What you describe is similar to what I think I know about Seattle. I
was never a part of it, but friends have told me that they were often
bused over an hour to either Warren Avenue or Queen Anne High School.
In Seattle it was either busing or the school for the blind in
Vancouver, Washington. Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane all had programs for
the blind kids, but the busing caused many of them to become estranged
from neighborhood activities with other children. The school for the
blind had a couple of Superintendents who did a serious disservice to
the children attending there. One was a man who developed a highly
custodial attitude, and the next man was bent on building a multiple
disabilities facility. It was only about 30 years ago that Dean
Stenehjem turned the school into one of the top 3 schools for the
blind in the country.
Still, there are many issues in the education of blind children.
Funding is the major stumbling block, but parents efforts to not allow
the schools to "treat their children like they're blind" is a major
problem.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/19/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
In New York City, there were sight conservation and braille classes in some
public schools. But these classes were resource rooms. The visually impaired
children were mainstreamed into all the regular classes, but received
special help in the resource rooms. As I said in another, unrelated post, I
didn't like being mainstreamed into those regular classes because they were
boring. The students were regimented. So I manipulated to spend as much time
as possible in the resource room where I could do whatever I wanted for most
of my time there. In New York City, there were no schools entirely dedicated
to disabled children. But when I began high school, instead of attending the
high school in my school district, I had to commute to a high school in
Manhattan, a subway trip of an hour's duration, in order to be in a school
with a sight conservation class. And that school had predominantly poor and
minority students. The education that I received there, was barely passable
academically, but it was an education about the relationship between social
class, race, and the quality of education one receives. Education through
experience is much more meaningful, than education gained from reading books
or listening to lectures. But I never believed that the good grades that I
received in high school were authentic. I was sure that they were a result
of my being part of a minority of white, highly academically motivated
students and that when I got to college, I'd be shown up to be a fraud. That
didn't happen, but I do think that my fellow students at Queens College, who
had attended high schools in white, more advantaged neighborhoods in Queens
than we received in my high school in Manhattan, were much better prepared
academically.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 2:08 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against Bernie
Sanders
Miriam,
Unbeknownst to me, my mother toured the Warren Avenue School, which was the
school where all the low vision and blind children were bused to. She
decided that most of the children were also multiple
handicapped...especially mentally challenged(not the term used back then),
and she did not want me in that setting. Interestingly, years later the
Warren Avenue school was torn down as part of the development of the Century
21 World's Fair, and John Hay Grade School, the same school I'd attended,
became the grade school for the blind and low vision children. By then the
upwardly Mobil families has moved on into the stylish suburbs, and the Hill
became dotted with multiple dwellings housing lower middle class and working
class families.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/19/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My public elementary school was not in my immediate neighborhood
because the school with the sight conservation class was in an adjacent
neighborhood.
But its population was pretty much the same as mine: white working
class families, a few very poor, mostly families who lived in
apartment buildings or small houses. We were not aware of class
differences. I was aware that some children did better than others,
academically.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 11:14 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against Bernie
Sanders
Good for Norman Solomon, and, of course, Bernie Sanders.
It's always been a class struggle. It certainly was not the Working
Class that taught us that we lived in a Classless Society. From the
first day I entered school at Seattle's John Hay Grade School, I
understood the Class Mentality. Our teachers, for the most part
underpaid middle aged white women, fawned over the children of the wealthy
families.
We elected class officers...never really learning just what their
duties were...always from the "favored" children. Great importance
was placed on "Bank Day". Each Tuesday our Second Grade teacher would
report on how many in the class brought money for their savings
accounts. Usually I could not find so much as a thin dime to bank.
Our teacher would say, "Carl, stand up so the class can see who kept
us from 100%".
Our governor was a very conservative Republican named Arthur B.
Langley. His nephew was one of my classmates. Hap Langley. I never
did know his real first name. But his father owned the city's largest
sporting goods store.
Hap Langley came close to being the School Mascot. And yet, with all
of the examples of class favoritism around us, our lesson books
continued to teach us that we lived in a Classless Society.
That early childhood conditioning is hard to get beyond. I wonder
just how many Americans will vote against their best interests, and
cast their vote for Michael Bloomberg. After all, it was a good
feeling to know that our scool's student president was the son of the
richest family on Queen Anne Hill.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/18/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders By Norman Solomon,
Reader Supported News
18 February 20
More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power
elites that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is
a direct threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy
individuals and huge corporations constantly exert on the political
process. No wonder we're now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from
leading corporate Democrats - eagerly amplified by corporate media.
In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.
Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of
mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented
the problem, illuminated by one piece after another after another
after another just this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward
Sanders in mass media spheres is scarce.
The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders
campaign seeks to replace with genuine democracy - disempowering
great wealth and corporate heft while empowering everyday people to
participate in a truly democratic process.
Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid
reporters and pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate
power, including the prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors.
And, in news coverage of politics, there's an inexhaustible supply of
former Democratic officeholders and appointees who've been
lucratively feeding from corporate troughs as lobbyists, consultants
and PR operatives. Their corporate ties usually go unmentioned.
An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders
campaign is MSNBC, owned by Comcast - a notoriously anti-labor and
anti-consumer corporation. "People need to remember," I pointed out
on Democracy Now!
last
week, "that if you, for instance, don't trust Comcast, why would you
trust a network that is owned by Comcast? These are class interests
being worked out where the top strata of ownership and investors
hires the CEO, hires the managing editors, hires the reporters. And
so, what we're seeing, and not to be rhetorical about it, but we
really are seeing a class war underway."
Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news
outlets are far removed from the economic pressures besetting so many
Americans. And so, media professionals with the most clout and
largest megaphones are quite distant from the Sanders base.
Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose economic
interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve. With 10 active
candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders "won 4 in 10 of voters
with household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3 in 10 with incomes
between
$50,00 and $99,000," The Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for
New Economic Thinking - Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen
- found that "the higher the town's income, the fewer votes cast" for
Sanders.
"Lower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders;
richer towns did the opposite."
The researchers saw in the data "further dramatic evidence of a point
we have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided
by social class."
It's a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight.
The often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous attacks on Sanders via
powerful national media outlets are almost always coming from
affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans
have virtually zero access to the TV studios (other than providing
after-hours janitorial services).
With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass
media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial
vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely
read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation's
extreme income inequality.
Viewed in that light - and keeping in mind that corporate ownership
and advertising dominate mainstream media - it shouldn't be
surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about
a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class.
"If there is going to be class warfare in this country," Bernie
Sanders told the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, "it's time that
the working class of this country won that war and not just the
corporate elite."
To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.
