The Nazis are in bloom again

This found its way into my e-mail box yesterday. The financial market bail-out seems to have triggered this anti-Semitic nonsense. It sounds like the comments we read on some blogs. But these people have resources and can vote. Here is the e-mail in its entirety:

General Bobby Farrell

Post Office Box 3456

Albuquerque, NM 87190 USA

Email: thegeneral@theakurians.com

Tel: 505-796-4651

http://www.the-aed.com

http://www.theakurians.com

http://www.theanointedtheelectandthedamned.com

IMMEDIATE NEWS COMMENTARY

29 SEPTEMBER 2008

U.S. GOVERNMENT BAILOUT OF KAK JEWS BY KAK JEWS! - THE TRUTH!

Point, the First: THERE IS AN ABSOLUTE CURE FOR ALL THIS KAK JEW SOCIALIST ABOMINATION: VOTE EVERY SOCIALIST INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE! Once you see their long-term scam agenda (below), throwing out the SOCIALIST BASTARDS won't take much effort.

"The Federal Reserve bails out AIG under the disguise of 'government'." The FACT is: The Federal Reserve IS NOT A GOVERNMENT AGENCY! Period.

All the grand-sounding lies and details are rampant with any newscast, local and national, so they do not require repeating here.

The simple fact is that KAK JEW-Controlled government 'agencies' have concocted a financial bailout SCAM to financially protect corporate KAK JEWS to the tune of $700/$800 BILLION DOLLARS charged to and taxed back upon the common U.S. Citizen whether currently employed or not. Wall Street charged/billed to Main Street, Suburban Street, County Road and Rural Route without any permission or thought of consideration for the GENERATIONS who will make these payments to the high-living GENERATIONS of the current crop of KAK JEWS!

Quoting U.S. House Representative Ron Paul (R) U.S. District 14, Texas: "Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy. The United States Constitution grants to Congress the authority to coin money and regulate the value of the currency. The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to delegate control over monetary policy to a central bank. Furthermore, the Constitution certainly does not empower the federal government to erode the American standard of living via an inflationary monetary policy."

You'll note Representative Ron Paul called the scenario but DOES NOT MENTION any "WHO" is actually responsible!

"WHO" created/initiated the idea of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - Bill Clinton still isn't that smart; look at the communiqués and see how many hooked noses you find;

"WHO" actually formulated and scripted the texts of the applicable statutes; Bill Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinski and other females in addition to the duties of government;

"WHO" took the 'proposals' through the BOUGHT AND PAID FOR lobbyists for further presentation to the appropriate Congressional Committees; read the list of FROM "WHO" and TO "WHO" and count the next layer of hooked noses all on the same Marxist agenda;

"WHO" publicized, advocated and ENFORCED the relevant bills onto the House and Senate floors: more KAK JEWS;

"WHO" then on to final votes: check the "WHO" at each point in the game and see how many KAK JEWS were involved and those same KAK JEW-Connections.

Representative Ron Paul CANNOT tell you, if he wants to live; Wolf Blitzer, Tom Brokaw, Charles Gibson and Katie Couric WON'T tell you if they want to KEEP their KAK JEW-Controlled jobs!

Nevertheless, KAK JEW SOCIALISTS and their puppets in government ignore both the Constitution, the 'government' and We, The People, and arbitrarily issue about HALF A TRILLION U.S. DOLLARS - almost twice the U.S. cost of World War II when everything had to be rationed to afford it - to bail out the KAK JEW-DOMINATED 'financial' organizations: Bear Stearns, now American International Group (AIG), don't count Lehman Brothers out of the game yet; and the ultimate utopian KAK JEW grab-the-money-with-no-liability: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instituted under the Marxist Reign of Bill Clinton and effected into 'law' by the Republican SOCIALIST-CONTROLLED Congress. And it isn't over yet!

KAK JEWS? Yep. Don't think so? The take the time to CHECK the "who" is, was, and will be, on top of this whole lying, thieving scenario of each and every 'institution' and 'government' AGENCY involved and tell the world if that is a grand collection of KAK JEWS or the City Council of Beijing!

Since its illegal and UNConsitutional creation in 1913 The Fed has NEVER been under the guidance of anybody but KAK JEWS and KAK JEW PUPPETS which amount to the same thing. Even a cursory view of the Chairmen of the Federal Reserve since it became an abomination on the U.S. Citizens is a real clue for anyone with the brains to understand WHAT they are looking at:

Charles Sumner Hamlin: 1914-1916;

William Proctor Gould Harding: 1916-1922;

Daniel Richard Crissinger: 1923-1927;

Roy Archibald Young: 1927-1930 - Master of the 1929 Stock Market Crash!

Eugene Isaac Meyer: 1930 to 1933;

Eugene Robert Black: 1933-1934;

Marriner Stoddard Eccles: 1934-1948;

Thomas Bayard McCabe: 1948-1951;

William McChesney Martin, Jr.: 1951-1970;

Arthur Frank Burns: 1970 to 1978;

George William Miller: 1978-1979;

Paul Adolph Volcker: 1979-1987;

Alan Greenspan: 1987-2006;

Ben Shalom Bernanke: 2006 to Date.

KAK JEW or KAK JEW PUPPET, take your choice. All were/are One World Government SOCIALISTS stinking of Rockefeller-Rothchild.

FYI: Now you know why The Fed doesn't account to congress: IT DICTATES TO CONGRESS! The Fed came up with this last bailout without even so much as a howdy-do to Congress or anybody else. Nothing new there, if anybody in Congress doesn't play along, they get BOYCOTTED by all the other KAK JEWS with an interest in the circle explained immediately below.

We call it the KAK JEW to KAK JEW to KAK JEW circle of circumstance, probably better called "CIRCLE OF POWER" … as that is exactly what it is: above the law collusions and conspiracy totally immune POWER!

KAK JEWS stealing everything in sight - with only KAK JEWS for anyone to complain to - KAK JEWS in all the enforcement and regulatory 'agencies' - covered by more KAK JEWS in all the relevant courts - knowing other KAK JEWS are going to glorify them in every medium and way available.

Look at it. Massive BAILOUTS for the Corporations and still NOTHING for the victims! Current estimates claim FIVE MILLION victims who are in or nearing foreclosure as result of the Clinton's MARXIST Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the bottom source of all the NON-PAYMENTS that in turn created the mortgage crash. The Clintons KNEW exactly what they were doing to the U.S. economy with NAFTA and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac KAK JEW MARXIST charades. And, once enacted, the KAK JEWS knew it was only at matter of time when they horsed MILLIONS of victims into a McMansion on a variable rate mortgage, knowing damned well they couldn't afford it once that 'rate' changed - which KAK JEWS were in charge of changing! KAK JEW to KAK JEW to KAK JEW is bailing out fellow KAK JEWS but not one solitary cent for anybody who is about to lose their home and the entire investment they have in it right along with their credit 'rating.' Understand that. The KAK JEWS will have the victim's money AND the foreclosed properties AND the bailout money too! They'll be back into their KAK JEW SCAMS as soon as they sober up from the celebrations, only with one hell of a lot more MONEY TO BUY MORE POWER TO GET AWAY WITH IT. Rest assured, all the KAK JEWS will be very happy …

And WHERE did all the reputed 'private sector' money come from? What 'money' there actually was come from KAK JEWS at institutions like AIG, money market funds, "YOUR" money being 'managed' via 'investments' in other KAK JEW financial scams that will now be LOST to YOU and reimbursed to the KAK JEWS, et cetera: All KAK JEW-controlled. The rest of the 'money' came from 'government' KAK JEWS running the credit computers at The Fed, creating the appearance of financial stability whether the money ever got printed or not.

Somebody CREATED this mess, and if "YOU" didn't, and "I" didn't, then whoever was IN CHARGE has to be guilty. But they couldn't have done it alone, there's just too many laws, regulations, directives, executive orders, Gestapo 'enforcements' to prepare, court precedents and 'interpretations' to get enacted - requiring massive collusions and conspiracies. Well now, and WHO is in positions necessary to accomplish all that?

THE KAK JEW-CONTROLLED UNITED STATES CONGRESS!

And WHO is behind all the necessary publicity?

THE KAK JEW-CONTROLLED MAJOR MEDIA: NEWSPAPERS, RADIO, TELEVISION AND ENTERTAINMENT, MAGAZINES AND ALL!

THE CURE: BOYCOTT!

Write your local newspapers, radio and television stations and tell them in no uncertain terms - vulgarity and racism if you see it (they still have to read the contents) - that "YOU" are fed up with their SOCIALIST agenda and glorification of MORAL DEGENERACY! Then write (a postcard is best because everyone who sees it will have read at least some of it) every ADVERTISER and tell them "YOU" will not tolerate their SUPPORT of the media's SOCIALIST agenda and glorification of MORAL DEGENERACY!

Those communications will get attention! Give it about a week, ten days at the most, and you'll see ADVERTISEMENTS about 'fairness' and 'honesty' and 'trust' from all that media. They'll be LYING though their damned teeth and their only intent is to SEE IF YOU HAVE ANY … TEETH! And THAT is your invitation to LET THE SOCIALIST BASTARDS HAVE IT AGAIN! CANCEL any subscriptions, and send your notice of cancellation to the HIGHEST ranking name you can find in their materials. Send a copy of your CANCELLATION to each and every advertiser! Advertiser? Yep. Advertising is sold/priced/valued on the NUMBER of people it reaches (called "impressions" for each and every documentable exposure even to the same person) and the advertiser instantly KNOWS that (1) "YOU" aren't kidding, and (2) DOESN'T KNOW how many more there are like you that won't/can't take the time to tell anybody!

Those are NUMBERS neither the media nor the advertiser can ignore! And both damned well KNOW that one for a fact from first-hand experience.

Then make sure your local County and State Chairs of all the political parties (easily accessible from the telephone directory) have the same message:

RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION - ALL OF IT - OR ELSE!

END THE KAK JEW SOCIALISMS IN GOVERNMENT!

END THE KAK JEW CONTROLS OVER GOVERNMENT!

STOP FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BLACKMAIL (Federal 'standards' or loss of revenue until 'compliance')!

STOP THE DAMNED LIES AND GOVERNMENT COVER-UPS!

Enough letters to the Editors, newspapers, radio and television, will get "YOUR" points across, and especially if you REFUSE to sit down, REFUSE to shut up, and REFUSE to stop talking to anybody and everybody else who is as angry as you are.

GET POLITICALLY ACTIVE! Being stupid enough to NOT VOTE - regardless of your lame-brained excuse - is the exact game the KAK JEW SOCIALISTS want you to play. Unless you vote, and you can't vote if you don't register, and you must register in time: they don't have to humor you or give a damn whether you like what is happening to you or not - in spite of all their grinning 'pretense' of concern.

REGISTER TO VOTE - LET THE BASTARDS KNOW IT - AND VOTE AGAINST EVERY INCUMBENT REGARDLESS OF RACE, RELIGION, OR POLITICAL PARTY!

ALL OF THEM, REGARDLESS OF OFFICE. If unopposed on the ballot - do not vote that option! Regardless of what you are told, you do not - REPEAT - you do not have to vote anything just because it's on the ballot! Pay no attention to threats that 'your vote won't count' - THAT IS A KNOWING LIE - and that is WHY you must also insist on a PAPER BALLOT rather than an all-electronic. With all-electronic the programming can get ANY result the SOCIALISTS want, and with a PAPER BALLOT the count and re-count and be challenged and re-counted until hell freezes over. You may have to GET RID OF SOME SOCIALISTS to secure new re-counts, but that too is possible to the determined.

AND THAT IS THE CURE AND THE PROCESS OF CURE!

Now, it's a question of "DO YOU HAVE THE GUTS" to demand the government The Constitution of The United States established, outlines and guarantees? If so, "YOU" are going to have to stand up and be counted against more solidly entrenched KAK JEW SOCIALISTS than you believe even exists.

If not, be prepared for the all-but-already-here LEGISLATED ENSLAVEMENT - the already-here never-ending dept crisis - economic depressions at the whim of KAK JEW SOCIALISTS - totally and irrevocable loss of any and all Constitutional Rights and Guarantees, most of which are already legislated and court-precedented into oblivion in disguise of 'crime preventions' by KAK JEW SOCIALISTS!

Sorry, John, but WE understand.

First, let's dispense with the absurdity of who "won" the debate. A political debate is a huge ink blot. It is not a verbal combat to determine a winner--unless one of the debaters screws up in some colossal way. It is a forum in which the dominant purpose is for the candidates to define and support their stances. People project their own prejudices and pathologies onto the debate. When we hear assessments of such a debate, we hear nothing substantive about the candidates or the issues. We receive only a map of the minds of the people who presume to make such assessments. And those maps are seldom pretty. For the most part they are reflective of a culture that no longer can distinguish between self-absorption and applied intelligence.

Second, the debate was overshadowed by the financial crisis, which provided an occasion for the regressives to put on a display of the political game that so totally defines them: distraction, obstruction, and hate-based propaganda. Begin with the fact that no one wants a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The administration, as has people like Warren Buffet, have warned that a potential credit freeze could shut down the nation. (In fact, word circulating on the Internet is that the Bank of England told the Kremlin that Pres. Bush will declare an economic catastrophe the week of Oct. 5 and the election will be postponed indefinitely.) McCain and neo-fascists in the House are trying to make the bailout look like a Democrat scheme, rather than a bi-partisan effort to head off the total collapse of the country. Their first ploy was to refuse to send a representative to the House-Senate talks and then to disrupt the Thursday meeting for reviewing the progress of the plan by raising their objections with a shouting match--at a time when sound information and cool deliberation was essential. Although Obama had made the initial effort to organize a cooperative approach between the campaigns, McCain saw a chance to posture. He parachuted in to Washington, but contributed nothing that anyone could see. What we could see was him rushing around, cell phone to ear, in a flurry of staff claims that he was involved in the negotiations. No one, Democrat, Republican, Administration, or staff have been able to report anything that McCain contributed.

One thing did come through clearly at the debate. John McCain stood sullenly refusing to even look at Obama, repeating the phrase "Sen. Obama doesn't understand." Sorry, John, but WE understand.

After the Republican convention, McCain's campaign went from any pretense to addressing issues to a media propaganda offensive styled after propaganda blitzes of the old Soviet Union, Red China, and most totalitarian states who believe a repetition of lies and slanders are the essence of gaining and maintaining political power. The press has done its job of revealing the actuality of Sarah Palin and the deliberate misrepresentations the McCain-Palin campaign has made of Obama. McCain has become a devotee of the Karl Rove tactics used against him in the primary campaign of 2000. He must have become convinced of their efficacy. And coupled with the I-can-see-Russia-from-here statements as evidence of qualification, there aren't many brain cells that do not feel indignant about the insults to them.

The scheme being put forward by the intransigent regressives which McCain claims to have made possible is for Wall Street to buy insurance on the mortgages that it can purchase. Who would be the insurer? The government. The regressives say it would preserve the free market. The fact is that the market has not been free. The corporate fascists managed to evade any attempts at regulation that would have prevented the crisis. They managed to keep the market a closed entity from which the forces of a truly free market were systematically shut out. To make a market truly free, it must be regulated by rules that keep it open and free. The insurance scheme would merely provide a way for the people who caused the financial crisis to maintain control of the market. And John McCain jumped in to lead the charge to make a provision in the bailout scheme that would preserve the privileges of the corporate fascists, not open up and set the market free.

When McCain fully embraced the propaganda tactics of anti-democratic regimes, he defined himself quite clearly. His decisions during and since the Republican convention have made clear what factions and ideologies he represents. Sorry, John, but we do understand.

Bad days at Standing Rock, and other reservations

[This photograph is from the movie "Rez Bomb" shown at the South Dakota Film Festival in Aberdeen last weekend. It was shot at the Pine Ridge Reservation]


The much derided member of the main stream media, The Argus Leader, has run a series of articles on the suicide epidemic among young people on the Rosebud Reservation. In the last 3 1/4 years, 28 young people have taken their own lives.

While so much of the electronic media and the parasitic blogs that feed on it distort and quibble about what politicians and political commentators are saying, there are issues being covered by real journalists that do something other than heap insult and abuse on other people. In fact, the mentality that generates the insult and abuse is a menacing presence on the reservations that scourges the mind much as the the buffalo slaughterers of a century ago scourged the land and the culture.

Suicide bombers in Iraq and other countries beset by Islamic terrorists are chronicled by the press on a daily basis, but the alarming rate of suicides on the Indian reservations is all but ignored except for occasional articles such as the series running in the Argus Leader. A factor in that story may be the involvement of the Center for Disease Control, which has been consulted to help the tribe deal with the suicide rate on the Rosebud.

I have had occasion to spend time on Standing Rock in recent weeks. While I was there to attend the opening of some new facilities of Sitting Bull College and some meetings dealing with crime, I was made aware that Standing Rock has, also, been dealing with an alarming suicide rate among the young. One web log states that between 1998 and 2002, there were more than 600 suicide attempts on Standing Rock. The article states that 224 were successful.

An article series in the political newsletter Counterpunch focuses on Standing Rock and its historoy of suicides, but also places some emphasis on suicides among all young people.

Indian Country Today carries a story of a Senate committee hearing at Standing Rock to explore what can be done about the suicide epidemic there and on other reservations. The rate on the reservations is 2.5 times the rate for young people in the U.S. as a whole.

At the hearing, it was pointed out that alcohol and drugs were involved. But the underlying cause--and that behind the problems with drugs and alcohol--is a sense of pointlessness and hopelessness. Racial discrimination and denigration is a constant ingredient mentioned by those who study the problem.

When the native peoples were forced onto reservations, their culture was taken away and the young were punished for speaking in their native languages. An economy based on an integration with nature and subsistence was destroyed and they were expected to replace it with the consumerism that drives our economy. To native peoples, the English language was regarded as a weapon used against them. Its words were missiles of destruction used to deny, denigrate, and deceived them. The language carried deadly germs in the form of words, which would kill you once they invaded you. They were used only to betray.

The thought is stated in a line from a well-known short story, "Lullaby" by Leslie Marmon Silko: "...it was like the old ones always told her about learning their [while people's] language or any of their ways: it endangered you."

History says the American Indians were subjugated by the destruction of their culture. On the Plains, the bison were killed off to take away the primary food source and the culture built around it, and the people were made dependent on their subjugators. It is like having petroleum taken away from a culture built around it--something we are beginning to experience.

But the issue is more the use of language as weapons and instruments of denial and destruction. While many online sources of news and comment are created for constructive purposes, many others expressions of a culture that deceives, insults, abuses, and generally confines its language to intended malice. Typically some blogs and their hordes of commenters can only accuse people of opposing viewpoints of bad character, mental failures, and incompetence in their chosen fields of endeavor. It is, ironically, people of low character, deprived intellect, and floundering levels of competence who persistently accuse others of them.

They think insult, abuse, and misstatement are the stuff of political discourse and are clever devices for quelling their opponents. But they debase the language and create a verbal environment that corrodes away any chance at cultural regeneration.

In their environment, dropping out and suicide seems the best future for young people who face the culture of malignancy. Education is, probably, the best antidote--but not education delivered by the malignant, whose language and words promise only a pointless and hopeless future.

Thou shalt lie. And lie. And lie, lie, lie.

Not too long ago, a politician caught in a lie was sure to lose an election. And politicians were very reluctant to accuse others of lying. A lie was considered the ultimate depth of human betrayal.

After eight years of assault on credibility by the Bush administration, with the war on Iraq being the big jewel in its imperial crown of deceits and deceptions, it is clear that lying is no longer considered an offense. The political faction that rails the loudest against Marxism and accuses the left of flirting, if not embracing, despotic communism, now practices one of the fundamental devices for obtaining control and exercising complete authority over people. It is the process by which people are conditioned to accept and be controlled by lies.

We constantly refer to George Orwell's writing, particularly 1984. as containing a warning which is being made true. At this point, we know that we do, indeed, live in a time when state-created lies are what rule us and a majority of citizens have decided that accepting those lies is a patriotic duty.

Many people think Marxist government is a matter of a state-determined economy. That is, in fact, only a superficial aspect of what Marxist theory is about. The basic philosophic premise of Marxism is called dialectical materialism. In theory the philosophy states that the material world is the only reality. All ideas and thoughts originate in material things; the material world is not shaped by ideas and thoughts. The dialectic is described as when a thesis is met with an antithesis, or opposing force, which produces a synthesis. As translated into political theory, dialectical materiaism is about controlling and reshaping people to do as the state dictates and to eliminate any opposition and words or thoughts might lead to opposition. This is the thesis that Orwell demonstrated in 1984. By controlling the physical environment in which people live, one can control the factors that determine their behavior and, thereby, control their behavior. Such obedience according to Marxist doctrine is achieved by conditioning.

Behaviorism is the official psychological theory of dialectical materialism. Most people who have had a high school or college psychology course will remember Pavlov's dog. Pavlov rang a bell every time he fed the dog. After a time, the dog associated the bell with food, and Pavlov could make the dog salivate simply by ringing the bell. This idea that organisms could be conditioned to do what one wanted extended into the physical sciences also. A Soviet scientist name Lysenko was assigned to find a way to grow wheat in Siberia. Operating under the conditioning principle in dialectical materialism, he kept planting wheat in the cold soils of Siberia under the assumption that as wheat tried to grow in that climate, it would eventually be conditioned to withstand the climate and produce a strain which could thrive. In the meantime, American scientists, including some at South Dakota State University in Brookings, were using genetics to select wheat strains that did well in cold climates and produced a species of wheat that thrived in our northern growing zones. Lysenko's effort was a dismal failure.

However, Marxist behaviorism had somewhat more success with human beings. Conditioning contains factors of fear and intimidation,as well as rewards for behavior that does what the controllers want. Humans respond to what is called negative reinforcement. If their fears are appealed to as what will happen to them if they do not obey but will be rewarded by being allowed to llive if they do, the less skeptical and analytic people will conform and accept the dictates of those who would control them as their duty to follow. This is the premise developed in Orwell's 1984.

It is the principle by which Marxists tried to control people in the Soviet Union. The problem was that many people were like Lysenko's wheat seeds. They developed doubts that the propaganda they were fed each day to condition them were true. They saw evidence that it was not true when they saw what was happening in Europe, America, and parts of Asia. Those doubts and a resistance to being conditioned brought about the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

And so in the election campaign of 2008, we have what columnist Paul Krugman has termed "a blizzard of lies." Numerous stories in The New York Times, The Columbia Journalism Review, and other newspapers and magazines have noted that despite the many stories from fact checkers that assertions by the McCain campaign are proven to be untrue, the campaign just keeps making them. It is done so as the same kind of tactic with which George W. Bush kept repeating that we had invaded Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda which were proven not to exist. If you repeat the falsehoods persistently and play to people's fears and prejudices, a good many people will accept them and behave accordingly. So John McCain's campaign has adopted the same kind of brainwashing that he was subjected to in the Hanoi Hilton. It works. As it did in the election of 2004. On some people. And for some time.

The question is whether a majority will recognize the lies and resent being lied to. Or are the American people so conditioned by the operant conditioning through the media that they are content to live the falsehoods?

We'll see.

Where do all the children go?

As soon as No Child Left Behind was implemented, it became apparent that the law needed to be revised to ALOKLO--A Lot of Kids Left Out. One of the first places where it became noticed that kids were being left out was the Houston School District. During its first year of testing, it reported that 5,500 students had left the system. It failed to note that half of them were drop outs.

Most teachers supported NCLB when it was initiated. They assumed it would provide the needed resources to improve education. Instead of getting the instructional support that would help them keep up with the evolving situations that educators face, NCLB was a scheme borrowed from business to "motivate" employees and school districts by putting them in competition with each other with punishments for those who ended up in the bottom ranks. Almost immediately the instances of teachers and entire systems cheating came to light. Teachers further recognized that the scheme required them to teach to tests in a one-approach-fits-all format. One Houston school told teachers to circumvent the tests and coached them in how to do it.

Most educators realized that the NCLB was shifting teaching effort to "teaching to the test." Instruction became a matter of preparing students for the tests rather than engaging them in approaches to learning that recognize the individual mentalities and the need for various approaches. Test score averages can be kept high if students who do not perform well are eliminated. And that means a system can keep its scores at an acceptable level by dropping children who get the lower test scores.

At the same time, some states are finding that the idea of having all students reach acceptable scores is being frustrated. In South Dakota, the 11th grade reading scores have been declining. That is true in other states, also, such as neighboring Minnesota. Teachers suspect the problem may well be in teaching to the test. Reading comprehension in the upper grades improves when students have to write in response to what they have been reading. Multiple choice reading tests, such as those used in NCLB, do not measure the finer points of comprehension and accurate interpretation; they measure only basic and obvious points of declarative statements. It is a akin to a music student who has mastered the scales but cannot play a song.

The drop out problem in public education has intensified with NCLB. Poorly motivated students find teaching to the test a deadly bore. And educators find that the assessment test scores go up when they are not dragged down by poorly motivated students. And so the educational underclass is growing in population as more students drop out.

Engaging drop outs is not easy nor understood. Much of the criticism of our public schools, their methods, and their curricula stem from the measures taken to address the drop out problem which became an urgent matter in the 1960s. Social passing and grade inflation stem from attempts to engage student interest, and learning was not a primary interest. The charges that students can't read, spell, write, or do basic arithmetic arise from well-intentioned programs to keep kids in school. In other words, many of the failures noted in education grew out of programs that made it more attractive for students to stay in school, but those programs did not address how to deal with their lack of interest, their lack of motivation, and the multitude of distractions that shape their attitudes toward school and learning.

The studies and programs directed at improving education are striking for the absence of one group of people in their formulation: the teachers. No place is that more evident than in No Child Left Behind.

Testing has two functions in education:

1. to measure the progress and achievement of students, and
2. to provide diagnostic information about their strengths and weaknesses.

As implemented the NCLB tests are barrier tests, tests designed only to gauge whether students have met goals set for them. For students who do not meet the goals, there is no information coming back to them and their teachers as to why. And for students who do meet the goals, there is no information as to what is working with them and why.

The biggest error in these tests is that they are administered under the assumption that in assessing student achievement, they are also measuring the competence of the teachers. No doubt, student success has much to do with the ability and skill of teachers, but the lack of success is more often because of factors far outside the control of the teacher and the school.

To demonstrate a high level of success through student testing, the most expeditious route is for the poor performers to drop out.

Most school boards today do not consider their function as a conduit and mediator between the professional staffs and the citizens whose taxes pay for the schools and whose children populate them. They think more that they are like a corporate board of directors whose job it is to tell the professional staffs what their jobs are and how to do them.

As No Child Left Behind comes up for re-authorization, it is time that real educators be involved in planning how to improve education and defining what it will take to achieve improvement.

And that means keeping kids in school and actually educating them, not dumping children who drag down the test scores by the wayside.

The worst night of my life

Todd Epp on South Dakota Watch commented on my previous post on small towns and how they have been portrayed in American literature. I personally have a preference for smaller communities and note that sometimes young people have a chance to explore their talents in smaller communities, whereas they get lost and caught up by urban routine in the big metro areas.

I have always thought college was a liberating experience for most students, but that is not to say that there are not some colleges that are as oppressive as provincial communities.

I have been through most of the bad times that a person of my age, 74, could go through and found that even in the worst of times there are acts of thoughtfulness and grace that buoy up the spirit. But I spent an evening in Dallas that still makes me want to take a shower and purge myself of its memory and any associations that recall it.

I was in Dallas with some NSU colleagues for a gathering for a number of English Departments that had been awarded grants to examine and revise their programs. It was a pleasant and productive occasion, and the hosts arranged a visit one afternoon to the Book Repository at Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy was shot. The memory and reliving of that assassination is a somber experience, so the professors decided to go to a famous Tex-Mex restaurant and warm up the innards with some spicy food.

When we got there, we had to split up in tables of four, and most people mixed in with people from different institutions. I ended up at a table occupied by three professors all from the same college. It was a college I knew because a number of colleagues and friends of mine graduated from it. The other professors were a woman, who was like the boss cow in a cattle herd, and two young men who acted as doting steers . I sensed immediately that I was considered an intruder but all the other tables of professors were filled and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The woman started the conversation--which she never relinquished--by declaring that one of the distinguished professors who had addressed us earlier in the day was "a walking geek." He was from the graduate school that all the professors at my table had attended. When the woman had finished her disquisition on the worthlessness and faults of the man, she moved on to other people not known to me with one abusive and malicious comment after another. The two young male professors nodded at her slanders and sometimes uttered verbal agreement, and all I could think of was how to escape. Attempts to enter the conversation and change the subject matter were met with curt rudeness by the woman and glares from the young professors that I was out of my place. I have never been in a situation where I felt so sickened of spirit and defiled as I did at that table. I still wonder just what students at that college are exposed to and why this horrible woman was allowed to spread her vileness . She did have some positive things to say about herself, of course, to which the young men either nodded or feigned adulation.

I realize that the deep revulsion that evening inspired in me--and still does-- is because I came from a community where talking about people behind their backs and tearing away at their characters was not something you could get by with. It was one thing to make a factual comment about a person, like boy, did Sam get in his cups last night, or Sarah never says anything nice about anybody. But if someone set about tearing down a person's character, people would try to change the subject or often walked away. We knew that if someone talked to us about another person that way, that someone probably talked about us that way to others.

That is not to say that community was free of malicious gossips, but they were avoided and earned reputations as people to stay away from.

Sometimes northern Midwesterners are thought of as cold and aloof, and I think their reluctance to talk about other people is a large part of that reputation. The community I was raised in had developed under five flags--Native American, Spanish, English, French, and American. And it was a terminus of the Underground Railroad.

In such a mix of cultures, people had to learn to be respectful and circumspect in talking about others.

But if there is something that ruins communities, it is malicious people who constantly talk ill of others. It takes only a few of such types to make communities unbearable places to live. And I cannot but wonder about life at the college where that woman held forth.

What are the values in small towns?

Sarah Palin has presented herself as an advocate of small town values. The question is, just what comprises small town values?

It is not as if the question has not been answered. The problem is that the answers are contained in a huge strain of American literature. And that literature, as with most literature, does not get read. Shortly after the Civil War writers, including Mark Twain, began examining the attitudes and cultures of small towns. During the early 20th century, most of America's major writers contributed to a literary movement known as the "revolt from the village." They chronicled the small-mindedness, social oppression, and social pathologies that drove young people out of small towns. Sociology corroborated the revolt by recording a constant migration of young people from small towns to large urban communities during 20th century. The outmigration is not as pronounced today because there simply are not that many people left in small towns to make up a social movement.

Today the attitude of young people toward their small towns is hardly one of revolt. They simply accept the idea that they will follow the century-long pattern and leave when they graduate from high school. I have read thousands of papers by college students who wrote about small towns they came from. The had fond memories of family and sometimes of school, but none of them considered living in their hometowns. They saw no way to make a living or use their talents and education. Many, many students loathed their small towns. To them small town life was characterized by mean and small minded people who gathered at the town cafe each day and immersed themselves in malicious gossip.

NSU had a president a few years back who devoted much time to things like slogans and images. He came up with a slogan that called NSU "the gateway institution." The regents and a number of business people did not like the slogan because they assumed it was appealing to the desire of many to use education as the ticket out of small towns and out of the state. They assumed right, of course.

In paper after paper students wrote about the cloud of meanness and resentment that formed the social climate in their hometowns. Their motivation in school and college was to leave that atmosphere of withering oppressive parochialism behind. I recall quite a few students who would not even return to their hometowns for holidays.

My own experience with small town nastiness came when my spouse and I placed foreign exchange students in homes. Late one night we received a call from the parents of a girl from Japan telling us we had to rescue the child from this "insane" little town where she was placed. Factions in this little town were at each others' throats constantly and she thought all Americans, if like this, were vicious and evil. Fortunately, we were able to relocate the girl in a larger community where civility lasted more than a few minutes.

The fighting and parochial hatreds in small towns has been well recorded in American letters. Their values are do not represent the best of America. Our writers have been telling us that for 150 years. If people in South Dakota want to understand why people leave South Dakota, Hamlin Garland tells some very fine tales about those reasons.