Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id j3H0w8G24441; Sat, 16 Apr 2005 20:58:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 20:58:08 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <BAY103-F372D29FF9EC4027039C27BC5280@phx.gbl> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George demetrion" <gdemetrion@msn.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2984] RE: Conflicting paradigms and confusing terms: exciting X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Status: O Content-Length: 5577 Lines: 94 "Now, George, my brain is mush after two weeks on the road, so I may be confused here. But as Amy so skillfully reiterates in her message regarding the history of the EFF project, public philosophy oozes through every pore of the process of development and the products that resulted from that process." Thank you, Meta, there's no question in my mind that it does, which is what absorbed me with EFF in the first place. Moreover, Sondra's reconstruction of Educational Goal # 6 to give citizenship and capacity to function in the global economy equal billing was nothing short of a brilliant imaginative leap, given the prevalence of the latter, considering the collective impact of Workforce 2000, Jump Start and SCANS on the collective imagination of the adult education policy sector. In addition, much of the activities of the EFF construction process (building the system) very much reflected a civic-based ethos of public responsibility as did the underlying assumptions particularly the role maps. This is so even with the worker role map, which emphasized the central role of the worker in shaping his/her destiny while contributing to the public space of the workplace, within a broader framework of "corporate responsibility," a prime responsibility of the firm, as reflected in the values underlying SCANS. That said, much of this within EFF remains implicit and perhaps even self-evident, and there may have been good reason in keeping it so given the tradition of experience over theory as enacted in the American political imagination, at least as argued by historian Daniel Boorstein. However, conscious political articulation has also been a key factor throughout the crucial periods in the nation's history starting no less than with the Declaration of Independence, which pointed to an ideal well above the reality of the then current era. Nonetheless, that articulated ideal carried a powerful resonance that has reverberated throughout the nation's history, re-envisionized particularly in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech in which political idealism, which changed attitudes and behavior, mattered profoundly. It is in this respect that I am making the argument that EFF did not formally build upon a coherent body of political literature quite readily available, based very much on the ethos of the US political vision to anchor its educational and policy vision in a concept that puts the public good and constitutional fidelity in the broad sense at the core of the nation's political values. I'm speaking specifically of such texts as Robert Bellah's et al's Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Benjamin Barber's A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, Gary Hart's Restoration of the Republic: The Jeffersonian Ideal in the 21st Century America, Jessie Jackson Jr's, A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights, the several small books by John Dewey on the topic, and from a slightly different perspective, John Rawls' Political Liberalism. There is also a text I did not include in the book titled The Power of Public Ideas, edited by Robert Reich, which also contributes much to a coherent articulation of a US based grounded public philosophy which resonates with much of the spirit of EFF. This articulation was crucial, I hypothesize (to assert it would require an actual testing of it out) in order to counteract the only prevailing public philosophy in operation, namely, a cost benefit utilitarian one that viewed policy through a strict accounting metaphor--hence, the central role of quantifiable-based standards in much of the discussion on education through the 1990s. Without a countervailing rhetoric, the EFF leadership had little choice but to seek to rationalize its perspective from this accounting metaphor, as capsulated in the extensive EFF/NRS connection in order to try to figure a way of transcending what many viewed as the incompatible differences between the two frameworks. It's quite likely that even within a coherent and articulated public philosophy in place based on its own founding principles, EFF wouldn't have been able to have escaped the NRS connection in any event, although that is speculative also. What it would have had was a highly articulated body of political thought grounded very much in the "American Grain" to have more fully made its public and policy argument, and a means to provide a distinctive alternative to the dominant, and in fact, only vision of public accountability. Let's look at this in another way. Consider how politically effective the conservatives have been in the past 5 years in part because they have a very articulated public philosophy; one that many have many problems with, but which nonetheless, serves to galvanize its own ranks which provides them with a means of engaging in public discourse on their own terms. This should also be the case, I argue, with the progressive sector which has not yet found its concerted political voice, which has to be about more than a specific set of issues. In terms of this discussion in Conflicting Paradigms, I recommend pp. 19-25, pp. 201-204, and all of Chapter 11. I will send a couple of separate postings in short articles where I have summarized the core arguments of Bellah and Rawls. "By *out of power* do you mean *out of gas*? OR Out from under the umbrella of power in Washington, DC--NIFL?" Clearly the latter, and as Martha puts it, that's a good thing. George Demetrion
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