School Reform Hoax

Headline in Projo: " A sweeping plan for school reform " (Nov. 18) . What it all amounts to is this: " standards-based education ". Our school system must be nothing less than world class.

Kids in Denmark " in the vocational track " are still expected to know so much more than our fast track losers : algebra , foreign language, biology, chemistry ,physics , geometry , statistics and probability .

Of course we can get those " underprivileged " kids - or just challenge challenged - the kids at Central High in Providence - to meet the tough new standards - even though they can hardly meet the present standards in ANY subject.

All we needed all along was a no -nonsense bureaucrat cracking the whip: There will be pain , School Supt. Diana Lam promises. The pain will be felt by those poor kids already born with three strikes against them. Working class kids will learn that their own stupidity -not the SYSTEM - keeps them in their place.

An economic system with a bottom line demands a BOTTOM class. Twenty years from now the " sweeping plan " headline will be read with a sardonic smile - so much the rubbish of the day.

What the educational system needs -indeed what our farcical political system needs - is the RADICAL criticism of the 60s, full of passion for REAL change, REAL justice, REAL equality.

You cannot BEGIN to reform the educational system while pretending that CAPITALISM and the blind forces of the world market have given us the best of all possible worlds.

It is heartless, ruthless CAPITALISM that will make most kids multi-cultural losers - no matter how fine their education. And don't pretend that the educational system really encourages kids to THINK . Thinking is way too dangerous to be left to the non-elite , the future victims of capitalism .

Radical criticism has nothing in common with obnoxious and phony political correctness - an elite invention which serves the elite.

Men and women of all races , atheists and believers, gays and straights, the able and the handicapped , the young and the old are welcome to join the New Rebellion .

And the most subversive force in America today is still the TRUTH !