GOOD NIGHT 2005, AND GOOD LUCK TO ALL IN 2006

While my spouse Fatima, and son Dean nearly dosed off watching the old black and white shots of Edward R. Morrow, who along with his staff stood up to the extremist Wisconsin senator and his witch hunting antics that ruined many a dear soul's life, and even led a CBS staff member to suicide, I nonetheless tried to share some thoughts with my son, and compare those times to modern times now upon us.

As a little grade schooler in South Suburban Alsip, I remember how some referred to a neighbor family down the block as being "dirty commies", but my father, a purple heart recipient, long since deceased, shot in the leg in world war 2, while jumping into a fox hole, who wore a brace from his knee to his ankle, was friends with the father of this family (also a vet) who was being slandered. Why my brothers and I fought our way to the bus stop, when we passed that families house, has remained a childhood mystery.

And after all, communism is dead. But what is the new fear that has replaced the commie menace? If you are dark complexioned or have Arab features, will you be stereotyped?

After 3rd grade my parents were divorced, and we moved to St. Augustine, Illinois, to live on the farm there until my grandparents bought us a house in nearby Abingdon. They were conservatives as are many small farmers, sadly disappearing from the countryside, as have the country schoolhouses, with the advent of corporate farming.

The Abingdon Commandos often have been depicted by a helmut of a soldier. After all a commando as one definition puts it (Columbia) is a small raiding unit of a type the first used by the Boars in the South African War, as were U.S. army ranger units later also popularly called commandos. Not on your life would one suggest changing the team name to the peacemakers, or peaceniks, and one should be cautious in Abingdon about criticizing a war that Uncle Sam has has dragged us into, like the one we're in in Iraq. It's like President Bush saying, “You are either with us, or against us.” Does he still feel that way now that his public support has waned considerably?

Do the mayor of Chicago and his likes feel the same (you’re either for it, or else) about about Renaissance 2010, even though much of it reeks of union busting? WHATS DISGUSTING? UNION BUSTING! Where have you gone Jackie Vaughn? I only asked the now deceased CTU president one question in the mid 80’s, while visiting Carpenter school, and it was about apartheid, and Pension investments in that racist system, and if we were going to divest.

She didn't suffocate my question, but encouraged me to keep speaking up about the matter. I wasn't by any means the first, needless to say, nor the last to do so.

And by the way, why are we under the spell of test scores, and how is it that those of us that know that it is wrong to sort students, teachers, and schools solely on the basis of test scores, continue to be suckered into talking about good schools / bad schools using the aforementioned criteria as the basis of how good an institution is. Please join the resistance to this injustice, that is, what I call the “gun to the head syndrome” Da mayor, to da board, the bored of ed. to the school, the school to the teacher, and last but not least teachers are forced to place paramount importance on the almighty testing instrument, thereby stifling the creativity of both instructor and student, debate it as we may. Or may we Mr. Mayor?

Unfortunately high stakes testing has spread throughout America like crack cocaine did in the eighties both abusive to the human psyche in their own way.

Why, by the way, Mr. mayor did you have the Board of Ed. Under Paul Vallas fire a teacher for exposing one of these ”made in Chicago” instruments as the editor of a teacher monthly. The now defunct Case exam, had flaws, and the editor of this publication(Substance) exposed those flaws. I followed this scenario closely, because I had teens of my own in the high schools at the time.

Is it true that Gestapo like antics sent crews of cronies out to confiscate those publications?

That is, when portions of the CASE exam were published in substance.

True this first amendment / whistleblower case went to the Supreme Court, but so did the Bush / Gore election. And now look at the mess that W. has made. From neglect in New Orleans(in part because a good portion of Louisianna National Guard has been stationed in Iraq?) Since the aftermath of Katrina to the quagmire in Iraq, we have been Bushwhacked. If they really believe in NCLB then how come my Spanish classes don't have the books they need? Has the $ been spent for bombs? Three of five classes have books. Please ! " BOOKS NOT BOMBS"

And how we continue to be opiated with the almighty test score, though some schools are magnet schools, the neglected school in the poorest neighborhood, segregated and all, has their scores compared to Whitney Young’s etc.

Standardized tests weren’t meant to be used in this way. They were meant to be used in a natural way to measure the natural growth of a student's test taking ability. The results measure more than anything else, how good a test taker you are. Some students who are doing poorly in class are great test takers, while others who are doing well in class do dismally poor at taking these exams.

Recently while a Coach at my school was looking through Substance in the teacher lunch room, he read out loud, “Martial Law at Senn “. A middle age security guard commented, “Oh that communist teacher paper.” I couldn't help quipping that “the editor of substance would take issue with your comment.” A short while later, he said, “Don’t take it personally.” I then explained to him that the editor had come to help us with our school violence problems, spoke to the staff, and was head of security for CTU. He still has contractual rights, and should still be in that position.

Jack Anderson and Gary Webb passed on this year. The former reported on the unreportable, like what the right wing Somoza dictatorship was up to in Nicaragua right up to his downfall in 1979, when he fled Managua to his back yard in Miami. “He was a son of a bitch” as FDR described the Somozas, “but he was our son of a bitch.”

My we say the same of "the son of the Bush" administration, and Saddam, that is, he was “our man in Baghdad” (on the CIA pay roll), until Bush Sr. decided to drive Saddam out of Kuwaiit? Why do I feel that the real reason Bush went to war in Iraq, instead of pursuing Bin Laden in Afghanistan, was that Saddam tried to have Bush, Sr. bumped off, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Now we must ask again, "where have all the soldiers gone?"

Gary Webb exposed the origins of “crack” cocaine, and how it got its start in Los Angeles. But Webb was fired from the San Jose Mercury News for pursuing the story, since it led to higher ups in the CIA involved in drug trafficking. Webb nonetheless put out a book, “Dark Alliance” that told the story of how Cocaine was transported via Central America, and arms shipments to the contras were sent back to the “contras” trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan Revolution. Webb was found dead, and it was said that it was suicide. Californian US Rep. Maxine Waters attempted having congress investigate this, but was hushed up by the Senate Establishment etc. See “cover Up, Behind the Iran-Contra affair,” or take a look at Judge Walsh’s book, "Firewall", The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. Judsge Lawrence E. Walsh was the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra Investigation, 1986-1993)

There was more “fear & loathing” in 2005, and in these modern times of course.

Nonetheless, “Good night 2005, and good luck to all in 2006.”