Finally, and this isn't the most important point by any means, but it's a telling one, and I'm bringing it up here in part because I'm an educator and have first hand experience with this. Another commenter at the NYT's site, also an Editor's Selection, recommended by 549 readers, wrote as follows:
"Perhaps the only reason why Americans haven't stormed the White House with pitch forks and torches is our belief that W was at least successful in his No Child Left Behind education reform. However, the truth is, NCLB is W's biggest delusion of all.
"As a 17 year veteran of public school teaching, I can attest that NCLB is as devastating to America's future as his failures in the economy and the Middle East. Perhaps more so. It will take decades to undo the damage he has wrought on American public education. Gone are inspiration, innovation, creativity, and the joy of learning. In their place are teaching how to take tests, conformity, and the prosaic memorization of facts with little real world application. Furthermore, he has turned his back on the necessary funding for this catastrophe, leaving schools like mine in desperate financial condition. "If W's true education agenda has been to strengthen parochial and private education by handcuffing public schools, then NCLB has done exactly what he wanted. Where's my pitch fork?
— Michael Pogue, Cincinnati, Ohio"
Teachers in public high schools say that "I don't have time to teach" because they're so busy getting students ready for the next test.
I have noticed in the last few years a distinct decline in my students' ability to use inferential reasoning. They have been too much schooled in the view that what education is about is memorization and being told what to think. Their curiosity and basic intelligence is no less than I have seen in any other cohort, but they have not been well-educated and NCLB is a major culprit in this.
Obama, unfortunately, is a big fan of NCLB. A populace that cannot think for itself and must rely on others to tell them what to think is a populace more ripe for the pickings of tyrants.
I do not fault, however, the American people first and foremost for the rise of Bush and Cheney and the neocons. Bush and Cheney are immensely unpopular and actually lost both elections by millions of votes. (See my book Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney, and you can also read online my 2005 essay "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election" which won a Project Censored Award).
Bush and Cheney only took office through fraud and through the cowardice of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party leadership.
Had Gore in 2000 called upon his supporters (and supporters of the idea that all votes should be counted) to march outside the Supreme Court while the Court was plotting to give the presidency to the loser, do any of us think that that wouldn't have made a difference?
If the New York Times had no derided as "spreadsheet wielding conspiracy theorists" those who pointed out the massive evidence of fraud in the 2004 election, and instead given coverage to even some of that evidence, would this not have made a difference?
The future of this nation and the world rests, to an exceptional degree, today in the hands of not Barack Obama, but in the hands of the American people. Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn't want to impeach Bush and Cheney and therefore prosecutions for these war criminals are not going to come from an Obama administration UNLESS enough Americans protest - I'm talking several millions - and force it to happen.
(A black junior senator in his first term doesn't suddenly become a viable candidate for president, doesn't get the necessary publicity, and doesn't get elected unless 1) there is massive public sentiment for change (even the GOP ticket talked about "reform") and 2) he has the backing of very powerful interests in this country who want to forestall and channel the anger at Bush, Cheney and Congress and this system into avenues that won't result in any real or fundamental change).
Real change begins with one person who decides that he or she cannot stand by and watch as infamous atrocities and injustices are carried out in their name.
These are not things that you can pawn off on others to take care of by merely voting for a candidate or by saying that it's in someone else's hands or that somethings got to be done, but none of these other people are doing anything so why should I?
It's something that you must take a personal, public stand on because it's the right and necessary thing to do, regardless of what your neighbors or your newspaper or your public officials say or do.
