The 2012 Election: Results and Prospects
(a cognitive-developmental catastrophe in the making)
cong2012


The results of the 2012 Congressional elections appear above.  Click here to see the interactive map provided by the New York Times.  It is worthwhile to scroll over the Congressional districts and note those where the Democrats lost by twelve points or less.  In Michigan there are five such Congressional districts.

Figure 1.  PISA Math Scores, 2003 - 2009, is the elephant in the room of American politics.  It is a straightforward application* of elementary graphing techniques.  
*Edward R. Tufte, The visual display of quantitative information (Graphics Press, 2001)
 Figure 1.  PISA Math Scores, 2003 - 2009: 21 Nations +
U.S. New England + U.S. South + OECD average
pisa
source.  PISA 2009 Results: What Students Know and Can Do – Student
Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science (Volume I)

a cognitive-developmental catastrophe in the making

The map and the graph are juxtaposed for good reason.  The cognitive-developmental, cultural-historical crisis represented by Figure 1 is at least one order of magnitude greater than the debt crisis.  The forces undermining our development as a nation are many, and they are complexly interrelated. These forces have triumphed in a policy--No Child Left Behind--based on the substitution of simple-minded shibboleths for genuine educational theory. Ideologically, NCLB is an expression of free-market fundamentalism.*  NCLB's hostility to modern pedagogical theory and practice is cut from the same cloth as climate change denial and creationism, and is part of the crusade against reason and science that has been a mainstay of the GOP rhetorical appeals for decades.  (This demonization of reason, which to a considerable degree has been institutionalized in the major media, is a major force in subverting the development of human capital in the United States.)   NCLB's refusal to consider the educational experience of Finland and other high-achieving nations should be taken as prima facie evidence that the main concern of our "educational reformers" is something other than educating America's children.  (Hint #1.  It's about money.  Hint #2.  It is identical in purpose to G. W. Bush's attempt to privatize social security.  Hint #3.  When you hear the word "reform" think "predation.")

Figure 1 is an indication of a crisis so profound and so unprecedented that it demands the appropriate political response, something that must of course take cognizance of electoral realities and possibilities.  Hence the pairing of the map above with Figure 1.  The quote at the right provides one framework for evaluating the nature of this crisis.  Is cognitive development now being reversed?  Are major portions of the United States regressing developmentally? And is it even possible to do anything other than watch the unfolding of an unprecedented cultural historical catastrophe?

Marc S. Tucker, in the final chapter of Surpassing Shanghai (Chapter 7.  An Action Plan for the United States) inadvertently reveals the hopelessness of the situation when he writes "the changes [that he and his colleagues call for] are as dramatic as the changes made in government during the Progressive Era.  But let the record show that the United States made those changes.  And we can make these, two, if we choose to do so." p. 218 
*Michael W. Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right (Oxford University Press, 1980); Paul Krugman, Free-market Fundamentalism; John Quiggin, Five Zombie Economic Ideas That Refuse to Die
from James R. Flynn, What is Intelligence?  Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

What follows is my version of the cognitive history of the twentieth century. . .  Science altered our lives and then liberated our minds from the concrete.  This history has not been written because, as children of our own time, we do not perceive the gulf that separates us from our distant ancestors: the difference between their world and the world seen through scientific spectacles.   172-3 . . . more and more people began to put on scientific spectacles.  As use of logic and the hypothetical moved beyond the concrete, people developed new habits of mind.  They became practiced at solving problems with abstract or visual content and more innovative at administative tasks." 173-4


The historical trajectory of cognitive development is a post-evolutionary, cultural historical phenomenon that acquires significance only in the era of modern civilizations.  The requirement that people develop new habits of mind (the scientific world view and formal operational competence) only arises as a major societal issue in the era of the third industrial revolution, beginning in the late 20th century.  To become middle class in the twenty first century means acquring the degree of cognitive performativity that was once the domain primarily of an educated elite.  This is what Finland, and Singapore and Shanghai have set out to achieve for large proportions of their population.  Figure 1 can thus be read as an indication of how far short of that goal the United States falls.  No Child Left Behind only guarantees that the United States will fall even further behind.


Marc S. Tucker, ed., Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems (Harvard Education Press, 2011)

theoretical and empirical frameworks,
existential-phenomenological fields, and benchmarks


In order to assess whether or to what degree we are in the midst of a developmental catastrophe, the leading edge of which is No Child Left Behind, we need theoretical and empirical frameworks, existential-phenomenological fields, and benchmarks.

The two excerpts in the right hand column, the first from Pasi Sahlberg and the second from the Stanford Report provide a benchmark.  The reader will recognize that point for point our educational reformers negate the "lessons" (Finnish Lessons, Sahlberg; Surpassing Shanghai, Marc S. Tucker, ed.) of the world's top-performing nation.  In this sense NCLB could be better named Race to the Bottom.

The theoretical frameworks know as cultural historical activity theory (Vygotsky, etc.) and ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, Ceci, etc.), are closely associated with the great success of Finland:  

from Ulla Härkönen (University of Joensuu, Finland),  "Current Theories Related to Early Childhood Education and Preschool as Frames of Reference for Sustainable Education," in Institute of Sustainable Education, conference, 2004

In Finland, for thirty years, theoretical frames for early childhood education and preschool have been outlined through Bronfenbrenner's ecological approach, Vygotsky's developmental theory, didactic theories and the psychological theories of learning, among which the latest is the constructivist theory of learning.

Bronfenbrenner's theory of ecological development (1979) has in Finland for almost thirty years been one of the most generally used theories to analyze the phenomena of early childhood education and, at the same time, of preschool. The importance of the theory of ecological development lies in the fact that personal development is seen in relation to different kinds and different levels of systems. This has introduced to the methodological principles of educational research a systems approach, according to which an object is studied as a system of its structural and functional relations.

Early childhood education and preschool have received strong theoretical stimuli from developmental psychology. This is true of Finland even today and evident also in this article. Developmental psychology theories are represented here by the often referred to theories of Bronfenbrenner and Vygotsky. They both focus their attention on human development and both have introduced a systems dimension to their ideas.

from Hartmut Geist, "The Formation Experiment in the Age of Hypermedia and Distance Learning," in The Transformation of Learning: Advances in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, edited by Bert van Oers, Wim Wardekker, Ed Elbers, and René van der Veer (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

 . . . the basic idea [of activity theory] is not "evolution," that is, the idea of adaptation to the environment, but "revolution," that is, change of the environment.  The dialectical analysis of human history, as it was done, for example, by Hegel and particularly by Marx, showed not only that humans adapt to the environment but also that they change it in accordance with their demands . . .  Activity is not an active adaptation to the environment but the transformation of the environment and--in interrelation with it--of humans themselves.  Although this idea is not new, it has only begun to prove its explanatory potental.  Among the first to apply this idea to psychology were Vygotsky and one of his closest students, Leontiev.  (pp. 103-105; emphasis added)

benchmarks




Pasi Sahlberg, "A Model Lesson: Finland Shows Us What Equal Opportunity Looks Like," American Educator, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2012.
Michael Fullan, a Canadian educational change scholar, speaks about “drivers of change,” such as education policy or strategy levers, which have the best chances of driving intended change in education systems. “In the rush to move forward,” writes Fullan, “leaders, especially from countries that have not been progressing, tend to choose the wrong drivers.”   “Wrong drivers” include accountability (vs. professionalism), individual teacher quality (vs. collegiality), technology (vs. pedagogy), and fragmented strategies (vs. systems thinking). The Finnish experience shows that a consistent focus on equity and shared responsibility—not choice and competition—can lead to an education system where all children learn better than they did before.

Understanding Finnish educational success needs to include an awareness of sociocultural, political, and economic factors. Indeed, there is more to the picture than meets the eye. An external OECD expert review team that visited Finland observed that “it is hard to imagine how Finland’s educational success could be achieved or maintained without reference to the nation’s broader and commonly accepted system of distinctive social values that more individualistic and inequitable societies may find it difficult to accept.”  Another visiting OECD team confirmed that the Finnish approaches to equitable schooling rely on multiple and reinforcing forms of intervention with support that teachers can get from others, including special education teachers and classroom assistants. Furthermore, Finland has shown that educational change should be systematic and coherent, in contrast with the current haphazard intervention efforts of many other countries.

The conclusion was that “developing the capacities of schools is much more important than testing the hell out of students, and that some nonschool policies associ- ated with the welfare state are also necessary.”18 Scores of news articles on Finnish education have concluded that trust, teacher professionalism, and taking care of those with special needs are the factors that distinguish Finnish schools from most others.

Importing a specific aspect of Finland’s education system, whether it is curricula, teacher training, special education, or school leadership, is probably of little value to those aiming to improve their own education systems. The Finnish welfare system guarantees all children the safety, health, nutrition, and moral support that they need to learn well in school. One lesson from Finland is, therefore, that successful change and good educational performance often require improvements in social, employment, and economic sectors. As described by theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, separate elements of a complex system rarely function adequately in isolation from their original system in a new environment.
Sahlberg vs. Sahlberg:
a universe of thought opened up by a slight discrepancy
  
In his article referenced above right Sahlberg (A Model Lesson) makes vague references to the post-war political situation.  

In his book, Finnish Lessons,  he is more specific.  Finland's leading place among European nations is rooted not just in the educational reforms of the 1970s, but in the immediate post World War II political environment in which the three major parties--Social Democratic, Communist, and Agrarian Centre--made education their major goal (pp. 16-17).   Especially important was the work of three key political education committees.  The first, the Primary School Curriculum Committee, established in June of 1945, was led by Professor Matti Koskenniemi. A second, the Education System Committee, began its work in 1946, and was chaired by the National Board of Education's Director General Yrjö Ruutu, an ally of the Finnish Communist Party.  The third, the School Program Committee, was established in 1956 . . . under the leadership of Reino Henrik Oittinen, Director General of the National Board of Education and a Social Democrat.  The work of these three committees laid the foundation for subsequent developments.  (pp. 17-18)

In my web page Bildung.  Was Mozart a Communist, I the


book Sahlberg glosses over one major force which might be called, as a first approximation be called "that fusion of culture and politics that gives an epoch its Zeitgeist:"  see Flynn (eg, New Deal)

There is such a zeitgiest hat emreges with the firt enlightenment, develops into the esecond enlightenment, and hs, i the United States, died.

Flynn is the cognitive dimension of that fusion . . .  
Bildung is its characterological-cultural dimension
Revolutionary Road is the personal as history and the historical as personal (Zaretsky)
Wellman interview et. al.
historical immanentist approaches would take the Wellman interview, Zelnick et al, as eigenmoments in the cognitive-characterological development of a population that is a subset or subgroup of a nation.

So figure 1 is generated by such cog-character processes.  Schooling is only a part of the dev process.  The higher the level of develpment aimed for, the more the divese forces inpcting on deveopment be harmonized from a developmentalist perspective.  In other words, if al you need are clerks and mchanichs circa 1940s, you are less depednt upon a powerful confluence of developmental forces.

As the demand for formal operational performativity rises

What
this is the developmental soup in which organisms develop.


intertwined re ressentiment vs cog dev--bildung--because, in relation to the American experience, where anti-Enlightenment and anti-scientific cultures dominate the public space and distorts elite science.
benchmarks, cont.


from How the Finnish school system outshines U.S. education, by Stephen Tung (Stanford Report, January 20, 2012)

In the last decades, U.S. and Finnish education policies have appeared to be moving in opposite directions. While U.S. public schools moved to standardized testing, Finnish schools eschewed nationwide tests to evaluate teachers, students or schools, instead relying on sample-based testing and school principals to identify potential problems, Sahlberg said.

While U.S. public schools are locally funded, usually from property taxes, and rewarded based on high performance through programs such as the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top grants, Finnish schools are nationally funded based on the number of students. Schools are provided additional funding if they have a higher proportion of immigrants or students whose parents are uneducated or unemployed, he said.

Darling-Hammond, who wrote about the Finnish educational system in her book The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, also contrasted America's test-based teaching to Finland's more flexible system.

"The [Finnish] curricula are very much focused on critical thinking and problem solving, project-based learning, and learning to learn," she said. "There is a lot of collaboration in the classroom."

[The article goes on to quote Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish education expert and the director of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture]

"When we compare teachers to other professions in society, we compare them to lawyers or doctors or architects," he said. "Not as here [in the United States], where they are compared to nurses or therapists, or something like that, that require lower academic training."

Teachers in Finland are required to obtain a three-year master's degree, state-funded, before teaching. These education positions are highly coveted, Sahlberg said. For example, only one in 10 primary-school teacher applicants are accepted.

"It's harder to get into primary school education than a medical program," he said.

But Sahlberg identified the biggest obstacle in the U.S. system as the same policy intended to revolutionize education. "If I could change one thing in policy, I would seriously rethink the role of standardized testing," he said in an interview with the Stanford News Service. "No high-performing nation in the world has been successful using the policies that the United States is using." (emphasis added)
an elite assessment of our educational crisis

The excerpts below are an implicit critique of No Child Left Behind. The committee that issued this assessment is composed of retired CEOs of major multinational corporations and the leaders of elite educational and scientific institutions.  They make 3 points.  

1. the latitude to fix the problems being confronted has been severely diminished by the growth of the national debt over this period from $8 trillion to $13 trillion.

2.  that public schools must be strengthened

3.  that NCLB has been (albeit implictly) a failure.


from RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM, REVISITED

Rapidly Approaching Category 5

By Members of the 2005 “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” Committee

Prepared for the Presidents of the
National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine


The original Gathering Storm competitiveness report focuses on the ability of America and Americans to compete for jobs in the evolving global economy. The possession of quality jobs is the foundation of a high quality life for the nation’s citizenry.

The report paints a daunting outlook for America if it were to continue on the perilous path it has been following in recent decades with regard to sustained competitiveness.

 . . . the most pervasive concern was considered to be the state of United States K-12 education, which on average is a laggard among industrial economies—while costing more per student than any other OECD country.10

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm report was prepared? The unanimous view of the committee members participating in the preparation of this report is that our nation’s outlook has worsened. While progress has been made in certain areas—for example, launching the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—the latitude to fix the problems being confronted has been severely diminished by the growth of the national debt over this period from $8 trillion to $13 trillion.11

Further, in spite of sometimes heroic efforts and occasional very bright spots, our overall public school system—or more accurately 14,000 systems—has shown little sign of improvement, particularly in mathematics and science.12 Finally, many other nations have been markedly progressing, thereby affecting America’s relative ability to compete effectively for new factories, research laboratories, administrative centers—and jobs. While this progress by other nations is to be both encouraged and welcomed, so too is the notion that Americans wish to continue to be among those peoples who do prosper.

The recommendations made five years ago, the highest priority of which was strengthening the public school system and investing in basic scientific research, appears to be as appropriate today as then.

The Gathering Storm Committee’s overall conclusion is that in spite of the efforts of both those in government and the private sector, the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has further deteriorated over the past five years [2005-2010].

The Gathering Storm increasingly appears to be a Category 5.  p. 4-5
 from Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2005)

 America is the home of by far the most deep, widespread and conservative religious belief in the Western world, including a section possessed by wild millenarian hopes, fears and hatreds—and these two phenomena are intimately related. . .  [A]t the start of the twenty first century the United States as a whole is much closer to the developing world in terms of religious belief than to the industrialized countries (although a majority of believers in the United States are not fundamentalist Protestants but Catholics and “mainline,” more liberal Protestants).  p. 8

 . . . the fundamentalist wing of the evangelical tradition is a very powerful ideological force in large parts of the United States and retains elements of thought which have come down with relatively few changes from much earlier eras.  Its origins are pre-Enlightenment, and its mentality to a very great extent anti-Enlightenment.  p. 124
the attack on pedagogical theory and professional development
the attack on pedagogical theory and professional development


This New York Times story (Ed Schools’ Pedagogical Puzzle) is about the Relay Graduate School of Education, part of the corporatization* of American education.  It should be considered in relation to the text at the right about education in Finland. Information on Relay's institutional network can be found here (Corporate supporters of public education vs. corporate vampires).  

*Note that the financial institutions that are in the vanguard of educational "reform"--listed and linked to in the right-hand column of this link--are fundamentally different from those producing corporations seen on the left-hand side.  Thus the term corporatization of education is misleading.  It is important to distinguish those corporations that support the national interest from those that subvert the national interest.

from Ed Schools’ Pedagogical Puzzle, by Sharon Otterman (New York Times, July 21, 2011)

“I can study Vygotsky later,” said Tayo Adeeko, a 24-year-old third-grade teacher at Empower Charter School in Crown Heights. She was referring to another education school staple — Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet theorist of cognitive development who died in 1934. “Right now,” she added, “my kids need to learn how to read.”

The debate mirrors a larger concern nationally, which is that by treating teaching as a trade instead of an art, and permitting new teachers to run their own classrooms from the first day, alternative education programs will, in the long term, reduce the quality of America’s teaching force. A great teacher, critics of the new approach argue, should also be trained in advanced work in his or her field, as well as be versed in child psychology, cognitive theory and educational philosophy, so he or she can work in any setting.

Lin Goodwin, the associate dean at Teachers College, describes Relay thusly: “What they are doing is teacher training, to follow a protocol, to be able to perform in a particular context, to know how to work in this way. And I think that what that does is it dumbs down teaching, and takes us back a few steps, in terms of our struggle in the profession for teachers to be seen as professionals.”

What kind of financial institutions are behind this attack on pedagogical theory and professional development?
continued . . .


existential-phenomenological fields



Diane Ravitch's blog provides an invaluable existential-phenomenological field, something that has only become possible with the Internet.  What do I mean by existential phenomenological field?  The teachers and parents who post comments on the blog provide intensely personal, empirically rich thick descriptions* of the impact of NCLB on children, parents, and teachers.  From these discourses it is possible to grasp the catstrophic impact of NCLB on the developmental potential of our kids.  Cultural historical analysis can help to explain how we got the the point where NCLB was passes in 2001.  Cultural historical analysis can also help to understand why NCLB can only deepen the historical-developmental crisis of American society.  The comments posted on Ravitch's blog provide a real-time window into the extraordinary destructiveness of NCLB.


Diane Ravitch's blog esp. NC Teacher: “I Quit”    and How Did David Beat Goliath in Indiana?  

http://edushyster.com/  
*Thick descrption.  Geertz, Inerpretation of Cultures; Medard Boss, Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis (English version, 1963)

Theoretical and empirical frameworks

I.  Empirical

PISA 2009 Results

 Lessons from PISA for the United States, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, OECD Publishing, OECD (2011)

PISA 2009 Results: What Students Know and Can Do – Student Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science (Volume I)

PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background – Equity in Learning Opportunities and Outcomes (Volume II)

PISA 2009 Results: Learning Trends: Changes in Student Performance Since 2000 (Volume V)

Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators   By Sam Dillon, New York Times,  December 7, 2010

What the U.S. Can Learn from the World's Most Successful Education Reform Efforts, McGraw-Hill Research Foundation.  Policy Paper: Lessons from PISA 


II.  Theoretical: click here for references


Stop! Very Rough Draft Materials Below
But behold!  This time the politics of ressentiment has failed.  In the words of Governor Perry, "Oops!"  Enter Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (Republican), who says the GOP should "stop beng the stupid party." [Jindal: GOP should ’stop being the stupid party’ (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 13, 2012)].  But as long as stupid worked there was no problem.  Of course stupid has the character of an epithet, not a concept.  Better to talk about cognitive performativity in various contexts, and to recognize the historical-cultural and developmental dimensions of such performativity.  Thus,  it is necessary to correct Bobby Jindal.  The GOP utilizes the rhetorical technique of demonization, which construes the world through a pre-operational cognitive modality.  But the party is also very cunning in the way it has successfully manipulated what we so quaintly call its base.
dd
capcong
  the base
Figure 1 is about more than education.  Formal schooling is only one moment in the unfolding of cognitive development, and data such as appear in Figure 1 therefore reflect the various forces that promote or retard development.  This complex systems approach is emphasized by Pasi Sahlberg (right).

Sahlberg, however, misses one characteristic of American society that is absent in other advanced societies.  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (Republican) has finally revealed what we all know: the GOP is the stupid party [Jindal: GOP should ’stop being the stupid party’ (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 13, 2012)].  One of the major reflections of this stupidity is the attack on our pubic schools known as "No Child Left Behind," a policy based on the substitution of simple-minded shibboleths for genuine educational theory, such as is at the core of the great success of Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  This demonization of reason, which to a considerable degree has been institutionalized in the major media, is a major force in subverting the the development of human capital in the United States.
The GOP's two greatest "achievements" are the radical redistribution of wealth and income to the super rich, and the catastrophic subversion of the cognitive development of the American people.  These two things are related.  While much has been made of the radical redistribution of wealth and income, there has been virtually no discussion of the cognitive developmental catastrophe that is now overtaking the United States, of the role of the GOP in actively inducing this catastrophe, and of the acquiesence of the Democratic Party in the politics of decognification.  If an enemy nation or a group of domestic subversives wanted to destroy us, they would subvert our capacity to generate modern forms of human capital.  No foreign enemy has done this.  Rather, a long history of resentiment, the rise to dominance within the GOP of predatory financial institutions (allied with barbarian capitalists in the energy and mining industries) and the manipulation of the culture of resentiment by these financial and political elites, has achieved what no foreign foe could ever dream of.  It is ironic yet also and more profoundly characteristic that these truly subversive forces wrap themselves in the American flag while destroying the American nation.  And it is our children who are the real victims of these forces of subversion.  No Child Left Behind is the instrument through which our nation is being destroyed.
The missing critical element(s) in understanding cognitive deveopmental outcomes:

1. Sahlberg vs. Sahlberg (political)

2. Hall (& Sahlberg)

3. Bildung


(I provide excerpts from Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development, here.)


Singapore is another high-performing nation where cultural historical activity theory has an important  place in the development of human capital:

“Vygotsky’s Neglected Legacy”: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, Review of Educational Research June 2007 77: 186-232 Yew-Jin Lee, National Institute of Education, Singapore, and Wolff-Michael Roth, University of Victoria

(Abstract).  The authors describe an evolving theoretical framework that has been called one of the best kept secrets of academia: cultural-historical activity theory, the result of proposals Lev Vygotsky first articulated but that his students and followers substantially developed to constitute much expanded forms in its second and third generations. Besides showing that activity theory transforms how research should proceed regarding language, language learning, and literacy in particular, the authors demonstrate how it is a theory for praxis, thereby offering the potential to overcome some of the most profound problems that have plagued both educational theorizing and practice.

and Yew-Jin Lee (the National Institute of Education (NIE) Singapore), "More than Just Story-Telling: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as an Under-Utilized Methodology for Educational Change Research," Journal of Curriculum Studies, v. 43 n. 3 p. 403-424 2011

 Preparing for Primary One Mathematics Learning - Model Method
The results of the 2012 Congressional elections appear to the right.  Click here to see the interactive map provided by the New York Times.  It is worthwhile to scroll over the Congressional districts and note those where the Democrats lost by twelve points or less.  In Michigan there are five such Congressional districts.

  1st    (the U.P. and northern lower penninsula): 0.7
  3rd   (Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Albion): 8.6
  6th   (Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Niles, Holland, Three Rivers): 11.8
  7th   (Monroe, Dundee, Tecumseh, Hillsdale, Milan): 10.3
11th   (Northville, Plymouth, Livonia, Westland, Garden City, Belleville,
              Canton):  6.4

List of colleges and universities in Michigan (Wikipedia)

The point of the above is to suggest a way to revitalize the Democratic party through the mobilization of young people (and their families) with an eye to becoming a solid majority in Congress.  In Michigan, for example, the Democrats currently hold five out of fourteen seats.  It should be possible, contingent upon the mobilization of new forces into the Democratic party's activist base, to significantly expand the Democratic Congressional presence.  Such a possibility is suggested by the results of the 2012 election.

continued . . .
 But never forget that the underlying purpose served by these rhetorical appeals is to transform wealth and income distribution in the United States in the direction indicated by the graphs to the right.  That is why it is so pointless to argue about the myriad of social issues that we have become entangled in on their merits.  These issues are the rhetorical means whereby political elites on the right manipulate the ressentiment (Nietzsche's spelling) of vast sections of the population in order to gain power.  When we take right wing polemicists at face value we already concede defeat: we have accepted their terms for the conduct of politics, and we have agreed to be silent about the powerful financial forces that orchestrate the deployment of this rhetoric.

But this will depend upon recognizing the threat to our future indicated by Figure 1. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is part of that threat (not part of the solution).  The Democratic Party must recognize that NCLB has got to go.  NCLB is a policy based on the substitution of simple-minded shibboleths* for genuine educational theory, such as is at the core of the great success of Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  NCLB is cut from the same cloth as climate change denial and creationism, and is part of the crusade against reason and science that has been a mainstay of the GOP rhetorical appeals and policy prescriptions.  (See judges re Dover)

"The biggest threat to our national security is our debt" is a common expression these days among the media's talking heads.  They are wrong.  The biggest threat to our national security is what is revealed in Figure 1, and some major corporate leaders understand this.  (see Corporate supporters of public education vs. corporate vampires.)

Figure 1 is about more than education.  Formal schooling is only one moment in the unfolding of cognitive development, and data such as appear in Figure 1 therefore reflect the various forces that promote or retard development.  This complex systems approach is emphasized by Pasi Sahlberg, "A Model Lesson: Finland Shows Us What Equal Opportunity Looks Like," American Educator, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2012.
*(see Paul Krugman, Free-market Fundamentalism, and John Quiggin, Five Zombie Economic Ideas That Refuse to Die



inadvertently reveals . . .

Marc S. Tucker, in the final chapter of Surpassing Shanghai (Chapter 7.  An Action Plan for the United States) inadvertently reveals the hopelessness of the situation when he writes "the changes [that he and his colleagues call for] are as dramatic as the changes made in government during the Progressive Era.  But let the record show that the United States made those changes.  And we can make these, two, if we choose to do so." p. 218

Why this is a revelation of hopelessness requires some preliminary considerations.

First, the literary maneuver of conceiving of the United States as the equivalent of a person that once, during the Progressive era, was able to change, and so too, could it do now, if it chose to, is patently absurd.  Suddenly the cognitive modality of the Tea Party rank and file intrudes into what is a very important study of education in Shanghai and four top performing nations.  

Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Volume I.  A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 
"Societies are constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power. . . .  Societies are not unitary . . .  " p. 1

Volume II: The rise of classes and national states 
It is a basic tenet of my work that societies are not systems.  There is no ultimately determining structure to human existence--at least none that social actors or sociological observers, situated in its midst, can discern.  What we call societies are only loose aggregates of diverse, overlapping, intersecting power networks.  506

America has not so much been exceptional as it has gradually come to represent one extreme on a continuum of class relations.  America has never differed qualitatively from other national cases.  Differences have been of degree, not kind. . . .  Explanations asserting an original and enduring American exceptionalism . . . have only a very limited truth.  638


The United States did not "change" as if it were a person.  As complex as the political, social and cultural processes of the Progressive Era were, the "sociospatial network of power" that drove Progressive reform against the opposition of old guard corporate interests allied with provincial Protestantism centered on Louis D. Brandeis.  (see Progressivism to New Deal: the Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State)  Progressivism's progressive side (there was a reactionary side--se Graham, Old Progressives and New Deal) was a real force to be reckoned with, not a mere idea of reform

This historical trajectory--Enlightenment to New Deal--while institutionalized in Finland, was aborted in the United States--aborted and demonized.  Some ask naive questions such as 'what would Roosevelt do today?'  But the historical Being that is symbolized by FDR, that Being which was the culmination of an entire historico-developmental trajectory, is dead.  There is, in America, an ontological absence of monumental proportions.  Figure one cannot be altered.

The most striking difference between the US and the advanced industrial nations is not merely the presence of a fundamtnalist culutre of unprecended scope, but more, its opportunistic integration into a reactionary corpraitsit and vampire capitalist coalition, toegher with the old guard small town proteatntism of the old GOP.

As long as we are unable to face this truth of our times--unable and afraid to face it--then we are merely whistling in the dark.  And so, Surpassing Shanghai's very last sentences constitute nothing other than just such a whistling.  We know, we intuit, that something enormous and terrible is happening. (But something is happening here/But you don't know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?) 		income
This link--Corporate supporters of public education vs. corporate vampires-- provides information on two major corporate interventions in the education "debate."  Relay University, which, taken together with the several major school reform organizations with which it is associated, is the instrument of a segment of finance capital.  

In contrast, the panels on the left (corporate supporters of public schools) provide information on a competing education-oriented corporate elite: the Members of the 2005 “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” Committee.  If you have looked at the above link, you will have noticed that the corporate members of this Committee are 1) multinational giants in high-tech manufacturing; 2) the leaders of elite educational institutions; and 3) that this Report was prepared for the Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine.

Utilizing an input-ouput framework, the differences between this segment of financial capital and the subset of the high-tech, multinational manufacturing sector are profound.  The latter employ huge number of workers--human capital--and have a vital interest in the quality of the labor force they depend on.  In their report, RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM, REVISITED: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, they emphasize above all the strengthening of America's public schools ("The recommendations made five years ago, the highest priority of which was strengthening the public school system and investing in basic scientific research, appears to be as appropriate today as then," chapter 5).  This elite has a concept of the national interest deeply rooted in its daily activities.

The predatory segment of financial capital, on the other hand, has no such dependence on the mass production of quality human capital in the United States. Their only interest is in diverting the flow of monies from public institutions serving the national interest into their own coffers.  They are subversive of the national interest.
continued . . .




Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development, expanded edition (Harvard University Press, 1996)

"The possibility that there exists a more restless relationship between intelligence and context, in which thinking changes both its nature and its course as one moves from one situation to another, is enough to cause shudders in some research quarters.  It represents a move toward a psychology of situations . . . xvi

"The term intelligence is often used synonymously with "IQ", "g", or "general intelligence", especially in some of the psychometric literature. . .  however, the ability to engage in cognitively complex behaviors will be shown to be independent of IQ, g, or general intelligence . . . cognitive complexity will be seen to be the more general of the two notions and the one most theoretically important to keep in mind when referring to intelligent behavior." 22

"The literature that we reviewed demonstrates that it is not sufficient for one to be biologically endowed with a cognitive potential and even to be exposed to appropriate opportunities for its crystallization: One also must be motivated to benefit from this exposure.  Performance is influenced by learning, refinement, shaping, etc., and the role of motivation cannot be ignored in such matters.  Extrinsic motivators (such as the value that one attaches to attaining success on a task), as well as intrinsic motivators (inculcated through various parenting styles, such as fostering autonomy, valuing schooling, and adopting a modern world view . . ) are equally important in shaping cognitive outcomes.  116

" . . . it would appear that no theory is capable of handling the diversity of findings reviewed earlier, unless it consists of the three prongs of biology, environment, and motivation.  An important feature of the bio-ecological framework has been to suggest mechanisms by which these three factors combine to produce contextually tied performances . . . " 192

continued . . .



Thus, such sweeping generalizations as the 1% vs. the 99% are at best naïve and simplistic; at worst, indications of the inability of such "opposition" movements to actually come to grips with the realities of power.  (see Robert Wolf, Obama's Top Wall Street Ally, Endorses Tax Hikes For Rich,  Huffington Post, 11/13/2012)

from the Progressive, "How to Push Obama", By John Nichols, (January 2009)
After his election in 1932, FDR met with Sidney Hillman and other labor leaders, many of them active Socialists with whom he had worked over the past decade or more. Hillman and his allies arrived with plans they wanted the new President to implement. Roosevelt told them: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."

An adequate assessment  of not only present business orientations toward politics but of future coalitional possibilities is essential.  The ease with which this can be done today (because of the fantastic possibilities created by the Internet) has not yet had an effect on our discourse on politics.  One might go so far as to say that the failure of progressives to use this resource is another indication of the inability of such "opposition" movements to actually come to grips with the realities of power.

Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence (continued)
"In closing, it is time to ask about the nature of the resources responsible for intellectual growth.  Past research on the influence of the environment has ducked this question, preferring instead to contrast global SES differences on IQ, surmising that some aspects subsumed under the SES rubric must be causative but never specifying what they might be.  In a recent article Uri Bronfenbrenner and I proposed specific mechanisms of organism-environment interaction, called proximal processes, through which genetic potentials for intelligence are actualized.  We described research evidence from a variety of sources demonstrating that proximal processes operate in a variety of settings throughout the life-course (beginning in the family and continuing in child-care settings, peer groups, schools, and work places), and account for more of the variation in intellectual outcome than the environmental contexts (e.g., family structure, SES, culture) in which these proximal processes take place.  Proximal processes refer to sustained interactions between a developing organism and the persons, symbols, and activities in its immediate environment.  To be effective, these processes must become progressively more complex and interactive over time." 244-5

"The influence of the environment on differences in IQ among children growing up in straitened circumstances is greater than that for youngsters raised in a more favorable milieu.  This in turn implies that efforts to enhance intelligence by improving the environment are likely to be most effective for children living in the most impoverished circumstances, the very group that many of the New Interpreters seem to consider beyond remediation."  247
Why Sahlberg's title, Finnish Lessons, is misconceived


1.  the role of the postwar political situation in Finland's subsequent development

2.  the historial trajectory of the enlightenment: institutionalized in Finland, destroyed in US

3.  the GOP jihad against science/formal operational thought

4.  deeply rooted and politically maintained poverty

5.  the development of teahcers is a multifaceted project embedded in the socio-historical situation.  What we lack is the kind of society that can generated such a professional workforce

from Selections from Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882/1887)

What will not be built any more henceforth, and cannot be built any more, is—a society in the old sense of that word; to build that, everything is lacking, above all the material. All of us are no longer material for a society; this is a truth for which the time has come. It is a matter of indifference to me that at present the most myopic, perhaps most honest, but at any rate noisiest human type that we have today, our good socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all shout and write almost the opposite. Even now one reads their slogan for the future "free society" on all tables and walls. Free society? Yes, yes! But surely you know, gentlemen, what is required for building that? Wooden iron! The well-known wooden iron." And it must not even be wooden.

see also Utopianism is what the landlords have time for…

  
the GOP is the stupid party [Jindal: GOP should ’stop being the stupid party’ (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 13, 2012)].

from Nietzsche, the Gay Science, /302/ Aph. 356

How things will become ever more "artistic" in Europe.— Even today, in our time of transition when so many factors cease to compel men, the care to make a living still compels almost all male Europeans to adopt a particular role, their so-called occupation. A few retain the freedom, a merely apparent freedom, to choose this role for themselves; for most men it is chosen. The result is rather strange. As they attain a more advanced age, almost all Europeans confound themselves with their role; they become the victims of their own "good performance"; they themselves have forgotten how much accidents, moods, and caprice disposed of them when the question of their "vocation" was decided—and how many other roles they might perhaps have been able to play; for now it is too late. Considered more deeply, the role has actually become character; and art, nature.

I.e., the GOP, although it may have decades ago merely acted stupid so as to attract a certain kind of limited psuedo-human being into its electoral corral, has now become--characteristically and irremediably--stupid.  "for now it is too late. Considered more deeply, the role has actually become character; and art, nature."


albatross around neck of the nation

Enrollment in Charter Schools Is Increasing (NYT, By MOTOKO RICH
Published: November 14, 2012)

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group, released the report on Wednesday. It showed that in some cities, charter schools — which are publicly financed but privately operated — enroll a significant proportion of public school students.

comment.  The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is nonprofit, but entirely dominated by financial network
Importnce (Flynn, Gomez,

 from William Calvin, A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Juan Carlos Gomez, Apes, Monkees, Children and the Growth of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2004)
Developmental Trajectories Performativity implied by Ceci; Austin, Butler, Barad; CHAT
list of authorities


 Zena Smith Blau, Black children/white children : competence, socialization, and social structure (Free Press, 1981)

Urie Bronfenbrenner and P. Morris, "The Bioecological Model of Human Development", in Handbook of Child Psychology  (edited by William Damon and Richard M. Lerner (Wiley InterScience, 2007)

The Cambridge Handbook of Socioculural Psychology, edited by Jaan Valsiner and Alberto Rosa (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

William Calvin, A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2004)

The Cambridge Companion to Piaget (2009)

 The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky, edited by Harry Daniels, Michael Cole, James Wertsch (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

 Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development, expanded edition (Harvard University Press, 1996)

Michael Cole, The Development of Children (W. H. Freeman and Co, 1996)

___________, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Harvard University Press, 1998

Merlin Donald,  A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001)

Merlin Donald,, Origins Of The Modern Mind : Three Stages In The Evolution Of Culture And Cognition (Harvard University Press, 1991).

James R. Flynn, What is Intelligence?  Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Mary Gauvain, The Social Context of Cognitive Development (The Guilford Press, 2001)

Juan Carlos Gómez, Apes, Monkees, Children and the Growth of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2004)

Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker. The first idea : how symbols, language, and intelligence evolved from our early primate ancestors to modern humans (Da Capo Press, 2004)

Peter M. Kappeler and Joan B. Silk, es., Mind the gap: tracing the origins of human universals (Springer, 2010)

Michael Tomasello and Henrike Moll, in ibid., Chapter 16.  "The Gap is Social: Human Shared Intentionality and Culture"

Shinobo Kitayama and Dov Cohen, eds., Handbook of Cultural Psychology (The Guilford Press, 2007)

Langer and Killen, Piaget, Evolution, and Development (1998)

LePan, The Cognitive Revolution in Western Culture (1989)

Robert K. Logan, The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind, and Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2007)

Lutz, S., & Huitt, W. (2004). "Connecting cognitive development and constructivism: Implications from theory for instruction and assessment."  Constructivism in the Human Sciences, 9(1), 67-90.

Allan Mazur, Biosociology of Dominance and Deference (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)

Carl Husemoller Nightingale, On the edge : a history of poor black children and their American dreams  (Basic Books, 1993)

Richard E. Nisbett, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)

Bert van Oers, Wim Wardekker, Ed Elbers, and Rene van Der Veer, eds, The Transformation of Learning: Advances in Cultural-Hitorial Activity Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

David Olson, Jerome Bruner: The Cognitive Revolution in Eductional Theory (Continuum International Publishing Groups, 2007)

Introduction to Section 5.  Child Psychology: Vygotsky's Conception of Psychological Development by Carl Ratner, Institute for Cultural Research & Education

Carl Ratner, Macro cultural psychology : a political philosophy of mind (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Hugh Rosen, Piagetian Dimensions of Clinical Relevance (Columbia University Press, 1985)

Child and adolescent development : an advanced course, edited by William Damon and Richard M. Lerner. (Wiley, 2008)

Robert J. Sternberg, ed., International Handbook of Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Mercer L. Sullivan, "Getting paid" : youth crime and work in the inner city, (Cornell Univesity Press, 1989)

Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication (MIT Press, 2010)

Richard W. Wrangham (Department of Antroropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University) and Michael L. Wilson (Department of Ecology and Behavior, University of Minnesota, and Gombe Stream Research Centre, the Jane Goodall Institute, Tanzania), "Collective Violence: Comparison Between Youths and Chimpanzees" see p 238 for quote

Developmental psychology (wiki)