Readers' Responses and Comments   1. 4. 2012

Re: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School
Success

I read the whole of the Atlantic article this Portside
posting gave an excerpt from.  Finnish schools have both
equality & excellence, excellence flowing from equality;
American schools, & the broader American (U.S.) culture,
on the other hand have both inequality and mediocrity. But
it's time the left finally got around to pressing the
issue of the U.S. massive "dumbing down" cultural
mediocrity, a mediocrity stemming from consumerist
capitalism's push to marketize everything, to make a mass
society of "average" consumers for mass-produced goods,
with "highbrow" tastses and goods reserved for the elite
few.

This pervasive anti-intellectualism, always a part of
American society from the beginning, has now shown where
it leads: to a "dumbed down" society which is eagerly
embraced by the left because it identifies democracy with
mediocrity, even though this mediocrity is the product of
capitalism's production of a mass market that will swallow
uncritically its nostrums assiduously pushed through
advertising and pabulum TV and other media. As it was put
in Aldous Huxley's consumerist dystopia, "You can't
consume if you read books."  And the left bought the farm
on this completely, going for lowering the bar, instead of
raising the bar and educating the masses to scale this
raised bar.  Which we of the left went for when we
agitated for "Everyone an A student, no matter what!"
instead of the proper Jefersonian democratic ideal of "An
aristocracy of talent in a democracy of opportunity."

And so we now see the distressing results around us
daily--boring, infantile TV; boring, infantile newspapers;
boring, infantile radio; boring, infantile, massively
popular websites, all geared to a mediocrity pushed to
sell boring mass-produced goods that are heavily hyped and
advertised.  No wonder a Kim Kardashian is so popular! 
Welcome to the cultural stupidity you, the left, joined
withe the mass-market consumerist capitalists in foisting
upon us!
 
George Fish
Indianapolis, IN  

===================

Re: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School
Success

This article reminds me of Uri Bronfenbrenners 1972 book,
/ Two Worlds of Childhood: US and USSR./ As I recall, the
book contrasted the Soviet approach which emphasized
collective achievement of the whole class, with the US
approach of individual achievement. After forty years,
Bronfenbrenner is still worth reading. The book is
available used through Amazon for as little as 1 cent
(plus shipping and handling, of course).

Art Perlo

===================

Re: Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins

I have been watching the candidates and the Iowa primary
and I cannot believe some of the guff that gets said.
Maybe a role for the Occupy movement would be to answer
back publicly the entire leadup to the election of some of
the nonsense. If the country actually pursued the policies
laid out by the front runners, the economic and political
future would be much worse and very bleak for the workd.

L. MacDowell

===================

Re: Haiti: 7 Places Where Earthquake Money Did and Did Not
Go

As a sidebar, if you send money to MEDICC, it goes
directly to buy supplies for Cuban-trained Haitian and
Cuban medical personnel, who have been working steadily in
Haiti since the day of the earthquake, dealing first with
trauma and more recently with cholera.

Ted

"Climate change threatens to foreclose on all of us." --
Rebecca Solnit

=====================

What does the Romney campaign mean for the Repulican
coalition?

Stewart Acuff

MSNBC is reporting that evangelical voters in Iowa are
splitting their votes amongst Santorum, Paul, and
Gingrich. With Romney at or close to the top, does this
indicate a split between evangelicals and other
Republicans. 

It is startling to see Romney with so many Iowa voters but
almost now evangelicals. Is this an Iowa phenomenon or
does it indicate a deeper split in the Republican
coalition?

Romney is clearly a member of the Northeastern moderate
elite. After all, he ran and governed as a moderate in
Massachusetts. He ran a hedge fund and destroyed 1000's
and 1000's of jobs. To put another way, he made millions
of dollars ruining the lives of middle class and working
families. 

There is a deep strain rightwing populism in the
Republican Party that hates the Eastern Elite which is
absolutely represented and characterized by Romney. 

Most of us progressives write off the Southeast in
presidential campaigns. 

I went through all this during the 20 years of organizing
I did in Georgia and Texas. 

The Republican campaigning foundation in the South has
been race and religion. Their policies emanating from that
foundation include abortion, guns, sexual orientation
discrimination. 

Just now rightwing Republican politician JC Watts is on tv
saying there are two camps in the Republican Party--those
for Romney and those for anyone but Romney. 

As the son of a Southern Baptist preacher raised in
Tennessee and Southeast Missouri, I think many
evangelicals will see Romney as a Mormon as an other--not
like the evangelicals, along with his career of
flip-flopping--very unreliable, exotic, not familiar. 

The other is anathema to Southern Republicans. 

In fact, the other is part of what is driving the hatred
of President Obama. 

While the Republican leadership have closed ranks behind
Romney, the base may not be so accepting--especially in
the red South.

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