their pennies

Families dreading an empty Christmas

Mothers mending worn out clothes

Kids sensing their parents' fears

Lonely hearts on lonely corners

their immortality dancing away

seeking bread, soup and comfort

Grey faces staring at a grey sky

seeking a glimmer through the gloom

proud nations standing alone

University leavers sweeping roads

with broken promises and no hope

education, disillusion, desolation

These are the barren years

and the world has turned

Please peace try again

News You Use

Gates' Eleven Rules

The following rules were provided in a speech given by Bill Gates to high school students. These are things they will not learn in school. In his speech, Gates addressed the feel-good, politically correct teachings that have created a generation of young people with no concept of reality; this sets them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it! Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault; don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. Some schools have abolished failing grades; students are given as MANY TIMES as they need to get the right answer. This bears no resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time..

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you agree that these rules reflect reality, then please pass them on to the young people in your life. If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

Bit of History

Viola Vaughn

Born in Michigan, Viola Vaughn received her Bachelor of Arts in Music and French from Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia in 1969. She earned her Master of Science degree in Public Health Administration in 1976 and her Doctor of Education degree from Columbia University/Teacher's College, New York, NY in 1984.

Dr. Vaughn has worked with a number of organizations in the United States and Africa, including the Drew Post-Graduate Medical School in California, where she served as Director of International Health, supervising programs in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Cameron, and Swaziland. She served as Coordinator of Consultation for the Michigan Community Mental Health Program and as Project Coordinator for the Sine Saloum Rural Health Project in Senegal. Dr. Vaughn has written a number of training manuals on subjects ranging from education and health care to employment and training.

Because she spent so much time in Africa, it became a second home. In 2000, Dr. Vaughn and her husband, jazz musician Sam Sanders, moved to Senegal to raise their five grandchildren, following the death of their daughter. Unfortunately, soon after relocating, Sanders died, leaving Dr. Vaughn to raise her grandchildren alone.

Vaughn chose to home school the youngsters, who ranged in age from 4 to 12. Her success in doing so garnered the attention of locals and led to the development of an approach to teaching other school children in a society where the education of girls was not a high priority. In 2001, Dr. Vaughn turned her grandchildren's bedrooms into classrooms with the goal of reaching 100 girls. However, the program she would eventually develop reached so many more. Her approach to reaching out to an ever larger group of young girls revolved around the concept of each one teaches one. According to Vaughn, "I found every one a girl younger than she and said, 'You're responsible to make sure she learns.' I taught them how to teach each other."

Dr. Vaughn's vision led to the creation of the Women's Health Education and Prevention Strategies Alliance (WHEPSA) to develop new strategies for offering health and educational services to girls in rural Senegal and 10,000 Girls, an innovative approach to education and employment. In less than 5 years, the program has grown to serve about 1500 girls. Its main components are education for girls at risk of failure or dropping out of school and employment and training for girls who have failed or never attended school.

With help from volunteers and sponsors, Dr. Vaughn and the girls started Celebration Baked Goods, a pastry shop and catering service, and Sewing Workshop, which produces handmade quilts, dolls, and gift baskets for export. These successful businesses provide hands-on work experience and skills. The income is used to pay participants' salaries and support the education program.

Earlier this year, Dr. Viola Vaughn was featured on a CNN My Hero segment. (Sources: www.10000girls.org, www.myhero.com, www.civitas.us and www.cnn.com)

Flushing Students Down the Tube

By John Burl Smith

There is something amiss just outside of the "city too busy to hate"- Atlanta. In Clayton County, Georgia, for almost a year, the County's School Board has been embroiled in the politics of self-destruction instigated from within and without. The brouhaha began with an investigation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the organization responsible for enforcing national academic standards. The school board shot itself in the foot, skirting the law, even breaking some at times; it opened itself up to charges from the SASC of incompetence such that it's a threat to the education of its student.

Slammed by an administrative law judge, four members of the Clayton County School Board were charged with violating Georgia's Open Meetings act and the state ethics code. The board was given nine recommendations by the SASC it had to meet; among them were a fully functioning board and a permanent superintendent. Consequently, these major sticking points became the focus of the SASC's retribution. Thus, after investigating Clayton's progress, the SASC felt the school system wasn't making enough progress toward complying with their recommendations. And, herein lies the rub. Feeling ignored, the SASC revoked Clayton County's schools accreditation which threw the 50,000-student school system into disarray.

Somewhere between the SASC's responsibility to insure students get a proper education and their authority to mandate changes, the needs and future of the children in Clayton County were lost. There is no dispute that the school board behaved despicably, but nowhere has there been charges that teachers were not meeting standards, discipline was lacking, cheating on class work occurred or students were being mistreated. Baffled at the SASC's action, citizens wonder why they chose to punish Clayton's students, who did nothing wrong. The SASC is victimizing students that attended school, went to class, and performed as other students across the country. It seems they have thrown "the baby out with the bath water." It appears the SASC is more concerned with retribution than insuring children are educated.

Nevertheless, in the final analysis, students in Clayton County will be the ones to suffer, rather than board members or politicians that precipitated this problem. The first indication that something was amiss for this reporter was that everyone, in particular the media, agreed that punishing the board was more important than saving the children. A look at the racial composition of the county and those on the school board put a different complexion on the controversy.

Clayton County is predominately black and so is its student population. This was the first time in about forty years (1969) that the SASC revoked accreditation of a public school system. Immediately, some 2,000 students indicated their intent to withdraw from the school system. Many of those will end up in private schools. And, therein lies another rub, undermining the public school system seems to be the real goal of the SASC.

Race and public schools have been the bane of the white community since Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Once the federal court ordered the desegregation of public schools, whites began setting up private schools and fleeing inner city neighborhoods. Now, education is a commodity to be sold like fast food to those that can afford it. This allows those who never wanted to educate black children to create a two-tier educational system that favors white children and those with money. For instance, black students from Clayton County, because of the loss of accreditation, will have more difficulty competing for scholarships and entering college. This means less competition for white children vying for limited space in the nation's colleges and universities.

This is what George W. Bush called "soft bigotry" and it runs rampant in America. Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, this same tactic was used to undermine confidence in black politicians and justify driving them from office. Black elected officials always inherit political systems established by whites. Those systems are designed to discriminate against blacks. When blacks enter office and try to change those systems, whites rise up in opposition with lawsuits and charges of incompetence. Black officials either cave-in and go along with the status quo or whites, through the media, drive them from office.

A similar drama is playing out just next door in Lithonia, Georgia. There a black female who became mayor promised change. Once in office, she began touching some sacred cows of white politicians and opposition rose up citing corruption. Through a constant drumbeat of incompetence and corruption in the media, she now faces recall. Race is the most salient factor in American life. It determines everything. It is the one thing whites will agree on when they have no other reason to stand together.

The Clayton County school board debacle would have been seen from a totally different perspective had the board and students been white. The SASC would not have been so ham-handed in flushing all those students down the tube because of an obstinate or truculent board. They would have shown more concern for the impact of their actions on the students, parents and community. Removing board members is not an arbitrary action. Voters elected them and outside bodies can't mandate that elected officials be dismissed. The community must reject them through the voting process. Only blacks can be dismissed from office by acclamation and only the education of black children can be flushed down the tube so lightly.

Hood Notes

Exterminating Public Schools

By Steven Miller and Jack Gerson

Educator Roundtable - the "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report of the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace, funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents, called for a series of measures including: (a) replacing public schools with what the report called "contract schools," which would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating nearly all the powers of local school boards - their role would be to write and sign the authorizing agreements for the "contract schools; (c) eliminating teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and (d) forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16).

These measures, taken together, would effectively cripple public control of public education. They would dangerously weaken the power of teacher unions, thus facilitating still further attacks on the public sector. They would leave education policy in the hands of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks, corporate entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities are profiting from the already huge education market while cutting back on public funding for schools and students.

Indeed, their measures would mean privatization of education, effectively terminating the right to a public education, as we have known it. Many of the most powerful forces in the country want the US, the first country to guarantee public education, to be the first country to end it.

For the last fifty years, public education was one of only two public mandates guaranteed by the government that was accessible to every person, regardless of income. Social Security is the other. Now both systems are threatened with privatization schemes. The government today openly defines its mission as protecting the rights of corporations above everything. Thus public education is a rare public space that is under attack. The same scenario is being implemented with most of the services that governments used to provide for free or at little cost: electricity, national parks, health care and water. In every case, the methodology is the same: under-fund public services, create an uproar and declare a crisis, claim that privatization can do the job better, deregulate or break public control, divert public money to corporations and then raise prices.

In the past year, it's become evident that the corporate surge against public schools is only part of a much broader assault against the public sector, against unions, and indeed against the public's rights and public control of public institutions.

This has been evident for some time now in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina's devastation is used as an excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure of a major American city: razing public housing and turning land over to developers; replacing the city's public school system with a combination of charter schools and state-run schools; letting the notorious Blackwater private army loose on the civilian population; and, in the end, forcing tens of thousands of families out of the city permanently. The citizens of New Orleans have had their civil rights forcibly expropriated.

Just as the shock of the hurricane was the excuse for the shock therapy applied to New Orleans, so the economic downturn triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis is now the excuse for a national assault on the public sector and the public's rights.

In public education, the corporate surge has grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. Where two years ago the corporate education change agents were mainly operating in a relatively small number of large urban areas, they have now surfaced everywhere. The corporatization of public education is the leading edge of privatization. This has the effect of silencing the public voice on every aspect of the situation.

Across the US, public schools are not yet privatized, though private services are increasingly benefiting from this market. However, increasing corporate control of programs - a different mix in every locale - is having a chilling influence on the very things that people (though not corporations) want from teachers: the ability to relate to and teach each child, a nurturing approach that nudges every child to move ahead, human assessments that put people before performance on standardized tests.

Perhaps the single most dramatic development of the corporate approach was the launching of the $60 million Strong American Schools - Ed in '08 initiative, funded by billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad. This is a naked effort to purchase the nation's education policy, no matter who is elected President, by buying their way into every electoral forum.

Ed in '08 has a three-point program: merit pay (basing teachers' compensation on students' scores on high stakes test); national education standards (enforcing conformity and rote learning); and longer school day and school year (still more time for rote learning, less time for kids to be kids.

Where two years ago charter schools were still viewed as experiments affecting a relatively small number of students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers - led by Broad and Gates - grossly expanded their funding to the point where they now loom as a major presence.

In March, the Gates Foundation announced a $100 million donation to KIPP charter schools, which would enable them to expand their Houston operation to 42 schools (from eight) - effectively, KIPP will be a full-fledged alternative school system in Houston. Also in the past year, Eli Broad and Gates have given in the neighborhood of $50 million to KIPP and Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles, with the aim of doubling the percentage of LA students enrolled in charter schools. Oakland, another Broad/Gates targets, now has more than 30 charter schools out of 92. And, as we shall see below, the same trend holds across the country.

NCLB in 2008 is still a major issue. It continues to have a corrosive effect on public schools. It is designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools must meet ever rigid standards every year, though no more money is appropriated to support this effort. This means that schools must take ever-more money out of the class room to meet federal requirements when schools with low test scores are in "Program Improvement". Once schools are in PI for 5 years they can be forced into privatization.

NCLB is a driving force that decimates the "publicness" in public schools. In California, more than 2000 schools are in "Program-Improvement". This means that they have to meet certain specific and mostly impossible standards, or they must divert increasingly greater amounts of money out of the classroom and into private programs.

For example, schools in 3rd year PI must take money out of programs that helped schools with a high proportion of low achieving schools and make it available to private tutors. . . Privatizing public schools inevitably leads to massive increase in social inequality. Private corporations have never been required to recognize civil rights, because, by definition, these are public rights. If the corporate privatizers succeed in taking over our schools, there will be neither quality education nor civil rights.

The system of public education in the United States is deeply flawed. While suburban schools are among the best in the world, public education in cities has been deliberately under-funded and is in a shambles. The solution is not to fight backwards to maintain the old system. Rather it is to fight forward to a new system that will truly guarantee quality education as a civil right for everyone.

Central to this is to challenge the idea that everything in human society should be run by corporations; that only corporations and their political hacks have the right or the power to discuss what public policy should be. The real direction is to increase the role and power of the public in every way, not eliminate it.

DISHing It Up Hot!

On Skewed Draw!

By Dot

An avid tennis fan, I watch matches on television whenever I can. I make it a point to watch all the slams, since they receive network coverage. Like fans of every sport, I have my favorites on the men's and women's circuit. I especially enjoy watching the Williams sisters, when they are healthy and winning, not only because we share race and heritage, but because they are truly great athletes and credits to the sport.

When the draw for the US Open can out this year, I was surprised to see Venus and Serena in the same quarter. I did not think their rankings had changed that much since Wimbledon, where they met in the final. Curious, I checked and sure enough, they had the identical ranking of 4 and 7, Serena and Venus, respectively, at Wimbledon that they have in the US Open.

When the sisters met in the quarter final match, the announcers made a big production of explaining their early meeting was because of their ranking, when nothing could be further from the truth. We can pretend all we want that race is not a factor in this country. But, how these women were placed in the draw is a good example of how blacks are screwed in white America.

An objective analysis shows that the US Tennis Federation or whatever group concocted this draw did not want a Williams v Williams final or semi-final for that matter. And, they went out of their way to make it happen, even though it reduced the chances of an American US open women's champion.

Placing Venus Williams (No. 7) in the same quarter as Serena (No. 4) meant the No. 1 seed in the first quarter faced No. 6, rather than 7 or 8, which is customary. The top seed usually gets the player with the lower ranking. For instance, the No.1 seed has No. 8 in her quarter in the top half of the draw; No. 2 on the bottom half in the 4th quarter gets No 7; No. 3 in the third quarter gets No. 6 and No. 4 in the second quarter at the top half of the draw gets No. 5. This did not play out at the US Open.

At Wimbledon, it was 1 and 8, 4 and 6, 5 and 3 and 7 and 2. At the Australian Open, it was 1 and 5 in the first quarter. Justine Henin was given a tougher draw in that regard than is usually the case for the number one seed. The other top seeds were placed accordingly, 3 and 7, 4 and 8 and 2 and 6. Noticed I said placed, because the seeds are placed rather than drawn from a hat.

Thus, it was a conscious decision to place the two blacks in the same quadrant. No amount of justification and talk about tennis rankings will change that fact. The US Open draw was skewed to screw Americans. How odd is that? Not very, if you understand how race factors into everything in the USA.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email www.callmemister.clemson.edu...Do you know any Black males who are seniors in high school who want to go to college out of state for "FREE" ? Several Black Colleges are looking for future black male teachers and will send them to universities/colleges for 4 years FREE. The 'Call Me MISTER' program is an effort to address the critical shortage of black male teachers particularly among South Carolina's lowest performing public schools. Program participants are selected from among under-served, socioeconomically disadvantaged and educationally at-risk communities. The program is a collaboration between Clemson University and four historically black colleges in South Carolina: Benedict College, Claflin University, Morris College and South Carolina State University. The project provides: Tuition for admitted students pursuing approved programs of study at participating colleges, an academic support system to help assure their success, and a cohort system for social and cultural support. Visit www.callmemister.clemson.edu/index.htm for more and the online application or call (800) 640-2657.

Email www.progressiveexchange.com ...Economists may not call it recession, but job stats say it is...By Tony Pugh...The combination of falling home equity, the rising cost of food, health care and housing, tighter credit and eight straight months of job losses -- 84,000 in August alone -- has put the squeeze on middle-class families struggling to stay afloat in a slumping economy. Although economists haven't yet labeled the economic downturn a recession, every time payrolls have declined this consistently since 1948 the economy has been officially in recession, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based liberal think tank. ...Even college graduates are feeling the pinch. Their 2.7 percent unemployment rate is the highest since 2004, while the 9.6 percent unemployment rate for workers without a high-school diploma is the highest since 1996. Most of the August job losses were again in the manufacturing sector, which shed 61,000 positions, the most in five years. In the past seven years, 20 percent of manufacturing jobs have disappeared despite improving U.S. export numbers.

Email stacychase@hotmail.com ...It's a new school year, and the children with their shiny faces and new attire are flocking to schools across the nation. Public and private schools are big business in this nation of 300 million. One can easily see their socioeconomic impact just by observing traffic volume. When school is out for summer recess and on holidays, there are noticeably fewer cars and trucks on the roads and highways, not to mention yellow school buses. At the beginning of every school year, we, parents, grandparents, teachers, guardians and others, have high expectations and hopes that the new year will provide great opportunities for our young people to learn and become better individuals, hopefully model citizens. Imagine my surprise on learning that teachers in an obscure little Texas town are allowed to carry concealed weapons. Teachers are supposed to be role models. When they come to school packing, the only message they could be delivering to impressionable young people is that it is okay to resolve conflicts with deadly force.

Email dpolman@phillynews.com... The American Debate: It's little discussed, but Obama's race may be decider...By Dick Polman...Let us swing the door ajar and invite the elephant into the room. One big reason Barack Obama is locked in a tight race, rather than easily outdistancing his opponent, is because he is black. That factor is rarely discussed in polite political conversation. People tend to dance around it, talking instead about Obama's perceived inexperience, or his youth, or his perceived airs, or his liberal voting record. And racist sentiment rarely shows up in the polls, because a lot of people don't want to share their baser instincts with the pollsters; they'll save that instead for the privacy of the voting booth. But the incremental evidence - anecdotal and even statistical - has become impossible to ignore.