The recent debates of the Republican Presidential candidates sadly suggested to me as an educator how unlikely it would be for the viewers and voters to separate fact from fiction. History, to many American students, has always been "a thing of the past." It's all a matter of connecting the dots which most all of the presidential candidates would like to disconnect. Knowing a certain amount of history, or, more to the point, remembering some significant dates, names and events can be, I believe, very important for American citizens to remember in order to be well-informed voters; those who know how to "connect the dots." What makes it easier for politicians to "disconnect the dots"is Americans' woeful ignorance of history and civics. In a report several years ago, from "The Wire," it was observed:
Many Americans know U.S. students' test scores on subjects like math and reading are low. In civics, however, they're appalling. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a respected, voluntary nationwide test, 22 percent of students test proficient in civics, and only 18 percent rate proficient in U.S. history. American citizenship depends on its citizens sharing some body of knowledge together about the political structure that governs their daily lives. -- report coauthor Sandra Stotsky, who led Massachusetts in developing some of the country's best education standards in the 1990s.
Moreover, in today's obsession with facts both trivial and significant, it's hard to keep up with what is really fact from what is "disconnecting the dots."
The presidential debates I witnessed were so full of misstatements, exaggerations and some plain lies that it should have been expected for some of the commentators to point them out, although it would be more assuring if the viewers could do so themselves. But it seems that the core constituents don't seem to be concerned about the facts but about the "delivery" skills of the candidates. There was little fact checking that I could tell from the networks; and those few errors cited had little of substance to be really informative.
An example of disconnecting the dots was demonstrated by former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas: one of the Presidential candidates. Pandering to the Jewish voters as Evengelicals often do in order to hasten "The Second Coming,"he claims that the nuclear agreement with Iran will put the U.S. and the rest of the world in danger of being overwhelmed by Jihadists. It's alarming, certainly, but unless you connect the dots it would seem from Huckabee's tirade that no other Middle Eastern countries such as Pakistan and Israel have had the bomb for decades. Given that those countries as well as India have the ultimate weapon and for some good reasons the crazies don't seem to be able to get hold of one for their "Second Coming," all Huckabee's hysteria will do is make some of the electorate advocate scrapping the agreement with Iran and be willing to put American "boots on the ground" which has already been shown to be a futile and costly gesture..
But even one of the "moderate" candidates at the debate, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, demonstrated his disconnect of the dots when he casually mentioned that teachers in Ohio are too uptight by the policies of his administration: "If I were not president, but if I were King of America, I would abolish all teachers' lounges, where they sit together and worry about 'woe is us,'" Kasich said at an education conference in New Hampshire sponsored by the education group The Seventy-Four and The American Federation for Children." The comment, even if meant jocularly, showed Kasich's ignorance and indifference to the importance of "lounge time" as an opportunity for teachers to exchange ideas and communicate with each other, not feel sorry for themselves.
A spokesperson for Kasich tried to clarify the governor's statement by saying that
"He thinks teachers have far more support in their communities than they sometimes give themselves credit for and they shouldn't pay attention to the small number of pot-stirrers in their ranks who try to leverage problems for political gain."
But if you connect the dots you will realize that the very venue of Kasich's speech could give unionized teachers worries about "the small number of pot-stirrers . . . who try to 'leverage problems for political gain": not the teachers but Kasich himself!
The American Federation for Children whose conference Kasich spoke at earlier this year is "An organization that backs private school vouchers [and] is campaigning against the recall of the eight Republican Wisconsin senators who backed Governor Scott Walker's anti-union legislation. The so-called American Federation for Children (AFC) is an ardent supporter of the voucher scheme in Milwaukee, the unsuccessful voucher program which Walker and his GOP allies want to export to other parts of the state as part of bolstering the Republicans' attacks on public schools and teachers.
The AFC's co-sponsor of the conference addressed by Kasich is the innocuous-sounding
"The Seventy-four. It's first articles... suggest that it favors an agenda that is advocated primarily by business interests and conservative politicians, and that is strongly opposed by public school teachers and their unions..."
The Seventy-four, founded by former tv news reporter, Campbell Brown, vigorously advocates "choice" for parents and children using "vouchers" which gives public funds to private charter schools to the detriment of public schools. Is it any wonder that unionized public school teachers could justifiably feel that they "should . . . pay attention to the small number of pot-stirrers in [political] ranks who try to leverage problems for political gain." It's all a matter of connecting the dots which most all of the presidential candidates would like to disconnect.
Another "pot stirrer," a candidate that even seems to be in agreement with teacher's unions and progressive school improvement for his opposition to the Core Curriculum is Scott Walker. But it doesn't take much dot-connecting to realize his real agenda: the privatization of the public schools in Wisconsin.
The following article on Walker's war on public education was written by Molly Beck of the Wisconsin State Journal. " Governor Scott Walker continues his war of attrition against public education, especially in Milwaukee. Despite the fact that the public schools of Milwaukee outperform its voucher schools, Walker is cutting the budget of the more effective public schools and increasing funding for the less effective voucher schools.
"The state will spend $258 million in the 2016-17 school year on private school vouchers, a new estimate shows.
"At the same time, the amount of state aid sent to public schools will be reduced by $83 million to offset the voucher spending, for a net cost to the state of $175 million, according to an analysis drafted by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau in response to a request from Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, who opposes vouchers. http://dianeravitch.net/2015/09/03/milwaukee-public-schools-budget-slashed-for-vouchers."
It's important, if you want to get at the truth, not only to know how to connect the dots but where they are in the first place.
This brings us to a major issue in this campaign: the "Immigration Crisis" that has the GOP in a lather. But first of all, is there a crisis at least in terms of illegal entry? Although there had been a rise in illegal immigration in the 80's and 90's, "in 2001, the number of new residents (based on U.S. Census Bureau data) started to drop. In 2005, it began to plunge, bottoming out at 140,000 in 2010 and has flat lined since then. Most analysts attribute the steep drop of the last decade to the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2006 and the lingering recession following the financial crisis.
"But a bigger factor has been at work in Mexico that will drive net migration numbers to very low levels -- close to zero -- for at least the next one or two generations and probably much longer. Mexico, known for massive and rapid population growth for most of the 20th century, is now on the same downward demographic spiral as the rest of the developed world, including most of Latin America.
To begin connecting the dots in this issue you must know that the U.S. liberalized its immigration laws in the 1960's which enabled all Latins, but particularly Mexicans, to come over the border, not necessarily to settle, but to provide agricultural labor at the lowest possible wages as "guest workers." This cheap labor enabled agribusinesses to keep costs down and offer consumers in the United States lower priced agricultural goods.
"It was during this period that Cesar Chavez, a Mexican-American, organized the Farm Workers' Union and established a very effective boycott of California grapes which led to the increase in wages and improved working conditions--temporarily--to migrant workers. A Mexican American, Chavez became the best known Latino American civil rights activist, and was strongly promoted by the American labor movement, which was eager to enroll Hispanic members. His public-relations approach to unionism and aggressive but nonviolent tactics made the farm workers' struggle a moral cause with nationwide support. By the late 1970s, his tactics had forced growers to recognize the UFW as the bargaining agent for 50,000 field workers in California and Florida. However, by the mid-1980s membership in the UFW had dwindled to around 15,000.
Thus, the reason for this 'invasion" was to benefit American agribusiness but among these immigrants were young men who lived in the barrios and found drug selling more lucrative than low-wage, physically demanding agricultural work. As a result, a reign of terror, especially in Los Angeles, but in other parts of the country as well evolved. In a 1999 evaluation of the problem, it was found "that criminal street gangs have become one of the most serious crime problems in California. Gang violence-particularly assaults, drive-by shootings, homicides, and brutal home-invasion robberies-accounts for one of the largest, single, personal threats to public safety in this state.
"The Department of Justice estimates there may be as many as 175,000 to 200,000 gang members in California. These figures are approximations only since there is no statewide, centralized repository of gang-related information to accurately measure the number of gang members in California. However, these figures represent an approximate 230 to 280 percent increase over the past 11 years when former Attorney General George Deukmejian's Youth Gang Task Force estimated 52,400 gang members in the state during 1981.
Now that liberating immigration had in part resulted in the rise of these gangs, the Federal government took steps to counter the threat.
Between 2001 and 2010, Con Air flew 129,760 convicted criminals back to Central America [from the US]. These included 44,042 who arrived in Honduras on daily flights that were initially to one of two cities. The flights to the capital, Tegucigalpa, were then suspended and they all began landing at the country's second-largest metropolis, San Pedro Sula.
And now the Republicans are scape-goating Latin countries whose residents are fleeing their home country because of gang violence, made in the USA, and imported back to their country of origin to perfect the system of extortion, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder that we "exported" into their countries in the first place!
There are many other dots that need to be connected such as, with all due respect to the Pope, population growth is a major source of the very poverty the Pontiff wishes to have addressed while he maintains the Church doctrine in terms of women's reproduction. At least from several points of view, Pope Francis'appeal to the wealthy nations to aid in reducing poverty could be considered self-defeating.
Unempowered women are often unable to act on their own behalf to obtain contraceptive services to regulate their childbearing; they are also the group most likely to believe that bearing many children will provide a bulwark against poverty in their old age. This points to the urgent need to improve women's education and job prospects if they are to assume greater control over their lives and move out of poverty. Programs that combine social and economic development and family planning services for poor women encourage them to have fewer children and thereby enhance their prospects of achieving a different, less-dependent kind of life. Such programs also provide women with the tools they need to attain those two goals.
Finally, the assault on women's health care through the pretext of charging Planned Parenthood with widespread ethical violations concerning fetal tissue strike me as the most hypocritical. For instance, Texas, with its highly restrictive policy on abortion ranks near the bottom in per capita spending.
Govpro looked at the numbers and found that Nevada spends the least per-capita on government. The other top five states with lowest per-capita spends are Texas, Georgia, Florida and Illinois. Among the 20 states with the lowest per-capita spends, almost half are in the Midwest, and six are in the southern United States.
At the same time many of these states are the most restrictive in giving access to abortion.
In other words, life is sacred before birth but after, that's not the state's problem. While the Elephant in the Livingroom is a global economic system run by perpetual adolescents with no serious attempt either nationally or globally to reign in their quest for "maximized profitability" at the expense of the other 90 percent. I can only hope that the electorate can connect the dots before they are totally disconnected from our "pre-selected representatives."