- Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie
to my sister. But don't you ever lie to my kids.
- Deep into your State of the Siege lecture tonight, long
after sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen,
you came after our children. "By passing the No Child Left Behind
Act," you said, "We are regularly testing every child ... and
making sure they have better options when schools are not performing."
-
- You said it ... and then that little tongue came out;
that weird way you stick your tongue out between your lips like the little
kid who knows he's fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey
tongue dart out and I thought, "He knows."
-
- And what you know, Mr. Bush, is this: you've ordered
this testing to hunt down, identify and target for destruction the hopes
of millions of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to
educate.
- Here's how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in
the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given
lists of words and phrases. They are graded, like USDA beef: some prime,
some OK, many failed.
-
- Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of
the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to "make
sure they have better options when schools are not performing."
- But there is no "better option," is there,
Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better schools to take in the kids
getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Where's the open door to the suburban
campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score
mark of Cain.
-
- And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score,
don't get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind.
We know the color of the kids left behind; and it's not the color of the
kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy.
-
- You know and I know that the testing is a con. There
is no "better option" at the other end. The cash went to the
end the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaire's
son another million.
-
- But you'll tell me, you took tests as a youth. I know
you did. And you scored on the Air Guard flight test 25 out of 100, one
point above too dumb to fly. But you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys.
They were stamped, "Ready for 'Nam." And you took a test to
get into Yale. And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you,
your grandpa on the Yale board provided the "better option" which
got you in.
-
- Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led
by Republican Mayor Bloomberg, had issued an edict to test the third-graders.
Winnow out the chaff and throw them back, exactly where they started, to
repeat the same failed program another year. In other words, the core
edict of No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind
another year. And another year and another year.
-
- You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity
program - because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding.
Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics:
Identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them
cheap. The system will provide the new worker drones that will clean the
toilets at the Yale alumni club, to punch the McDonald's cash registers
color-coded for illiterates, to pamper the winner-class on the higher floors
of the new service economy order.
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- Greg Palast is author of, "The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy," which has returned this week to the New York Times bestseller
list. View Palast's writings for Harper's, The Guardian (UK) and BBC television
at www.GregPalast.com.
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