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Arizona shooting: Don’t blame Sarah Palin — get public schools to discuss politics

Lady Kathleen — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:46:59 +0000

Narberth, Pa. Its the Republicans fault! Listen to their nasty anti-government rhetoric!

Thats been the party line among many of my fellow Democrats, ever since Jared Loughner allegedly shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others outside an Arizona shopping mall Saturday morning.

The real problem is public schoolsTheyre wrong. The real problem lies instead in our public schools, which have left millions of Americans unequipped to engage in rational politics. That makes them suckers for the kind of conspiracies that Mr. Loughner reportedly embraced, as well as for the mistaken idea that one party is to blame for all of this.

Lets be clear: Some Republicans really have engaged in demagogic bashing of government officials. But its equally demagogic to blame them for the Arizona tragedy. Back in the McCarthy era, left-wingers called this line of thinking guilt by association: you support civil rights for African-Americans, and so do the Communists, so you must be a Communist! Its sad and ironic to see liberals doing the same thing now.

RELATED: Giffords shooting: What the Civil War can teach us about political restraint

Or listen to the other popular Democratic line: Its all about Arizona. The place is crawling with gun nuts and tea party crazies, the story goes, and its ground zero for Americas anti-immigration movement. No wonder Loughner lived there!

Thats a shockingly irresponsible stereotype, put forth by the same folks that always tell you theyre fighting stereotypes. As the prayer vigils and other ceremonies in recent days illustrate, Arizona is home to thousands of decent and fair-minded people. By painting them all with the same brush, we echo precisely the kind of irrational invective that we often indict.

Cheap political pointsMost of all, we make it impossible to conduct a reasoned conversation across our differences. Instead of using this tragedy to score cheap political points, then, we might pause to ask why so many Americans across the ideological spectrum indulge in the politics of hate, fear, and foolishness.

The usual suspects are mass media outlets, starting with the high-decibal shout-fests on talk radio and cable TV. Or we point to the Internet, especially the darker corners where Loughner liked to troll. According to news reports, he thought that American currency was worthless and that the government was brainwashing people by controlling their grammar.

But that doesnt explain why such unfounded statements find such a friendly audience, not just in Arizona but across the country. As of last May, 14 percent of Americans said President Obama wasnt born in the United States, and another six percent said that was their best guess. When one of out five Americans entertains this kind of big lie, we all have a big problem.

And theres only one way to solve it: via our public schools. If Americans cant evaluate different points of view or conduct a dialogue across them then our schools need to teach these skills.

Classroom discussion: nearly extinctFor the most part, theyre not. Weve stripped the schools of almost anything thats divisive, contentious, or controversial. Is it any wonder that many of our citizens cant engage in reasonable political dialogue?

Open up a typical history or civics textbook, and youll see what I mean. At the end of each chapter, students are told to recall certain names and dates or to identify different aspects of government. But rarely are they asked to take a position on a hot-button contemporary issue.

Ditto for classroom discussions, which typically skirt such questions. In a 2003 year-long survey of 100 middle and high school social studies classes, Martin Nystrand and his colleagues found almost no actual dialogue about controversial issues. Ditto for a 2007 study by Diana Hess and Louis Ganzler, involving more than 1,000 students in 21 high schools.

Part of the reason has to do with restrictions on teachers, who have been disciplined or even fired for raising controversial questions in the classroom or for expressing an opinion on them. Most recently, a federal court upheld the dismissal of an Indiana teacher after she told her students that she honked her horn while driving past a Honk for Peace

Another problem concerns the training of teachers, who are rarely prepared to handle such issues. Instead, theyre warned against raising anything controversial, which might in turn raise the hackles of parents and school board members.

The cost of keeping controversy out of classroomsTo be sure, teachers should not indoctrinate their own views in schools. But theres a big difference between sharing an opinion and requiring your students to accept it. Skilled teachers can lead a group discussion without leading it to a given conclusion.

RELATED: Across the red-blue divide: How to start a conversation

Do we want them to do it? Thats the biggest question of all. By insulating our classrooms from political controversy, we have raised a generation of Americans who often dont know how to think or act politically. And if you think Jared Loughner is the only one, you havent been listening.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.

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Sarah Palin, Tea Party: Is The Left Afraid?

RodZ — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:36:41 +0000

I watched the MSNBC screaming heads go crazy over the Tea Party folks and Sarah Palin. It is just funny to watch them spin the political impact of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party people. As you know they paint Sarah as dumb and the Tea party as an extreme right, out of control, bunch of stupid people. They are not any of those things.
Do I want Sarah Palin as President? Absolutely not, but not because I think she is dumb. I believe that like Obama, she does not have the knowledge, skills or experience to be the President of this country. We have seen the results of leadership based on an extreme ideological agenda coupled with inexperience. I don’t want a repeat of that even if it is coming from the right.
The majority of Tea Party people are every day folks like most of America, they want our government to work for us. It seems to me that responsible leadership can sit down together and compromise on important issues without bankrupting our country or forcing us to live with one sided legislation that benefits no one except the politicians and the special interest groups. I believe that the majority of Tea Party people want the same thing.
Is Sarah going to run for President? Who knows, I do know that she is driving the left crazy because they see her as less than intellectual and not in the same class as they are. The intellectual snobbery that the screaming heads put forward towards her is the same as they put forward towards Bush. Sarah is just like most Americans, plain spoken, hard working and knows that if presented an opportunity to enhance their life one should take advantage of it. So she wrote a book, so she gets paid for speaking, so what? If you look at all the “retired” politicians you’ll find them doing the same thing. More power to her for making a buck.
The Screaming heads are upset about her Face Book page, calling it juvenile, I guess they don’t realize she is reaching over a million people and the number is growing. Maybe they do realize that and that is what is upsetting them.
Say what you want about the Tea Party and Sarah, they speak to the people, not down to them and they are raising awareness of the lefts political agenda. The good news to me is that because of these actions the people of America are becoming more involved in the political process and their government.

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Senate Health Care Still A Secret: Doesn’t Reed Get It?

RodZ — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:50:30 +0000

After a few weeks at home and some key elections you would think the leadership would begin to see that America is a fiscal conservative, socially moderate country. The liberals are about 20% of the population and control a hundred percent of the House, Senate and the Presidency. The Tea Party groups were dismissed as organized by the Republicans, called names and ignored. Harry Reed continues to push secret deals in back rooms and no one really knows what is in the making to move this bill forward.
Massachusetts is having a special election and if the polls are any indication, a message is being sent by the people of this state that I believe reflects the mood of this country. Stop treating the American people as ignorant and give us a bill that will actually accomplish health care reform. Do under the lights with full participation of both parties.
Republicans need to get off of their butts and contribute to this process and stop blocking everything put forward by the opposition as do the Democrats. We must have a compromise to move almost any bill through the system.
It is my opinion that this bill is very bad for the American people. If the Democratic Senators have to have special deals to vote for their own bill one has to wonder what is wrong with the bill. One also has to wonder if a Senator takes a deal like some have, are they no better than the special interest groups or insurance companies they are vilifying?
If Scott Brown is elected in Massachusetts the Republicans should not see this as their return to power, they should see the mood of the country and begin to see that we want workable health care reform. The Democrats need to see this as a indicator of the peoples mood and not try to hold up his certification and push this bill through.
It is the function of the government of this county to regulate industries in order to protect us from unscrupulous practices, not join in and rip us off in the name of social reform.

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