School Board Meeting

Went well considering all the budget cuts, people who look to such loopholes against funding schools should be ashamed of themselves.
Many children came to the meeting tonight, protesting the school closures, the budget considerations droned on and on, children tried to stay awake and held signs saying, "Go slow" or "Slow down".

The sadness of this was not lost on me, inner city children being forced to recognize that the public doesn't care about them and they are expendable, as small children they are already so awash with defeat, that the only protest they can make is, "hurt us slower."
It breaks my heart, once again, people should be ashamed of themselves. I doubt their sleepy little heads trying to listen attentively to budget considerations will make the news, but they inspired me with their doggedness, and their presence changed everything.

Peter McClaren writes in "Life in Schools"(pg. 183,1989) and with H. Giroux in "Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement" (pg. 228,1983) that curriculum represents the introduction to a particular form of life; it serves in part to prepare students for dominat or subordinate positions in the existing society. For these children this evening the curriculum affimed the rights of due process but only in so far that their dreams were seen as not valued by the current society.

At an aparapoe moment a man from the governor's office came in with an envelope promising $6 million, but the hope of the current superintendent is to use that little bit of money to regiment curriculum so that it is consistant and lacks diversity, supposedly to better the curriculum, but the students have always done well in college placement, the schools here are still highly valued. So the main need is to take away the freedom from teachers to create curriculum, and start with social studies curriculum first.

This standarized curriculum is not even discussable as a budget item, possibly because a very powerful right wing syndicate wants to take power from the powerhouse in Portland social studies education for the nation, Rethinking Schools, by creating a standarized curriculum they take the power away from these teachers to test new curriculum in their classrooms that changes the curriculum of schools after publishing around the nation.