Repercussions of the Norway Attacks

It has been just over a week since the brutal Norway terrorist attacks and it is not at all surprising to see that the news of the attacks have completely disappeared off the western media front. It’s all about debt ceilings, celebrity deaths and anything else that comes to mind ever since it was found out that the terrorist wasn’t Muslim or hadn’t converted to Islam. It is embarrassing and pathetic. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if the terrorist attacks weren’t carried out by a blue-eyed, blond haired, Norwegian? It certainly wouldn’t have dropped off the news this quickly, that’s for sure.

There was a piece titled “Why Norway Could Happen Here” by Peter Beinart a few days after the attack which stated that “the same anti-Muslim bigotry that influenced Anders Breivik in Norway is widespread among right-wing extremists in America, and could trigger a similar attack here” and you saw that in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Sure the attacks can happen any where and it is not necessarily just limited to the United States but the tendency to allow military ideology to prey on mentally vulnerable people fosters a hostile culture towards anything that is different.

There were reports left and right that this had the hallmark signs of Al-Qaeda or Muslim extremists but that just wasn’t the case. In a matter of days, the Crown Prince of Norway did apologize in person to the Muslim community there at the World Islamic Mission Mosque in Oslo that there were some in Norway that immediately thought this was an act of a Muslim. That kind of humanity and sincere gesture is something you would never see here in the immediate aftermath.

In the clip below, Stephen Colbert walks through the American media’s early coverage as the news of the attacks were unfolding.

“These journalists were able to get the story they wanted and scoop reality,” Colbert joked. “Even if there was a rush to judgment, we must not repeat that mistake by rushing to accuracy. Just because the confessed murderer is a blond, blue-eyed Norwegian-born anti-Muslim crusader doesn’t mean he’s not a swarthy, ululating Middle-Eastern madman.”

Even more embarrassing than the media’s rush to judgment, though, were the half-hearted retractions that came after. Colbert played a clip of a CNN guest attempting to explain how a Nordic-looking person could have a committed such an attack. “Maybe it was a good disguise?” the guest theorized.

“Yes,” Colbert said, “which is more plausible? That a non-Muslim did this or that Al-Qaeda has developed Polyjuice Potion?”

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I’m Moving To Canada

I have been looking forward and dreading this day for a little while now. I was more than certain to move on from my undergraduate life at Stevens and into the next stage– but I had no idea it would involve me moving back up north to Canada. I was never sure how to make such a decision and how much I would debate it from the moment I know that I might have the opportunity. Slowly but surely, more and more people I know have begun to find out about the next chapter in my life that I have decided to accept employment in the great city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. It wasn’t my first choice but in the end, it was my best choice because of where I wanted to progress professionally.

The last decade that I have spent in the Garden State has been something remarkable. I was never a big fan of moving down here in the middle of 7th grade but I have since grown fond of this place. I may not have always liked the political decisions made here, their sports teams or even their lack of Mars chocolate bars, but the people were a different story… and seriously, why aren’t there Mars chocolate bars here?

Dating back to 2001, I decided to go to the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies (MCASMET) for high school which was only in its second year of existence when I first started. I like to think, that along with several people from our class, I had some sort of influence in the way things developed in that school. This is the place where I learned to question facts and not take them at face value. This is a place where I learned to be disciplined while debating with a classmate who was fundamentally incorrect. However, this is also the place where I got into trouble for not being “patriotic” enough during my freshman year but this is also a place where I made a best friend who I rarely go the stretch of a full day without making contact of some sort.

I hope to continue the lasting relationships I had formed not only with those that I was fortunate enough to learn from in my classes but a couple of old teachers and a soccer coach as well. It has been five years since I graduated from MCASMET and I was just at the reunion a couple of weeks and I am already looking forward to where everyone will be in the next five years.

My undergraduate studies just concluded with my commencement in late May and even though I will not say it was everything I hoped it would be, I will add that it wasn’t too bad. I think I am correct when I say the first person I befriended at Stevens became one of my better friends and would go on to become my eventual roommate several times over, including this final year. I had another roommate who was more civil-ized than the rest of us but I am not sure how he survived the constant slew of cheeky insults tossed his way. I was certain he hated me at times but hopefully that’s more temporary than a full time thing. I’m gonna miss competitive games of basketball and racquetball down here in Hoboken and sometimes down right painful games if you played with the right (or wrong) people.

A tidbit: Did you know one of my best friends from high school went to graduate school with a best friend of one of my aforementioned college roommate?

One thing I never did understand was how big the western culture is on moving away from home or disassociating ties from those that raised you. That is probably the one thing that puzzles me the most. Family is the one place you can always turn to whether it is in a time of need, time of celebration or anything in between. It is time to grow up now but moving to another country away from your immediate family will always be difficult but strong faith and belief should see you through. Hopefully, this next chapter is as resourceful as I expect it to be and we’ll see where I go from there.

For those looking to get in touch with me, can still use my same email address or cellphone  number starting July 4th but in order to text me, you should use my Google Voice number because I won’t have an international text messaging plan to start off. If you need any of those information, feel free to contact me and we can exchange information.

Now, who is up for a visit to Toronto to visit me?

Journalism and ‘The Words of Power’

Here is an excellent piece by Robert Fisk on how journalism can sometimes lose the actual context of the story and be very easily shaped by selective choice of words in the reporting. Do this piece by Fisk justice and read all of it – don’t skip around, it really builds well and the examples he has cited in this speech are simply brilliant.

You can click the title of the quoted piece below for the original source from Al Jazeera English or just read it below:

Journalism and ‘the words of power’ by Robert Fisk

Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words – and the use of words.

It is about semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’  our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean.

For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis. Poor old Oslo, I always think! What did Oslo ever do to deserve this? It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious treaty – in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies – even timetables – were to be delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.

And how easily we forget the White House lawn – though, yes, we remember the images – upon which it was Clinton who quoted from the Qur’an, and Arafat who chose to say: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. President.” And what did we call this nonsense afterwards? Yes, it was ‘a moment of history’! Was it? Was it so?

Do you remember what Arafat called it? “The peace of the brave.” But I don’t remember any of us pointing out that “the peace of the brave” was used originally by General de Gaulle about the end of the Algerian war. The French lost the war in Algeria. We did not spot this extraordinary irony.

Same again today. We western journalists – used yet again by our masters – have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan as saying that their war can only be won with a “hearts and minds” campaign. No-one asked them the obvious question:  Wasn’t this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnam war? And didn’t we – didn’t the West – lose the war in Vietnam?

Yet now we western journalists are actually using – about Afghanistan – the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition rather than a symbol of defeat for the second time in four decades, in some cases used by the very same soldiers who peddled this nonsense – at a younger age – in Vietnam.

Just look at the individual words which we have recently co-opted from the US military.

When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies – al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban -have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!

A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ – for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.

Now again, when US generals refer to a sudden increase in their forces for an assault on Fallujah or central Baghdad or Kandahar – a mass movement of soldiers brought into Muslim countries by the tens of thousands – they call this a ‘surge’. And a surge, like a tsunami, or any other natural phenomena, can be devastating in its effects.  What these ‘surges’ really are – to use the real words of serious journalism – are reinforcements. And reinforcements are sent to wars when armies are losing those wars. But our television and newspaper boys and girls are still talking about ‘surges’ without any attribution at all! The Pentagon wins again.

Meanwhile the ‘peace process’ collapsed. Therefore our leaders – or ‘key players’ as we like to call them – tried to make it work again. Therefore the process had to be put ‘back on track’. It was a railway train, you see. The carriages had come off the line. So the train had to be put ‘back on track’. The Clinton administration first used this phrase, then the Israelis, then the BBC.

But there was a problem when the ‘peace process’ had been put ‘back on track’ – and still came off the line. So we produced a ‘road map’ – run by a Quartet and led by our old Friend of God, Tony Blair, who – in an obscenity of history – we now refer to as a ‘peace envoy’.

But the ‘road map’ isn’t working. And now, I notice, the old ‘peace process’ is back in our newspapers and on our television screens. And two days ago, on CNN, one of those boring old fogies that the TV boys and girls call ‘experts’ – I’ll come back to them in a moment – told us again that the ‘peace process’ was being put ‘back on track’ because of the opening of ‘indirect talks’ between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t just about clichés – this is preposterous journalism.  There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.

Maybe one problem is that we no longer think for ourselves because we no longer read books. The Arabs still read books – I’m not talking here about Arab illiteracy rates – but I’m not sure that we in the West still read books. I often dictate messages over the phone and find I have to spend ten minutes to repeat to someone’s secretary a mere hundred words. They don’t know how to spell.

I was on a plane the other day, from Paris to Beirut – the flying time is about three hours and 45 minutes – and the woman next to me was reading a French book about the history of the Second World War. And she was turning the page every few seconds. She had finished the book before we reached Beirut! And I suddenly realised she wasn’t reading the book – she was surfing the pages! She had lost the ability to what I call ‘deep read’. Is this one of our problems as journalists, I wonder, that we no longer ‘deep read’? We merely use the first words that come to hand …

Let me show you another piece of media cowardice that makes my 63-year-old teeth grind together after 34 years of eating humus and tahina in the Middle East.

We are told, in so many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are ‘competing narratives’. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. ‘Competing narratives’ now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase is a species – or sub-species – of the false language of anthropology. It deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly ‘competing narratives’, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not – ‘in competition’. It’s two sides in a football match. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

So an ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’. Thus a ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. Thus Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.

You will not be surprised to know that it was Colin Powell, in his starring, powerless appearance as secretary of state to George W. Bush, who told US diplomats in the Middle East to refer to occupied Palestinian land as ‘disputed land’ – and that was good enough for most of the American media.

So watch out for ‘competing narratives’, ladies and gentlemen. There are no ‘competing narratives’, of course, between the US military and the Taliban. When there are, however, you’ll know the West has lost.

But I’ll give you a lovely, personal example of how ‘competing narratives’ come undone. Last month, I gave a lecture in Toronto to mark the 95th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the deliberate mass murder of one and a half million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turkish army and militia. Before my talk, I was interviewed on Canadian Television, CTV, which also owns the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. And from the start, I could see that the interviewer had a problem.  Canada has a large Armenian community. But Toronto also has a large Turkish community. And the Turks, as the Globe and Mail always tell us, “hotly dispute” that this was a genocide. So the interviewer called the genocide “deadly massacres”.

Of course, I spotted her specific problem straight away. She could not call the massacres a ‘genocide’, because the Turkish community would be outraged. But equally, she sensed that ‘massacres’ on its own – especially with the gruesome studio background photographs of dead Armenians – was not quite up to defining a million and a half murdered human beings. Hence the ‘deadly massacres’. How odd!!! If there are ‘deadly’ massacres, are there some massacres which are not ‘deadly’, from which the victims walk away alive? It was a ludicrous tautology.

In the end, I told this little tale of journalistic cowardice to my Armenian audience, among whom were sitting CTV executives. Within an hour of my ending, my Armenian host received an SMS about me from a CTV reporter. “Shitting on CTV was way out of line,” the reporter complained. I doubted, personally, if the word ‘shitting’ would find its way onto CTV. But then, neither does ‘genocide’. I’m afraid ‘competing narratives’ had just exploded.

Yet the use of the language of power – of its beacon-words and its beacon-phrases -goes on among us still. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan? They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq.  Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. And then immediately we western reporters did the same. Calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once – ever – have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan. And that most of them, ladies and gentlemen, are in American or other Nato uniforms!

Similarly, the pernicious phrase ‘Af-Pak’ – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters when it originally was a creation of the US state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoided the use of the word ‘India’ whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, ‘Af-Pak’ – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the ‘Af-Pak’ envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase ‘Af-Pak’, which totally deletes the tragedy of Kashmir – too many ‘competing narratives’, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, ‘Af-Pak’, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the state department’s work.

Now let’s look at history. Our leaders love history. Most of all, they love the Second World War. In 2003, George W. Bush thought he was Churchill as well as George W. Bush. True, Bush had spent the Vietnam war protecting the skies of Texas from the Vietcong. But now, in 2003, he was standing up to the ‘appeasers’ who did not want a war with Saddam who was, of course, ‘the Hitler of the Tigris’. The appeasers were the British who did not want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair, of course, also tried on Churchill’s waistcoat and jacket for size. No ‘appeaser’ he. America was Britain’s oldest ally, he proclaimed – and both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940.

But none of this was true.

Britain’s old ally was not the United States. It was Portugal, a neutral fascist state during World War Two. Only my own newspaper, The Independent, picked this up.

Nor did America fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940, when Hitler threatened invasion and the German air force blitzed London. No, in 1940 America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality – and did not join Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941.

Ouch!

Back in 1956, I read the other day, Eden called Nasser the ‘Mussolini of the Nile’. A bad mistake. Nasser was loved by the Arabs, not hated as Mussolini was by the majority of Africans, especially the Arab Libyans. The Mussolini parallel was not challenged or questioned by the British press. And we all know what happened at Suez in 1956.

Yes, when it comes to history, we journalists really do let the presidents and prime ministers take us for a ride.

Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel – our own servicemen dying as they did so – to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist – and we love historical parallels – has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?

Look at more recent times. Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – you can fit ‘WMD’ into a headline – but of course, he didn’t, and the American press went through embarrassing bouts of self-condemnation afterwards. How could it have been so misled, the New York Times asked itself? It had not, the paper concluded, challenged the Bush administration enough.

And now the very same paper is softly – very softly – banging the drums for war in Iran. Iran is working on WMD. And after the war, if there is a war, more self-condemnation, no doubt, if there are no nuclear weapons projects.

Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power – though it is not a war since we have largely surrendered – is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words, in many cases – I fear – better than we do. History, too. They know that we are drowning our vocabulary with the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute experts, or those of those of the Rand Corporation or what I call the ‘TINK THANKS’. Thus we have become part of this language.

Here, for example, are some of the danger words:

· POWER PLAYERS

· ACTIVISM

· NON-STATE ACTORS

· KEY PLAYERS

· GEOSTRATEGIC PLAYERS

· NARRATIVES

· EXTERNAL PLAYERS

· PEACE PROCESS

· MEANINGFUL SOLUTIONS

· AF-PAK

· CHANGE AGENTS (whatever these sinister creatures are).

I am not a regular critic of Al Jazeera. It gives me the freedom to speak on air. Only a few years ago, when Wadah Khanfar (now Director General of Al Jazeera) was Al Jazeera’s man in Baghdad, the US military began a slanderous campaign against Wadah’s bureau, claiming – untruthfully – that Al Jazeera was in league with al-Qaeda because they were receiving videotapes of attacks on US forces. I went to Fallujah to check this out. Wadah was 100 per cent correct. Al-Qaeda was handing in their ambush footage without any warning, pushing it through office letter-boxes. The Americans were lying.

Wadah is, of course, wondering what is coming next.

Well, I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that all those ‘danger words’ I have just read out to you – from KEY PLAYERS to NARRATIVES to PEACE PROCESS to AF-PAK – all occur in the nine-page Al Jazeera programme for this very forum.

I’m not condemning Al Jazeera for this, ladies and gentlemen. Because this vocabulary is not adopted through political connivance. It is an infection that we all suffer from – I’ve used ‘peace process’ a few times myself, though with quotation marks which you can’t use on television – but yes, it’s a contagion.

And when we use these words, we become one with the power and the elites which rule our world without fear of challenge from the media. Al Jazeera has done more than any television network I know to challenge authority, both in the Middle East and in the West. (And I am not using ‘challenge’ in the sense of ‘problem’, as in ‘”I face many challenges,” says General McCrystal.’)

How do we escape this disease? Watch out for the spell-checkers in our lap-tops, the sub-editor’s dreams of one-syllable words, stop using Wikipedia. And read books – real books, with paper pages, which means deep reading. History books, especially.

Al Jazeera is giving good coverage to the flotilla – the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don’t think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships – from all over the world – are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid – as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn’t the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian ‘intervention’ in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?

In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.

But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.

Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton’s attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair’s humanitarian ‘intervention’ in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers – and the people on those boats – that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?

The hell we are! We prefer ‘competing narratives’. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination – be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the ‘peace process’, the ‘road map’. Keep the ‘fence’ around the Palestinians. Let the ‘key players’ sort it out.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not your ‘key speaker’ this morning.

I am your guest, and I thank you for your patience in listening to me.

Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, gave the following address to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on May 23.

Don’t Blame The Governor… Yet.

There are a vast number of public policy issues that arise when policymakers discuss items such as a budget in order to make the best decision not only for the individuals in the community but to improve the society as a whole. Although each issue provides its unique aspect on what impact it plays to improve the lifestyle, it also brings differences not only its regulations but also in unintended consequences. The two categories compared in this analysis are the economic and budget issues as well educational policies including pre- and post-secondary education and what impact one plays upon the other.

Education policies, since the start of the country’s founding, have done well to maintain the basic goals of the American nation. Although for the most of the reasoning behind public education was morally justified, there are signs of political motivation behind an educated public as well. Since its early stages have sustained the firm belief of Thomas Jefferson that the only way the American democratic process could have active, engaged voters would be if they had the ability to read, write and were educated enough to understand the issues they were voting for. He also argued that different forms of learning eased the process of large immigrations assimilate into their communities more fluently. Finally, education paves the way for the worker to be able to find jobs which raise not only their economic, but social status as well.

Over the course of history in the United States, public education has been primarily dealt at the state and local government level. “Policymakers at these levels have guarded this responsibility throughout the years and raised concerns whenever the federal government has attempted to interfere in education policy, especially in primary and secondary schools.” Historically, the federal government has shown a far greater interest in legislating higher education. This can be related to policymakers wanting to reduce the cost of the individuals encouraged to attend college and universities and in the end, provide towards a better-educated population which would certainly stimulate an economic growth. This does not imply that the federal government has no say in the way educational policies are set. The Department of Education lists several goals geared towards legislation associated with the Educate America Act. Amongst the goals are School Readiness, School Completion, Student Achievement and Citizenship, Teacher Education and Professional Development, Mathematics and Science, Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning, and Safe, Disciplined, and Alcohol- and Drug-Free Schools and finally, Parental Participation.

Even though there is little doubt as to whether the budgetary cuts by the current Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, were absolutely necessary, it is still up for debate whether the manner in which the cuts were made were the most efficient for the citizens of New Jersey. There are historical comparisons to be made with prior administrations to govern the state and how the education programs were handled relative to the entire budget. Since most states primarily depend on the property tax revenues to finance public schools, several states have begun to face political and legal pressures. Michigan and Vermont, for example, have adopted statewide sales tax that is then redistributed to the school districts across the state on a need-base basis. However, such an issue has been met with severe resistance from some citizens who seek answers from their local lawmakers as to how their funds are being dispersed. The Vermont Supreme Court subsequently ruled in favor of, and the state legislature passed Act 60, ruling that “equal educational opportunity is a right that must be guaranteed” by the states while others have suggested that although a more active role by the states will eventually be needed, such an increase in support would require a dramatic shift in how many currently fund their public education systems and likely cause states to raise taxes.

Historically speaking, in a 20-year span starting from 1940, the population of the state of New Jersey rose by roughly 50% although the number of people residing in the state’s largest cities would steadily decline for next two decades. The state was relatively slow to react to disperse aid to support the dramatic increase in the state’s population. In the mid 1950’s, the Education Board of Newark Board had estimated it require aid or additional borrowing of up to $50 million to get their school system into a reasonable condition. Even though New Jersey was only behind Montana in terms of school spending, it still ranked a disappointing 37th out of 50 when it came to the amount of aid provided in education. Since then, remedies were taken by the State to ensure students received proper public education in harmony with the state laws of New Jersey. Another subject, which is discussed later, is Abbott District which was a result of a ruling that asserted that public primary and secondary education in poor communities through the state were unconstitutionally substandard and required assistance.

The State of New Jersey has had three elected governors since 2002, each with their vision of what is the appropriate next step for the State. Democrats Jim McGreevey (January 2002 – November 2004) and Jon Corzine (January 2006 – January 2010) and Republican Chris Christie (since January 2010) each had a budget issue as one of the many items a Governor deals with. While comparing education budgets for the past three elected governors, it is easily noticeable that the two administrations prior to Chris Christie had a dramatic increase in their first year budget spending on education (as noted by the table below) although that was during a more stable economic period.

 

Education Budget (in millions)

 


Note: “Year Before”, “First Year” and “Next Year” all indicate the amount allotted
in the budget reference to the year that Governor took office.

Although it is interesting to note the two dramatic rises in terms of education budgets in the first year for the Democratic governors and the negative percent change for the Republican governor, it would be careless to conclude anything amongst party lines without consider a larger sample of history. Additional factors like state of the national economy and relationship of teacher’s union with the governor at the time must also be brought into consideration. On the other hand, the slight increase of 2.14% projected should not be strictly perceived as the education budget will increase under Governor Christie’s proposed budget. The rise is “due to increases in State school aid that is not paid directly to school districts, such as the State’s debt service payments for school construction bonds” and without such considerations, the State appropriations for “direct aid to districts, grant-in-aids, and direct State services” dropped when compared to the FY 2010 budget.

The recently released Office of Legislative Services (OLS) Budget Analysis for the Governors Budget, Fiscal Year 2010-2011 (FY 2011) states the previous fiscal year allotted just a shade over $11.13 billion in Total School Aid while the proposed amount this year is at $10.31 billion – a cut of $819.5 million. An additional $1.057 billion in federal fiscal stimulus money that was available to New Jersey’s school districts in FY 2010 is not available in FY 2011. The Governor significantly cut state spending on non-school aid purposes deeply with the intention that, beyond closing the State’s own massive budget deficit, his administration could achieve the savings necessary to provide school districts with $238 million in increased state funding.

Another OLS Budget Analysis for the Department of Education showed that the amount of funding that the state of New Jersey had budgeted from FY 2009 to FY 2010 decreased by 2.46% while the recommended FY 2011 budget stands at 2.18% increase. Amongst their various findings, a second report detailing the Education budget released by the OLS stated that:

The recommended FY 2007 appropriation for total State aid is $10.4 billion, an increase of $1.04 billion (11.1 percent over the FY 2006 adjusted appropriation for total State aid of $9.4 billion. The largest increase is in the recommended FY 2007 appropriation for Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Assistance, $823.2 million, or 77.3 percent of the total recommended State aid increase.

Of the less than 25 percent of the increase (approximately $215 million) from the State aid was then used to finance the rest of the Education budget which included items such as Special Education programs, Education Opportunity Aid (EOA) grants and Total Facilities Planning and School Building Aid. In comparison, the proposed FY 2011 budget recommends an appropriation of $7.076 billion in direct aid to school districts to support K-12 educational programs which is a steep 13% decline from the amount of aid allocated the fiscal year before and a 15% drop if the impact of “Grown Impact – Payment Changes” are removed. As a consequence of such reductions taking place, 60 different school districts will not receive any direct State school aid in FY 2011.

Governor Christie’s recent budget proposal makes cuts of millions of dollars to the education system in New Jersey. While many agree that cuts are needed to balance the state’s budget, the degree at which funding towards education for the state’s youth, while relatively similar in comparison to previous administrations appears to be astronomical compared to cuts to other areas in this fiscal year. One problem that Governor Christie is facing is his troubled relationship with the New Jersey Education Association. The NJEA did not support Governor Christie during the campaign and from the time he took office in January their relationship has deteriorated. The recent defeat of 316 school budgets across the state exemplifies the public’s attitude towards higher taxes and cuts to programs.

Although it is not necessarily a requirement to attend higher education compared to primary and secondary education, a very large majority of high paying career and companies now require some form of post-secondary education when selecting a candidate. The costs of higher education have increasing gotten out of hand. “In 2007, for example, public higher education costs rose 4.2 percent, which was about twice the rate of inflation” In the past quarter century, the cuts to higher education have varied from a minimal 3.4 percent to as high as 69.6 percent across various states around the country. In 1975-76, the ratio of federal grants to federally guaranteed low-interest loans was a reasonable 2:3. That ratio has since skyrocketed to 2:7 as of 2005-06, and further complicating the mixture are the wholly private loans that have emerged in the past decade representing nearly one out of every five student loans in 2004-05 – or double the percentage of private loans four years earlier.

Another major issue that which should never be ignored when dealing with educational policies in the Garden State are the Abbott Districts. Although they can be a case to analyze on themselves, the Department of Education adopted an outline that provides remedy of “Early Childhood Program Expectations: Standards of Quality” that are comparable to the standards that are pre-determined for grades K-12, and required Abbott districts to integrate them into their preschool programs which as burdensome of an issue maybe, is vital to the progression of the students in the lowest socio-economic status.

After looking through several reports, it seems inevitable that cutting the budget was necessary to reign in the deficit spending for the state of New Jersey and tough decisions needed to be made, regardless of how unpopular. The NJEA is by far one of the strongest unions in the nation that represents 200,000 teachers, education support professionals, higher education professionals, retired and student members with a self proclaimed goal of enhancing public education and improving the quality of system of public educations for all students. Such agendas, like all goals, do come with a price tag and at some point, there needs to be an account for figuring out how to pay for such goals.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Anyon, J. (1997). Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform. New York: Teachers College Press.

Hu, W. (2010, April 21). Schools in New Jersey Plan Heavy Cuts After Voters Reject Most Budgets. Retrieved May 2, 2010, from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/education/22schools.html

Kraft, M. E., & Furlong, S. R. (2009). Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives.

Office of Legislative Services. (April 2010). Analysis of the New Jersey Budget: Department of Education. Trenton.

Office of Legislative Services. (2002). Analysis of the New Jersey Fiscal Year 2002-2003 Budget. Trenton.

Office of Legislative Services. (2010). Budget Analysis of the New Jersey Budget, Fiscal Year 2010-2011. Trenton.

Symonds, W. C. (2002, October 14). Closing the School Gap. Business Week , p. 124.

Vermont Department of Education. (2010, March 19). Act 60: The Equal Education Opportunity Act. Retrieved May 5, 2010, from Department of Education: http://education.vermont.gov/new/html/laws/act60_fact_sheet.html

 

Powerful Lesson Learned

I just read this comment on a thread on Reddit and it does deliver a power lesson albeit in a rather disturbing way. Take a quick look and read the following quoted section and let me know what you think.

Junior high was OK for me. As a good student, yearbook staff member, and band nerd, I was well liked by the faculty and minimally harassed by fellow students. Skip to social studies with Mr. R. He started class one day by explaining to us that he had gone over test scores, homework, etc. and determined why our class average was so low. Quietly and determinedly, he announced that I and another boy were to blame… for everything. Then he calmly explained to the class why we were so stupid. I was so shocked. I remember staring down at my desk and crying silently while he proceeded to humiliate me and the other boy in front of the entire class. Then he told me to pick up my desk and move it to the back of the room, facing the wall. He barked at me again to move it when I squeaked out, “seriously?” So the other boy and I silently moved our desks to the back. The harassment continued. The other boy was crying, and I think I was near passing out from embarrassment and confusion – I had aced our last test. The class was incredibly quiet. My friends gave me pity looks or avoided eye contact, and one girl actually started to laugh out loud at me. We sat like that for half the class. Then Mr. R stopped his lecture and asked why nobody had stood up for us. When he got no reply, he said, “Well, this is what Hitler essentially did to the Jews. And none of you said anything to stop me from humiliating your classmates. Interesting.” My student/teacher relationship with Mr. R never fully recovered, even after he apologized.

It can be argued that the two isolated students should have known beforehand but I think it definitely delivered a more powerful because neither the two students or the rest of the class was aware of what was going on. However, depending on the students you should, and you leave that judgment with the teacher, it can certainly have unintended consequences from an otherwise very excellent example.

Source: Reddit