Poor little rich kid.
Mr. Duncan is going to take a lot of flak for his Katrina komment, joining the Brownie School of Fixing by Diaspora, but he's already getting blog-flogged for that.
No, I'm more interested in the psychology of Duncan Dogooder, trying to anticipate how much damage this poor little rich kid is going to inflict on public education before he rides into the sunset, reading The Little Engine That Could to budding embryos in a Chicago church basement.
There are going to be a lot more losers than winners.
I know my popularity's going to plummet.
What an odd thing to say.
While I agree, Arne, that your playground popularity right now rests on the dollars you're tossing on the asphalt, I find it telling that your popularity plays into this at all.
Madeline Levine, a clinical psychologist, notes that children who were "indulged, coddled, pressured and micromanaged on the outside...appeared to be inadvertently deprived of the opportunity to develop an inside."
Let's see. Child of professor. Pro ("The Cobra") athlete. Home for a year mid-college to work in his mother's tutoring center.
More from Dr. Levine:
I think there's been a real ratcheting up of materialism, as opposed to an emphasis on making connections with people. Competition counts more than cooperation.
We don't need hurricanes and poor little rich kids to fix our schools. We need communities.
Community is an old word, and a good one. Communis. Shared by many.
New Jersey's RttT application is flawed enough to catch the Washington Post's attention. While we could certainly use the money, I am proud we did not completely capitulate to the whims of a manchild whose life has been framed by a fishbowl.
Until Arne can tell me how many squirrels live on the Bloomfield Green, that poor little rich kid can kiss my arse. He's taken class warfare to W's level.
Heckuva job, Arne.
Kudos to Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog for pointing out the original quote.
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5 comments:
As I often say after reading your posts, at least in my head, "Amen."
Community trumps competition every time. Why that is so hard for so many to learn I will never understand.
(Although, I think those who are used to winning do tend to like competition more than those who don't win.)
Love it! Humor always helps :)
Dear Jenny,
I suspect many of us never had true community and do not know what we're missing.
Once you start acting human, hard to go back. Arne ought to try it sometime.
I wrote a post mocking Race to the Top and I was shocked by a comment that blasted me because, by God, competition is what made us the greatest (read between the lines more powerful) nation in the world and if we start telling kids that they are valuable they might think that they are equal and gifted kids will start getting a complex because they are really better than everyone else since they score better and after all a seventy-nine is a crappy grade and we can't take crap anymore and . . .
I got suckered into it. I posted a reply point-by-point. I shouldn't have. Competition has it's place on the basketball court, but not as a means of funding public education.
It's not a three point jumper we're hoping for. It's getting a brand new ELL student to learn how to read both in her native and newly acquired language. Taking away funding because she won't score well on a test is not simply idiotic. It is cruel.
Dear John,
Our culture is awash in cruelty. We hide behind the mantra of competition.
Arne Duncan just said this week there will be more losers than winners with the RttT funding. He was nicknamed "The Cobra" when he played pro ball in Oz.
Of course, he never made it to the NBA. What a loser....
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