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- Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:01:50 -0500
- Sender: Professionals and Students Discussing Education Policy Analysis
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- From: U56E3@WVNVM.BITNET
- Subject: Re: Clinton's school choice
- In-Reply-To: Message of 01/25/93 at 12:06:49 from 72460.3000@COMPUSERVE.COM
- Lines: 23
-
- Re: Peter Lau's point that the acts of officials are all public acts
-
- I'm inclined to believe that whatever education we come to experience is a
- profoundly private matter, even when our parents' plans (however vain) are
- the subject of public pronouncements. In large measure (in the case of many
- people I admire, for instance) the education we actually take from our ex-
- periences is constituted by a repudiation of lessons taught (as in school).
- We fabricate our own meanings in the "darkness" of our private minds, partly
- in response to the help and frustration others contribute. If we're lucky,
- those meanings may have public significance (if we can articulate them in
- some public forum). The technocratic view of education, on the contrary,
- specifies which facts, skills, and attitudes students WILL possess regardless.
- These bits of human capital, in our scheme, are the values of the workplace
- (as previous postings have avowed). The dilemma is that such values contribute
- to the commonweal very indirectly (e.g., by restoring the nation's economic
- competitiveness). Such values might be said to be (following Hannah Arendt)
- "socialized" private values. They reflect not care for the commonweal, care
- for others, nor--woe to students--care for the self. I'd differ with
- Tom Mauhs-Pugh: It's hard to find the public realm in this thicket. It may
- reside most particularly with those students working in the dark.
-
- CRAIG HOWLEY, ERIC/CRESS, P.O. BOX 1348, CHARLESTON, WV 25325
- 1-800/624-9120
-