Catherine Driscoll wrote:
> I'm not going to disagree with this because it's pessimistic, but because
> it can't possibly be right. Absolutely no change could possibly improve the
> school system??
>
> It's not a matter of whether you or someone else can think of an
> improvement that would work -- improvement can't be impossible except in
> the abstract case of a perfect situation.
Catherine,
There are good arguments against the position I expressed, but this is not one of them because I didn't express this position. What I said was that under *current political conditions* -- i.e., given the current balance of forces -- any attempt to change the schools would be controlled by reactionaries.
Therefore, I argued (taking for granted that there are several thousand good changes possible in principle), we had to defend the present not because it was good or did not need improvement but because we had no practical chance of implementing *our* (progreessives's) ideas.
So if you are going to disagree with me, you can't talk about schools but must talk about current political possibilities.
Analogy: Social Security really needs improvement. Taxes should be lower and benefits should be higher. Also Disability should be much easier to get. HOWEVER, any opening of the debate in Congress NOW will result in lower payments, higher taxes, more screwing of the disabled. So we have to fight against *any* changes in Social Security until such time as the balance of political forces changes. How to bring about that change is, as they say, a horse of a different color.
So the arguments in your post are all absolutely correct and also absolutely irrelevant to the points I made.
Carrol