WARNING: DUMMIES AT WORK

Read the following advertisement and feel sorry for the kids of the parents concerned. They think that all Texas public schools need is more money. Surely somebody has told them that the school districts where the biggest money is spent (like Washington D.C.) are the ones with the WORST results?

Texas Parent PAC is a newly formed political action committee for parents, grandparents, parents-to-be, and anyone who loves children and supports high-quality public education. The future of Texas rests in the children of today, and our public schools are the best opportunity we have to ensure the state’s future is bright and prosperous. Unfortunately, state legislators continue to shortchange students by refusing to adequately fund neighborhood public schools. There are no good excuses for failure by the Legislature to meet the needs of 4.4 million students enrolled in Texas public schools!

Parents are fed up with the inability of state lawmakers to support Texas children in the manner they deserve and our constitution requires. That’s why Texas Parent PAC is bringing together parents from all over the state to take action.

Our PAC-with-heart will stand up for children by making contributions to Republican and Democratic candidates who are committed to strengthening Texas public schools. Endorsements will be based on key record votes and positions on issues such as the school start date, public school finance, opposition to private school vouchers and excessive testing, local control, and government mandates.

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Truth Has Nothing to Do With It

Is Theory going out of fashion in American universities?

A half-century ago theorists in departments of literature debated such topics as the relation of scientific truth to the sort of truth made available by great literature. Now that topic is no longer raised, not because answers have been found but because the reigning consensus holds that "truth" is an empty concept, that there is no such thing as "literature," let alone "great literature," and that the meaning of any piece of writing--or "text"--is unstable at best.

Of course today's academic theorists do not limit themselves to deconstructing, say, Jane Austen. They practice a broader sort of "theory" or, better, Theory. (One needs a capital letter to do justice to the ambition of the project.) Under the rubric of "cultural studies," theorists claim to possess the key to understanding all sorts of human activity, from crime to colonialism. The Frenchmen who started it all, figures like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, are now in disfavor in their native country and, worse, out of fashion. But they still have a grip on American humanistic scholarship.

But for how much longer? A sign that things may be changing is "Theory's Empire," edited by Daphne Patai and Will Corral. Its 47 contributors patiently dissect all aspects of Theory, from its putative grounding in the ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) to the practical effects--say, in India--of the postcolonial ("poco") branch of Theory, which does so much to denigrate logic and reason.

Valentine Cunningham, Raymond Tallis and other contributors show how much theorists distort Saussure's insights. Contrary to what the theorists claim, the arbitrary aspects of language as a system (langue) in no way imply that individual speech acts (parole) must be likewise arbitrary and thus incapable of communicating truths. "The confusion between the system and its use," notes Mr. Tallis--e.g., between the arbitrary rules of syntax and the particular meaning of a sentence--is "especially unforgivable in writers who claim to be familiar with Saussure, as it was one of the latter's great achievements to distinguish these things."

Theory has tried to deconstruct science in a similarly misleading way. The philosopher Thomas Nagel observes that theorists invoke quantum theory and relativity "to show that today even science has had to abandon the idea of an objective, mind-independent reality." But, he curtly remarks, "neither theory has this significance." Another philosopher, Susan Haack, draws attention to Theory's use of what she calls "the Passes-for Fallacy": What "passes for truth" is equated with "what is truth." Such an elision, she notes, allows theorists to make a bogus claim: They observe (rightly) that some things once thought to be true are now considered false; then they discard (wrongly) the very concept of truth.

If challenged, theorists often vilify their opponents as right-wingers or worse. Kwame Anthony Appiah observes that when Susan Gubar, a leading academic feminist, raised questions about the state of feminist theory she "found herself condemned, astonishingly, as a troglodyte, perhaps even a racist." Ironically, Theory may harm the very politics it purports to defend. Noam Chomsky finds it "remarkable" that leftist intellectuals, with their attacks on rationality, "should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of Enlightenment." Meera Nanda laments that when postcolonialists repudiate the "objectivity" and "universalism" of science, they give "aid and comfort to Hindu chauvinists who display many symptoms of fascism."

For most people outside the academy what is most striking--and most puzzling--about Theory is the prose in which it is couched. To take an example offered by contributor D.G. Myers: Homi Bhaba, a major theorist, refers to "the desperate effort to 'normalize' formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality." (Whatever that may mean.) The theorist Luce Irigaray asks more clearly, though not more cogently: "Is E=MCý a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possibly sexed nature of the equation is not directly its use by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest."

It all makes one wonder how anyone could ever have taken such pronouncements seriously. "Theory's Empire," by its very existence, suggests that even professors need not feel obliged to do so any longer. And where will their newfound wisdom end? Mr. Appiah reports that "more and more literary critics" have actually decided to "devote themselves to . . . literature."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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