Arkansawyer

I’ve had a grudge against Thomas Friedman ever since he slandered the countryside between the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport and Bentonville as “Dogpatch”. The man doesn’t recognize working farmland and unfarmable hill country, which is bad enough, and doesn’t recognize his own failure to understand what he sees, which is much worse.

So it’s never a surprise when Friedman misses the implication of his own writing. Here he argues for his own exclusivist form of educational reform (via an exclusivist immigration policy, but let that pass for now), and comes up with these two remarkable bits:

My favorite chat, though, was with Amanda Alonzo, a 30-year-old biology teacher at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, Calif. She had taught two of the finalists. When I asked her the secret, she said it was the resources provided by her school, extremely “supportive parents” and a grant from Intel that let her spend part of each day inspiring and preparing students to enter this contest.

We’ll get back to that in a moment. Now, what lesson does Friedman draw from his night out?

Gotta say, it was the most inspiring evening I’ve had in D.C. in 20 years. It left me thinking, “If we can just get a few things right — immigration, education standards, bandwidth, fiscal policy — maybe we’ll be O.K.”

Now, did you hear that teacher say anything about education standards? No. She talked about “supportive parents” (which, for Friedman, ties into his exclusivist immigration stance), resources, and funding. Where in Friedman’s article is increasing the resources for the schools? Where does he suggest increasing their funding? Nowhere.

But that is exactly the part of schooling that can be controlled. The government can’t provide a kid with supportive parents. It can fund that kid’s schools.

Perhaps if Friedman could understand the vast sea of underserved students in underfunded schools throughout the nation as internal immigrants he’d consider giving them what they need.

Or not. After all, they’re poor.

Yesterday, on an SUV with a Tim Griffin bumpersticker, I saw this bumper sticker below it:

ECONOMIC QUESTIONS SHOULD NEVER HAVE POLITICAL ANSWERS

which is itself a political answer to an economic question.

It’s true, and it’s a little embarrassing, but I have sometimes used class to avoid talking about race. It’s the sort of compromise that has always grit my teeth. Why do I sink to it?

(Hear that? “sink to it” There’s a moral overtone, tied up with my pride, that I don’t like there.)

When you plan, when you think into the future, again, if you aren’t thinking about race as part of that future, you aren’t going to make very good plans.

This is vision here, how you plan to instantiate the world you want beginning with the world you have. That vision has to be complete and explicit, both in its positive statement of what’s wanted and in its negative statement of what has to be abolished or overcome. Race lies at the heart of that in the United States, and a strategy for progressive change must start there.

But sometimes the people you’re up against are splitting you from the people you’re depending on with cynical uses of race. When they (whoever they is–I found it easy to locate in particular city officials and functionaries) find discussion of race useful, I’m usually in favor of dodging it. What does work, sometimes, is appealing to common interest instead, which comes down to class.

That’s a sloppy and unsatisfying compromise. Neither my ego nor my pride likes it. That’s not necessarily a bad sign.

This is great!

Art Amiss and KXUA 88.3FM have teamed up to bring Fayetteville a snapshot of the thriving Arkansas punk music scene as it is today! The result? A kickin’ compilation of 21 original homegrown Arkansas Punk songs from bands you’ll wish you had already known and won’t soon forget!

There’s also one of the best of The Malls songs on there, from way back in 1980. (Probably I was at that show if I wasn’t causing trouble out of town.)

On the other hand, it sure sounds good every time I hear it:

Don’t get your Lincolns confused. Abraham Lincoln: Democrat. Blanche Lincoln: Republican.

Mr. Obama said a lot of stuff about staying in school and studying, I guess like I do with my nice tutor, and Dad says that’s fine for me, as long as I don’t miss sports practice, but if those other kids do he won’t be able to hire them at his business and we won’t have anyone to clean our pool and mow the lawn and stuff.

It’s short. Read it. Then consider this:

Perhaps the ‘baggers will try to shout down U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder at his town hall meeting Wednesday night to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act and health reform. It’s being hosted by the Central Arkansas Labor Council at a union hall on Enmar Drive.

That’d be here:

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Here’s the story as told by power:

Dropping out of high school costs the students future income and society the taxes from that income, but efforts to keep kids in school show limited results.

And on:

“They simply don’t have the skills to compete in the 21st century,” Ritter said.

Gone are the days when a person could graduate from high school, find a job and do reasonably well in life, he continued.

“The manufacturing jobs that paid well and offered a man a job for life don’t exist anymore. They have been outsourced,” Ritter said.

(Oh, the irony–Ritter’s job is financed by the Walton Foundation.)

And on:

“We aren’t going to have economic growth without a more educated workforce. We have to have more kids graduate from high school and college if we are going to compete economically,” said Linda Auman, chief academic officer for the Fayetteville School District.

Aren’t you glad the chief academic officer is thinking about the workforce, and not silly stuff like the value of education to one’s life as a citizen?

And here’s the story as told by the object of power:

“I want to be a teacher because I believe if people had cared when I was growing up, I wouldn’t have been in all the trouble I was in,” Foster said.

“There’s going to be some kid out there that’s just like me and needs some guidance. If no one is there to lend a helping hand or just listen, we are going to have more children fall through the cracks. I want to take what I learned the hard way and help someone else before they fall through the cracks like I did.”

If you read her story, you see she didn’t fall, but was pushed:

She dropped out in eighth grade after an argument with her principal. Foster recalls the principal told her she was a troublemaker and would never amount to anything.

She said her parents threw her out of the house, and she ended up living on the streets. She supported herself by waiting tables and any other job she could find.

Of course, there’s always an ignorant someone to carp in the comments:

Good story but don’t claim to “fall through the cracks” when you are a drop out. Congrats on having the guts to better yourself and best of luck!

Someone needs a remedial reading course, or maybe a song.

To whom it may concern,

Due to the recent downgrade of your website, I am no longer able to post payments to my account. (I note you’ve added the highly insecure “personal question” to your authentication process; that’s not my issue, but it does suggest shoddiness in the rest of your redesign.) Honestly, what do you care who pays my bills, so long as they’re paid? What use is an ISIS account to me, or to you?

Enclosed find a check, to show good faith. Please advise on how to make future payments.