Defend Public Education
• 3 pm Rally @ Pershing Square (5th & Hill) in downtown L.A.
• 4 pm March from Pershing Square to the Governor’s office
• 5 pm Rally @ Governor’s office (300 Spring St.)
UCLA
• 10 am Pickets
• 11:30 am Walk Out
• 12 pm Rally @ Bruin Plaza
(UCLA invites high schools and community colleges in the Westside area to join)
Cal State Los Angeles
• 9:30 am Rally @ the USU area (Free Speech area)
• 2 pm March to Los Angeles Regional Rally (See regional listing above)
Long Beach: Wilson High School
• 4 pm Rally @ Wilson High School Gymnasium (4400 E. 10th St.)
• Music by Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, The Nightwatchman)
FUCK SHIT UP!
Not walking out. I support many of the cuts to humanities courses, for example. I think many people regret going to college once they have to find a job and realize their history degree isn’t going to do anything for them. It’s this great big scam perpetuated by politicians who think they are doing the right thing, and by the businesses who profit off of the poor saps who pay thousands for books and give up lost wages to go to a university.
It would be far better to support vocational schools instead and leave universities to the academics. Not everybody is cut out for academia and that isn’t even a bad thing. I wish I trained to be an electrician.
Bill Cosby would disagree, Spokker. The guy visits ghettos year around to tell kids that if they put their mind to academics, they could excel. He tells poor children to ignore people like you, who insist that some people were just meant for manual labor.
Troll, I was referring to this comment by Spokker:
“Not everybody is cut out for academia and that isn’t even a bad thing.”
Guess Bill Cosby and Jaime Escalante are wasting their time, huh? If Escalante would have taken that same attitude toward those kids at Garfield High, like those other teachers, those students never would have learned calculus.
I agree with you guys that art degrees don’t = money in most cases, but the sentiment that some people aren’t cut out for academia comes from a troubling mindset, and in many cases a racist mindset.
“Guess Bill Cosby and Jaime Escalante are wasting their time, huh?”
There are a lot of kids in rich neighborhoods that aren’t cut out for academia.
“but the sentiment that some people aren’t cut out for academia comes from a troubling mindset, and in many cases a racist mindset.”
No, it comes from a realistic mindset. Not everybody can be or wants to be a scholar. We need people electrifying houses, making sure the water flows and building crap. None of those occupations benefit from film and philosophy classes at a four-year university. Students graduate with no skills and little job prospects these days.
Didn’t Obama want $12 billion for vocational schools? I wonder if that ever happened.
Notice how almost all people filled with hate insist that they’re just being realistic?
As a matter of fact, Spokker, I don’t think you’re being realistic at all.
Show me empirical data which proves a significant number of people in society have brains incapable of academic progress. It’s an unfounded, baseless belief of yours, and nothing more. I’m going to guess that the only people who truly have such brains are disabled in some way, and we’re talking a small, small percentage of society. I’ll say again, imagine if Jaime Escalante took your advice, and decided not to even bother teaching those kids at Garfield HS in East LA calculus, because they were obviously not meant for academia, according to the other jaded, hapless teachers at the school at that time. I think your beliefs are disturbing and dangerous, Spokker. And realistic they’re not. You haven’t proven anything. You’re just repeating things you overhear from angry right wingers regarding the poor and undereducated, who themselves just draw from stereotypes.
Go to any Cal State school, work and interact with fellow students, and tell me with a straight face that you think everybody who is there should be there. I’ve been through CSUF and students are almost proud of doing the least amount of work for average grades. “Nah bro, you don’t need the book for this class.” Students are always looking for the classes with the easy A’s.
Group projects are a fucking joke. I could go on and on. The last group project I did was the worst I’ve ever experienced. We all had a few minutes where we had to speak, and one of my partners lifted his part directly from stuff that I wrote for myself. The other guy didn’t reply to my emails about the project until the day of the presentation and did zero work.
Many students don’t do the readings before class. They don’t take their term papers seriously. They aren’t there to actually learn anything. They are there to avoid adulthood for another four years and financial aid makes it pretty damn easy to do. They don’t actually learn anything and the proof is in the number of people who graduate and cannot find relevant work in their major, and this was true even when the economy was healthy.
Here’s what I think. Want a subsidy to go to school? Take engineering, science, math, medicine, something along those lines. Want to major in philosophy, language or something like that? Go for t, but you’ll be paying full cost.
“Show me empirical data which proves a significant number of people in society have brains incapable of academic progress.”
No need to. People already self-select themselves for the work they are best at. Financial aid that is not based on merit disrupts the self-selection process and encourages more people who do not belong in a four-year university to attend.
“I’ll say again, imagine if Jaime Escalante took your advice, and decided not to even bother teaching those kids at Garfield HS in East LA calculus”
I am a big admirer of Escalante so what am I now? Calculus is more relevant than any of the shit they teach you in humanities courses. If Escalante was teaching communications no one would care.
“You haven’t proven anything. You’re just repeating things you overhear from angry right wingers regarding the poor and undereducated, who themselves just draw from stereotypes.”
What stereotypes? Who do you think I’m talking about?
The worst thing about CSU is the number of students who text in class. The new move is to hide your texting behind your laptop screen, as if you were taking notes. But then again, they don’t even have to hide it anymore as many instructors have given up the fight since the students do it so blatantly.
And I remember two guys from a 400-LEVEL ECONOMICS COURSE who would sit next to each other and watch Family Guy on a laptop, sharing a pair of headphones.
Where do these guys come from and why are they even there? If their tuition was paid for by Calgrants and Pell grants, would you be pissed?
Ultimately, I feel like I have to aspire or choose to believe Rob’s way of thinking; there should be a concentrated push to have kids,regardless of background, go to college. However, I have also sadly observed Spokker’s ancecdotes of college students wasting the opportunity to really learn and challenge themselves intellectually.
Doesn’t explain your original comment, Spokker, that people weren’t meant for academia. There’s no way for you to determine that.
Spokker, what do you mean people “self select” what they are good at? Doesn’t that contradict your earlier claim that some people weren’t meant for academia? You hopped from divine plan to free will in one comment, you college ombudsmen. Don’t know if you noticed.
The ultimate goal and desire of the fascist right wing corporatists is to greatly diminish if not banish public education altogether, to privatize, reserve and control all free thought, to preserve and maintain the class system, the economic status quo, to have higher education reserved for the moneyed class’s, or for robotic clones, who fill a need for a desired necessary service, only cogs in the wheels of some technocracy based society.
The humanities, liberal arts, philosophy, economics, real history and investigation of civilization, and all advancement and education of the working class’s gives rise to the questioning of society, and is a threat to the ruling class’s and their lackey’s.
Knowledge is power, art is power,†public education†without hindrance or influence by self-preserving, fascist, thought police, is power and freedom.
The system of free public education, taught without fear or restrictions from a self-serving, racist, ruling class and their minions, must be not only be saved but also expanded.
Amen!…or as Forrest Gump says: “That’s all I got to say about that.”
Che, what’s wrong with “liberalism”? You say my liberalism is showing, as if its a disease one catches. Why would someone name themselves “Che” if they had a problem with liberalism? You can use any name you like on this blog, and you choose the first name of one of the most famous leftists in the 20th century?
We got Spokker flip flopping from people not being meant for college to people having the freedom to “self select”, and now someone named “Che” calling people out on their liberalism?!? lol. It’s been fun.
“The humanities, liberal arts, philosophy, economics, real history and investigation of civilization, and all advancement and education of the working class’s gives rise to the questioning of society, and is a threat to the ruling class’s and their lackey’s.”
All stuff you can learn by reading Wikipedia a lot.
“Spokker, what do you mean people “self select†what they are good at? Doesn’t that contradict your earlier claim that some people weren’t meant for academia?”
No, it doesn’t contradict it at all. If someone determines they are not cut out for academia, they will self-select themselves into a profession that is more applicable to their skill set.
For example, if someone does not want to write term papers, dive deep into theory or simply attend a class and pay attention to boring lectures, they may choose to do other things. They may go to work in the mail room and attempt to work their way up. They may go to a vocational school and learn a trade.
Think of a scenario consisting of two people. One went to to a four-year college and now makes $40,000 per year in a white-collar desk job. The other did not go to college and now makes $41,000 per year in construction or plumbing or something. Maybe he had a friend set himself up with a nice county job and he worked his way up.
At first glance, it would appear that the person who went to college made a terrible mistake. Not necessarily. If the person who went to college decided not to go to college and took the same path that the other person did, they wouldn’t have necessarily made $41,000. They may not be cut out for that kind of work. Maybe they would have only made $20,000 per year without a degree.
And the person who did not go to college wouldn’t necessarily make more money if he went back in time and decided to attend college. He may have actually made less. Or maybe he would make the same amount, but be burdened with loads of debt.
These two individuals are cut out for different types of work.
The person who knows the most about your ability is you. Is takes some deep soul searching in order to make a reasoned decision on whether or not to go to a four-year college, something I think many people fail to do, unfortunately.
Additionally, I think the people who go to college who do not belong there help lower standards for everybody. It was PBS who did a special on the declining standards in colleges across the country. Students can avoid rigorous study and still get C’s. That should not happen.
It’s called Declining by Degrees and it’s an incredible eye-opener. You can get it on Netflix if you have an account.
“All stuff you can learn by reading Wikipedia a lot.”
Let me clarify this. Of course these subjects are worthwhile in a general sense, but it’s clear that many of these degree programs are over-saturated. Unless you are a straight A or high B student, eat, drink and breathe Kant, and have Franz Fanon coming out of your asshole, you should probably rethink a philosophy degree, for example. The stereotype of the English major that works at Starbucks should be a sign of caution.
As far as keeping control of knowledge out of the hands of fascists, help keep the Internet neutral and blogs like LA Eastside will continue to thrive, among other things.
As long as there is free, unfettered, education for all citizens, including the liberal arts, the humanities, and access to the world’s great philosophers, then we won’t have to worry about descending into another dark age or a dystopian, Orwellian, future exclusively based on technocracy and tinker toys.
As far as keeping knowledge out of the hands of fascists, not to worry, they get their information from not only “Wikipedia” but from the Limbaugh and or the Glenn Beck Technical Institutes.
And therein lies the rub.
Spokker, Jaime Escalante had cholos in his classes who certainly weren’t cut out for academia. Mr. Escalante made them cut out for it. Don’t you understand that his story is evidence of your theory being bullshit? There is not a shred of proof on the planet that some human beings, who aren’t already mentally disabled in some way, aren’t cut out for academia. However, there is proof that people who were deemed not cut out for it excelled anyway with the right guidance. Regarding people themselves coming to the decision that they are not cut out for academia, just how does that happen, anyway? Have you ever heard of depression? People will tell themselves all the time they’re not cut out for something, yet when they try it, it’s another story. There really is no way of knowing that you’re not cut out for something. Maybe getting a spot on the Lakers roster is a long shot. But graduating from college? Anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. And there’s more evidence to support that theory than there is that some people, who don’t have any mental disabilities that they or anyone know of, are incapable of graduating from college. If you want to cut costs, that’s fine. But don’t try to make up such demeaning shit to support your cause.
DQ, well said.
I’m far more afraid of what would happen if we lost public education at the k-12 and college level than I am of the country going flat broke from funding it. There’s nothing I’d rather spend my last tax dollar on than education for our youth or anyone seeking to learn. Beats the hell out of a bank bailout, a military ship that China will wind up foreclosing on anyway, or some asshole who owns a paving company and bribed a politician for a no bid contract to repave a freeway that’s fine as it is. I’ll take the student, even the lazy student scamming the system. The previous 3 examples are scamming the system no less.
Everyone should go to college and study some philosophy, society, literature, history, the arts, math, the sciences, religion, and engineering. We should all do that, even if we aren’t going to be making our living doing these things.
Having a liberal education should make you a better person. It helps you think.
It’s like exercising – even if you don’t like to do it, you should, because it is good for your health.
Spokker, if you want to be an electrician, be one. It’s an honest living if you do it right – a socially useful job. It pays well, too.
An electrician who has studied ethics, and spent time reading widely is going to be a better electrician. Here’s why: an electrician who feels at ease with the world is going to be able to know the value of safety on the job, the value of doing a good job, and the effect of his or her job on the planet.
This person will make better decisions.
You don’t need to go to college to be well read, and thoughtful, but, in school, you can spend some time away from the working world and spend time studying.
C.S.U.N.
• 2:00pm walk out.
• 2:30pm rally @ sierra quad.
• 4:15pm march.
• 5:00pm hands around education @sierra quad.
• 5:30pm rally @ sierra quad.
How about ELAC? Go Huskies!
P.S. Well said, alienation.
LilCholo – your generalizations are incorrect.
During downturns, the people who suffer the most are the poor, who are most likely to become homeless.
The poor, by definition, lack money. During downturns they won’t have a buffer of capital to cushion the blow of the downturn. Poor people can’t quickly leverage capital to improve their economic situation — that is, they can’t turn cash into tools, machinery, computers, etc. and then command a higher wage.
Also, the absence of public education doesn’t really mean every poor kid will be selling drugs. What it means is that the economy will have to adapt to a large, undereducated workforce.
I think it’s pretty predictable what would happen. Just look at the South. The minimum wage would be reduced or repealed, because the workers won’t be in any position to defend themselves against that.
Then, manufacturing would return to America, and they’d make this new minimum wage. Maybe they’d screw things together – assembly line work.
Overall productivity would decline, and poverty would increase. Poverty would mean less tax revenues. People would be somewhat illiterate and many wouldn’t even go to high school. Dropping out to work would be the norm.
It would feel like Alabama or something. Maybe the old Soweto.
Lil Cholo, how do we get people to teach if we aren’t going to pay them a living wage?
Lil Cholo, what gives you the high ground to speak for the poor, because you claim to be poor anonymously on a blog, under the pseudonym “Lil Cholo”? How do you know nobody else here is poor? And, do other poor people have the right to speak for the poor, as well? Or, is it just you? Because I’ve heard plenty of poor people say that they have been hit hard by the economy. Debt is not the only symptom of this poor economy. The economy was hurting well into the past decade because of a loss of jobs, and if you don’t think that affects the poor you have to be a fool to try to speak for them. The poor were the first to take a nosedive in the Bush economy, but because the banks were still shelling out dough, Bush was able to spin the economy as being hunky dory. And, poor people were taken advantage of by predatory loans, too. In fact, they were the primary target by many banks. It was no risk for them because they knew they were going to get bailed out, and they did. Lil Cholo, based on what I’ve heard from the poor both in real life and on the internet, your views represent only a fraction of them, if even any, because I’ve never heard a poor person say that the economy hasn’t affected the poor. You’re the first. I don’t know if you’re really poor or not, or even if you’re really a “cholo”, lol. But you do NOT speak for the poor. That I’m certain of.
“Don’t you understand that his story is evidence of your theory being bullshit?”
Haha, that’s the theory being taught in state-subsidized, left-leaning public schools.
You don’t even know what left leaning is.
I think it is sad that going to college is given so much weight when, really, it comes down to questions of money and your family’s collective business sense that determines where most of us end up in life.
I wouldn’t be where I am without my entire family pitching in to help. College was great, because now I can write very nice essays, and I learned a lot of math. Really though, my skill set for making a living with my two hands and brain came in the after hours of my official life as a student (and as an employee at menial jobs).
I’m sort of with Spokker, but with the caveat that what he has said can easily become the rhetoric of someone trying to shut out the poor and poorly connected from accessing the arts, philosophy, and literature that the elite have used to shape public debate and the structure of modern life.
Lil Cholo, you boast about no one in your area losing “their home”and then claim to be poor. Poor people in L.A., for the most part don’t own their homes, they rent. So, you are already one step above the renter, you have something considered valuable by this society. You make a lot of generalizations which make it easy to pick apart your arguments. You should definitely pick up a book on Logic,particularly one about fallacies. It will strengthen your reasoning. I was born and raised in Lincoln Heights and currently reside in the Florence-Firestone area and most of the poor people I see are not satisfied with what they have and who they are. They are hustling for every dollar they can get whether it be recycling cans and bottles, having weekly yard sales or coming together with extended family to raise the money so that they can afford a monthly mortgage. Some people do manage to escape poverty by opening up a business or getting that job that pays enough. I know with this economy, it’s not happening as much, but it does happen. You also make it seem that all college graduates carry around a mountain of debt for a lifetime. That’s simply not true, it took me awhile but I no longer owe any college related debt and I know quite a few of my fellow college graduates who did not fall into the subprime mortgage mess and currently own their homes. If cholos and paisas (among some of the poorer “subsets of society)were satisfied with what they have, then why are they out their slanging and oohing and ahhing Escalades or other “hot” cars and talking about how they’re saving up to get one? Also, vanity cuts across class lines;that’s why you’ll see vatos(gang affliated and otherwise) in the hood flashing that gold necklace or sporting that expensive ecko/fubar shirt. If they really were satisfied with who they were, do you think they’d really be wasting all that money on clothing? Also, you seem to assign the poor with a stoic aloofness that seems to imply that they are all above “el crisis.” Money problems and the stresses related to it manifest themselves in alot of families(poor and other wise) with higher rates of domestic violence,divorce,drug use and alcoholism.
Ubrayj, that’s exactly my point. I don’t dispute Spokkers point about art related degrees not helping people in the business world or students taking advantage of the school system, both are no brainers. But that “some people weren’t meant for academia” takes us right back to Hitler. That attitude must be confronted. It is total bullshit and there is so much evidence to the contrary it almost reeks of insanity whenever someone tries to go there.
And then “Lil Cholo” professing to speak for the poor by saying the poor are satisfied with their lot in life. Funny, I’ve only heard the rich say that of the poor. That’s exactly what the wealthy tell their children when their children start to question their own family’s life of decadence while the rest of the world suffers. “Those people want to be poor. It’s a culture. They like it.”
Hey Lil cholo! I would never cry about living in California, I was just stating facts about the poor here,for the most part, being renters. I’d prefer California over Texas anyday. I was stationed at Fort Hood and Texas’ heat and humidity sucked! As for Arnold being in office, he was not elected with 100% of the vote, so stop with your mindless generalizations. You claim what you say is not anti-college propaganda but ultimately it is the main idea of your arguement. Your philosophy may work for you but please don’t preach it to the kids straddling the fence on whether to go to college or not.
Lil Cholo, I guess what irritates me about your arguements is that they are well put and may easily convince some naive young chicano/a to forego the college experience. You seem to have made the most of the education you recieved and put some deep thinking behind what you write. In fact, your writing is better than what alot of the college freshmen produced for the remedial english classes I tutored at CSUN. So, you see, college also can act as a sort of redeemer for the many who didn’t learn/hone/improve their basic skills at the high school level. Also, you seem to present yourself as this non-materialistic person but then you contradict yourself by disparaging college courses/majors that aren’t “money makers.”
College equaling doom? Nah! Ignorance equals doom. Oh yeah, as far as California being more expensive to live in than Texas; you pay 89$ to $140.00 a month for electricity in Texas, I’m paying about 17 dollars per month on my electricity right here in Cali. Dang! that air conditioning is a money muncher!
I thought a lot of what Lil Cholo wrote made sense. It has that warm feeling of the familiar.
Then I realized it was the “happy slave” recording they implanted into my head.
People come to the urban areas of California to struggle against their inner “slavemaster”. That’s our lot in life. The ones who were born here, and not into that, they move out of the city.
PS – I think he’s correct about the poorest people still having jobs. I see the cuts hitting a lot of $10 to $15 an hour workers. The thing is, in LA, $10 isn’t middle class; it’s still considered poor, or working class at best.
Lil Cholo, I have another little bone to pick when you say “If you graduate from college and didn’t get the job you were after..you’re too good to work at Mickey D’s or Walmart.” True, you’d be too good to work at Mickey D’s as an entry level cook/cashier but a degree would make you a perfect candidate to manage or own a franchise. Also, I’m sure there have been some graduates who’d swallow their pride and take whatever job they could out of economic necessity. Believe it or not, employers see a degree,regardless of major, as a plus because it shows a history of commiting to something and getting it done. Oh yeah, there have been plenty of people who have barely made it through high school and have found their intellectual spark in college.
Lil Cholo,
Again, if you want to convince people you’re really a poor cholo, stop talking like a rich person. Moving half way across the country is not the easiest thing to do. You sound just like the people who were saying that the Hurricane Katrina victims only had their selves to blame for living there in the first place. As a poor person, you should well know that poor people rely on family just as much as they do money. And if their whole family lives in Los Angeles, moving to Texas would isolate them from the only social network they have. Not to mention, moving itself isn’t cheap. The only loans available to even buy a cheap house in South Texas, at least up till last year, were probably high interest ripoffs. One reason that might be worth moving for, a better reason that real estate value, would be to move to a place with good paying jobs. But there aren’t any such places anymore.
Regarding people not being meant for academics…like I said to Spokker…prove it. Show some data. And don’t give me this “I’m poor, so I know” crap. I’ve met more than my fair share of poor people in real life that would dispute you, so your claims of being poor go absolutely nowhere with me, especially considering you’re using an anonymous pseudonym and might not even be poor to begin with.
And, sorry, but I’ve never looked at a quarter on the ground and wished it were a 20 dollar bill. Then again, I’ve never posted on a blog claiming to be poor and calling myself “Lil Cholo”, either. Your street wise cholo meets the Dalai Lama meets Glen Beck act is quite impressive and entertaining, though, I will say that.
Since the rest of what you said is just long winded rehashes of things you already said before, I’ll skip it and await your evidence to support your and Spokker’s point that some people weren’t meant for education. No charts from some right wing racist website. Real empirical data from scientists and doctors which prove that a significant number of people, who don’t already suffer from some type of disability, are incapable of excelling academically. Let’s see it.
Come on Rob. He can be poor and advocate for the rich. A rich person like FDR or Kennedy could advocate for the poor, or working class.
I think he’s advocating for his own life. Us LA people are advocating for our own lives. The situations are different.
There aren’t any $50k wooden shacks in a dusty part of town, in LA. There are only $150k wooden shacks in a poor part of town, and they’re getting bought by “investors” who have a lot of cash.
Survival in LA means going to college, or at least having that idea in your head. Go to trade school at least. Around 50% of adults over 25 in LA have some college education or a degree. I’m sure the number goes up as the age rises, judging from the number of re-entry students you meet in the UC, CSU and community college.
not having a degree is often used as a way to weed people out of the hiring process, not to mention when it’s time to look at who’s gonna get promoted. having a degree won’t guarantee a job or a promotion, but it’s one less thing they can use against you.
Why does education and knowledge just have to be about what kind of a job one is able to aquire, or how much money one can make if they skip college and become a plumber or a cop or go into the military.
Education and knowledge is priceless and whatever one decides to do in life, education and knowledge is still powererful and opens up the whole world to a person.
An educated, knowledgeable culture , is a culture that is harder to deceive. Maybe this is the reason the ruling class is against higher education for working people.
His claim of being poor while making arguments so inconsiderate to the poor is just one of many suspicions I have of him, alienation.
Education shouldn’t be just about money, but it’s definitely a “key” to get into a lot of jobs. And I’m responding to LC.
I’m 100% for education for its own sake. My idea of a good day at college was to miss class and read in the library.
It was a pretty stupid thing to do, because it hurt my grades, but there was a lot of good stuff in the libraries. Stuff you can’t really get anywhere else.
I’ve always been an advocate for education, it is still the best option for most….( and all certainly do deserve it) Now the economy has changed the “game”, not that education doesn’t matter, or is somehow less important, it’s just that in this economy a Master’s Degree could get you a bagger job at the neighborhood market. Of course I would rather my son make a decent living, and pursue an education in the fields of science or engineering but if he makes a choice as an adult not to pursue college, and instead chooses to be an auto mechanic or something because he has to pay rent NOW! and feed his kids NOW!, i won’t knock him.
Oh yeah, Lil’ Cholo, you claim that college is where you go to learn “what the government wants to teach you.” This is yet another statement that shows you know nothing, doo-doo,squat about college. There is a concept in college known as academic freedom which implies, among other things, that the government does not control what is being taught at the college level. If the government controlled what goes on at the universities, we wouldn’t learn about subjects that run counter to the status quo; all ethnic studies programs and other diverse political thought classes.