Saturday, November 01, 2008

REVOLUTION THROUGH EDUCATION

Yesterday on the program we had a caller Jose. He brought up a lot of interesting points about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers ... and he believes that we have already begun a Marxist revolution in America - similar to that of Latin America. And he believes that this is happening through our government education system.

Now, it only took a 2-second Google search to find a speech that Bill Ayers made in Venezuela in 2006 at the World Education Forum. Before I give you some of the highlights, I want you to keep a few things in mind. According to Barack Obama, Bill Ayers is "just a professor of English in Chicago" and "a guy who lives down the street." Now if this man was "just" a professor, why is he being invited by Latin American dictators to speak at a World Education Forum? Bill Ayers is more than a professor; he is an icon for those hoping to revolutionize the American government education system.

I also want you to keep in mind that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama worked together on education reform in Chicago. We know the story ... Obama was the chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, serving with Bill Ayers. This $50 million fund awarded grants to groups that were trying to improve inner city education. And how did it do that ... not by giving money to the schools, but by giving money to other groups like the Small Schools Workshop. Ever heard of that? Well when Barack Obama was the chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for this workshop ... which was an organization led by Bill Ayers and Michael Klonsky -- former chairman of both Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). These are the people who Barack Obama thought would be best equipped to help the ailing inner city schools of Chicago.

There is so much more to this, folks. But it is completely beyond the understanding of government educated myrmidons who swoon at the sight of a "Change We Can Believe In Sign" ready for them to waive like a fool at some Obama rally. What I am driving at is that we know how much government education reform means to Barack Obama. And Bill Ayers was right by his side and a benefactor of Obama's support. We also know that when it comes to education in this country, as President, Barack Obama wants to make sure that your children are educated by the government. Vouchers? No way. Private schools? We'll see. This is a man who believes it is the government's job to educate your children ... and in his past the "educators" that Barack has turned to have been the likes of Bill Ayers.

Now what does Bill Ayers think about education and the United States? Let's return to that speech he made just 2 years ago at the World Education Forum in Venezuela.
I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I'd been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: "We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now."

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position-and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice ...

Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism - turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life ...

Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome ... Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education- a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.

When it comes to our government education system in this country, it might not even matter if Barack Obama is elected in this country. But under Barack Obama, I know that I can expect more federal government and less choice for parents

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Canada: Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) are even more hypocritical than you thought - yes, it's possible

The idea behind Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) is to hook kids on hatred of the Jewish state while they are still wet behind the ears in their knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and vulnerable to the sophisticated play on emotions and pity these fulltime activists with no respect for truth bring to bear on their "victims."

It struck me as risibly hypocritical to see them all hot and bothered last week when Hasbara invited Israeli consul General Amir Gissin to speak at York University. Unwilling to subject him to the usual disruptive savaging Palestinian groups - particularly SAIA - routinely apply to pro-Israel speakers, Hasbara insisted on reserved seating. SAIA went ballistic, accusing Hasbara of "racial profiling." SAIA put out a statement: "SAIA believes the university is a space for open public debate, freedom of expression and thought, and one of the rare spaces to question systems of power, authority, and oppression. York University cannot be allowed to begin using police and security to ban students from attending public events on our own campus."

"Open public debate"? Let me take you back to last year's Israeli Apartheid Week on the University of Toronto campus. SAIA set up a full day session of anti-Zionist brainwashing for high school students. They had some other name for it but that was what it was. Nobody but high school students were allowed into the building, and even they had to have identity cards. Profiling? Ya' think? Nobody else was allowed in: no teachers, no parents, no older siblings.

I can't think of anything creepier or more inculpating than a closed-door session to which youngsters only are invited to listen to adult fanatics spewing hatred. So SAIA should just shut up about profiling, since they are the worst offenders in Canada in that department. If they knew the meaning of shame, they would stop lecturing real democrats on the nature of fairness or justice. But shame, like integrity, truth and fairness can only mean something to people with a conscience. And people with a conscience are the first to be "profiled" right out of SAIA.

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