Subject: Re: making a "Bourdieu model" for what's happening in New York City public schools (warning: long)
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 02:39:33 


Carston,
I think a bit of B. in the back of everyone's mind is useful. I think you 
are absolutely correct in locating the problem in how schools are funded 
locally. But this and other points raised by Tom require more subtly than 
survey you offered.  Not to be condscending in the the least common, but two 
factors come into play that Bourdieu can illuminate moreso than a more 
marxian interpretation. One is that these for profit schools are  95% 
committed to teaching only math and science and secondly the mass 
standardized testing that is in vogue here. I have a friend teaching who has 
to skip 200 years of history at the begining of the semester  to prepare 
students for exams in Oct. that following the curriculm they would not be 
prepared for.

Secondly how do you explain the  political process, by which whites and 
blacks voted for G. and support his cultural fascism, which seems the only 
thing he is interested in since being diagnosed with cancer. I offer that in 
jest. Yes I agree with your critque of the domination of corportization and 
the the introducation of the market into every part of social life.But how 
does this occur? that is where down  on the ground research...well maybe it 
makes us feel betteer
cheers


>From: Carsten Sestoft <sestoft-AT-hum.ku.dk>
>Reply-To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: making a "Bourdieu model" for what's happening in New York 
>City public schools (warning: long)
>Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 13:04:12 +0200
>
>Hi Tom,
>Thanks for an interesting story. I don't know if you need Bourdieu for your
>studies in New York education: isn't it the usual sad story in which
>private enterprises and their agents infiltrate public positions from which
>they, aided by pseudo-fact based arguments, try to criticize--and
>subsequently take over, for their own profit--public enterprises? And, of
>course, as so often in the US--as if to show that not EVERYTHING is
>governed by big business, that the division of powers is still to some
>extent operative--, the lone voice crying in the desert, in this case
>justice DeGrasse demanding more money for the public school system.
>If one should think in terms of fields, I guess one would have to study the
>field of NY City politics and the field of NY education, and their
>relation, but I don't if that would make you much wiser.
>best wishes
>Carsten Sestoft
>University of Copenhagen
>
>
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