<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>J</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">ustin:
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I haven't read B&G on education in an age, and can't comment on whether you
<BR>are right about it. I don't advocate the views you criticize, and neither
<BR>does Kelly. I was defending the utility of a specific sort of functional
<BR>explanation that you don't address. I was arguing in defense of a version
<BR>of HM based in part on that sort of functional explanation; you change the
<BR>subject.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>If you are not familiar with Bowles and Gintis on education, you don't have
<BR>to comment on what I said about their analysis. I did not say that your
<BR>position [or Kelley's position] was the same as their position, or call upon
<BR>either of you to defend it.
<BR>
<BR>We come to these questions from different perspectives, with different
<BR>interests. You apparently want the thread to move in one direction, and one
<BR>direction only. I saw some potential tangents of it as at least as
<BR>interesting as a discussion of historical materialism as a grand narrative of
<BR>history -- which itself began as a tangent on a thread on the intersection of
<BR>class and race. Although intellectual discourse for its own sake does have
<BR>its pleasures, I am always trying to use my participation in these
<BR>discussions to help me figure out issues that are practical and live
<BR>political questions for my other, organizing life. You don't have to share my
<BR>interests or anyone else's interests, and you don't have to find the tangents
<BR>I or anyone else introduces as worthy of following up. If it doesn't interest
<BR>anyone, it will just die. But it is just not very constructive to building
<BR>dialogue and conversation in general when we start throwing around those
<BR>types of personal insults. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Justin:
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I think it's not approppriate to attack the tenability of people's views by
<BR>remarking on where they ended up when they changed their minds. You said
<BR>nice things about Genovese, with which I agree; but look where he is now.
<BR>Gerry Cohen, who taught me more than I can say, appears to have lost it
<BR>entirely. (I say "appears" because, while I have read his lectures with
<BR>horror; I have not yet seen the "new" edition of KMTH.) I don't think you
<BR>are a Stalinist, but the "look where he ended up" is a Stalinist pattern of
<BR>argument. --jks</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">
<BR>I made an argument that there is an intellectual continuity in Gintis'
<BR>evolution on education issues, that he had a functionalist view of schooling
<BR>in _Schooling in Capitalist America_ and that the argument for school
<BR>vouchers which he makes continues to be functionalist. You can agree or
<BR>disagree with that view, or you can decide that you are in no position to
<BR>make an argument one way or the other, but it is entirely uncalled for to
<BR>label such an argument Stalinist. And not only because the argument I made
<BR>did not in any way justify such accusations, but because Stalinist is one of
<BR>those epithets, like fascist, racist and sexist, that we should be very
<BR>careful about throwing around, and use only when it fits a situation quite
<BR>precisely. Its use is sure to bring an end to any reasonable give and take in
<BR>a conversation.
<BR>
<BR>As much as I think Genovese's corpus is interesting and very important, there
<BR>are clearly lines of intellectual continuity between his earlier texts and
<BR>his current positions. Ditto Gerry Cohen. Ditto Leo Casey circa 1975 as
<BR>Gramscian Marxist and Leo Casey circa 2001 as radical democrat. Human beings
<BR>change and evolve our views, but barring physiological damage, we don't
<BR>completely metamorphize. I think it is an entirely valid exercise to try to
<BR>understand how people work through particular theoretical problematics,
<BR>seeing what remains the same and what changes. Disagree if you want, but
<BR>don't pretend that this is the equivalent of Michael Gold or William Z.
<BR>Foster policing the boundaries of "proletarian" thought.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --</P></FONT></HTML>