L’ élitismo dei poveri

That Was No Discovery After All – The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves – James Tooley

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Trigger warning: –  l’istruzione privata funziona per i ricchi. Ma per i poveri? – perché i poveri di tutto il mondo si rivolgono prevalentemente al privato per la loro istruzione? – due pregiudizi sull’ istruzione privata –  tutti vedono senza guardare in faccia la realtà della scuile del terzo mondo – la trasparenza del privato come carta vincente nella concorrenza pubblico/privato – le analisi reticenti, due casi esemplari: Sen e Oxfam – fatti riconosciuti e non valorizzati: l’arte di nascondere quel che succede –

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the private schools might be there, some might even be better than the public schools, but that’s only because they are selective. “They take the cream of the cream,”

Note:IL PREGIUDIZIO CANONICO SULLE SCUOLE PROVATE

“Most of the schools are shocking, there is a shocking turnover of teachers, they’re not trained, they’re not committed, and the proprietors know that they can simply get others because there is a long list of people waiting to come in.”

Note:SECONDO PREGIUDIZIO

For Sajitha it was clear: if many—or even a few—parents had higher aspirations for their children and wanted to send them to private schools, then “they should not be allowed to do so, because this is unfair.” It’s unfair because it makes it even worse for those left behind.

Note:PROIBIZIONISMO… LEFT BEHIND

It was one thing to argue that “education for all” could be secured only through public education supported by international aid if you were unaware of private schools for the poor. But as soon as you knew that many poor parents were exiting the state system to send their children to private schools, then surely this must register on your radar as being worthy of comment in the “education for all” debate?

Note:LA COSA PIÙ SCONCERTANTE

India, enrollment in primary private schools was already above 30 percent, and there was “a further acceleration” of the numbers by the late 1990s, “especially in areas where public schools are in bad shape.” In urban areas, the trend was even more startling, with the proportion in private schools estimated at 80 percent or more. As I read this, it seemed hard to reconcile these statements with the notion that private schools were patronized mainly by the elite—

Note:DATI PER L‘INDIA

Rather than further explore their choices, Sen criticized poor parents for making them: in villages in Uttar Pradesh, he wrote, poor parents’ response to nonfunctioning public schools was “to send their sons” to study in “private schools.”

Note:AMARTYA SEN

A major source of Sen’s evidence was the Public Report on Basic Education (the PROBE Report)… It too was clear that “even among poor families and disadvantaged communities, one finds parents who make great sacrifices to send some or all of their children to private schools…

Note:FONTE

The PROBE team’s findings on the quality of public schools were even more startling.

QUALITÁ

So what was the secret of success in these private schools for the poor? The report was very clear: “In a private school, the teachers are accountable to the manager (who can fire them), and, through him or her, to the parents (who can withdraw their children). In a government school, the chain of accountability is much weaker,

Note:COSA RENDE MIGLIORE IL PRIVATO?

I read the summaries at the beginning and end of The Oxfam Education Report, a standard textbook for development educationalists, and again I found only the accepted wisdom that governments and international agencies must meet the educational needs of the poor.

Note:ALTRA FONTE RETICENTE

But then again, hidden away in a chapter titled “National Barriers to Basic Education,” was the extraordinary (but downplayed) observation: “The notion that private schools are servicing the needs of a small minority of wealthy parents is misplaced. . . . It is interesting to note that a lower-cost private sector has emerged to meet the demands of poor

Note:TENUTO BEN NASCOSTO

That poor parents in some of the most destitute places on this planet are flocking to private schools because public schools are inadequate and unaccountable seemed to me to be hugely significant territory for development experts to concede.

Note:UN FATTO RICONOSCIUTO MA NON VALORIZZATO

exploring this conundrum that something the poor were doing for themselves seemed to be systematically ignored by development experts

Note:L’ENIGMA

He told me: “The governor asked me, “Why are you putting your energies into building schools? Leave it to the Ministry of Education.” But if we waited for government it would take 20 years. We need schools now.”

Note:PROFESSOR SULEYMAN… SOMALILAND

We visit one at the foot of the hill, Ubaya-binu-Kalab School, with 1,060 students, charging monthly fees of 12,000 Somaliland shillings, about $5. The owner told me that 165 of the students attended for free, the poor again subsidizing the poorest.

Note:POVERI E POVERISSIMI

I was ready to start the research—promising to examine in more depth the phenomenon of private schools for the poor in India, in a range of African countries, and in China, too. TheJohn Templeton Foundation was taking a risk:

2003 ANNO MAGICO

Quell’idiota di Dummett

Michael Dummett: A Bumbling Anti-Racist – When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics – Neven Sesardic

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Trigger warning: – antirazzismo a scrocco – antirazzismo da operetta – dogmi come se piovesse – compagnie imbarazzanti –

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Michael Dummett was Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. He is one of the most celebrated philosophers of the twentieth century,

Note:CHI È

Paid by Oxford to Do Research, Does Politics Instead

Dummett was knighted in 1999 for “services to philosophy and racial justice,” but his contributions to these two areas were not always in perfect harmony.

Note:FILOSOFIA E ANTI RAZZISMO

An Oxford philosophy professor admits he “abandoned all attempt at creative work in philosophy” and “gave no more time to thinking about philosophy” for a full four years

Note:QUATTRO ANNI A UFO

Dummett’s way of waging a battle against racism had itself many strange and illogical aspects.

Note:FINANZIARE LA LOTTA POLITICA

Upon receiving the information that someone has been refused by immigration officers, Dummett “dash[ed] to the airport as quickly as possible,” and it is only then and there (at the airport) that he “had to find out what [he] could about the case and say whatever [he] could on the refused person’s behalf.” This means Dummett went to the airport with the intention of defending someone’s right to stay in the United Kingdom without knowing the background facts of this person’s case at all.

Note:MODALITÀ DI AZIONE

A Logician’s Strange Route to Empirical Truth

even beliefs “conforming to a palpably powerful prejudice” may in fact be (strongly) supported by evidence.

Note:L’ IQ DEI NERI MANDA IN CONFUSIONE DUMMETT

Later Dummett tried again, but in a different way, to show that the possibility of a significant genetically based IQ difference between racial groups can be dismissed a priori.

Note:DIFFERENZA IMPOSSIBILITA’ A PRIORI

Although Dummett insisted than no one can rationally think that the great majority of members of any racial group are intellectually inferior to the great majority of members of some other group, some scholars doing research on these issues have thought exactly this (and offered a rationale for their view).

Note:JENSEN

Dummett was clearly wrong in his resolute claim about what “no one can rationally think.”

Note:ERRORE MARCHIANO

One does not expect this kind of misjudgment about elementary statistics from someone who received the prestigious Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science (which, as noted, Dummett did in 1994).

Note:ERRORE INATTESO

A Pimp, a Criminal, and a Racist Invited to Talk at All Souls College

Another troubling feature of Dummett’s political activism is the company he (occasionally) kept.

Note:COMPAGNIE IMBARAZZANTI

A ludicrous but menacing local figure had named himself “Michael X” in the hope of attracting some cross-Atlantic street cred: as a Trinidadian pimp and hustler called Michael de Freitas he had won notoriety as an especially nasty enforcer of evictions for a rack-rent landlord named, in one of those Dickensian coincidences, Mr. Rachman. The soi-disant X had a group—actually a gang—called RAAS. The letters were supposed to stand for Racial Adjustment Action Society and some white liberal clergymen and similar dupes were induced to take it seriously, but in Caribbean patois, as one soon discovered, a “raas” was a used tampon. . . . At Oxford in my first term, a rather silly Catholic bleeding-heart don named Michael Dummett managed to use his privileges to get X to speak in the All Souls dining room.

Note:HITCHENS SPIETATO SU DUMMETT

Michael X was not just a criminal but a vocal and notorious racist too.

MX IL RAZZISTA VIOLENTO

If you ever see a white man laying hands on a black woman, kill him immediately. . . . Whitey is a vicious, nasty person.

Note:UNO STRALCIO DEI SUOI DISCORSI

For these statements he was later convicted of inciting racial hatred and spent eight months in jail.

Note:CONDANNATO

If despite all those red flags Dummett was still willing to lend support and respectability to a thug, pimp, and racist, this raises another worry about his judgment.

Note:DUMMETT EDOTTO DI TUTTO

A Sham Engagement with Philosophy

Could we imagine, by way of analogy, a surgeon who became upset about some social injustice and who, although continuing to work at the hospital, devoted every moment he could spare to his noble political cause and gave no more time to thinking about medicine for years? Hardly, because his lack of dedication to his profession would be soon detected by his patients, colleagues, and administrators, and he could not hope to keep his job with such an attitude. It is a sad testimony to how irrelevant and dispensable philosophical activity has become

ANALOGIA COL CHIRURGO

La società effeminata

La società effeminata

Manliness – Harvey C. Mansfield

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Trigger warning: accuratezza degli stereotipi di genere –  cristianità effeminata – o sicurezza o virilita’ –  senso del tragico – mondo borghese – virilità come vaccino alle democrazie – autogoverno come rimedio

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The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist. It does exist, but it is unemployed.

Note:LA VIRILITÁ DISOCCUPATA

consider the evidence for manliness in social psychology and evolutionary biology, which show as best they can that the stereotypes of men and women are basically correct.

Note:CORRETTEZZA DEGLI STEREOTIPI

Unemployed manliness is nothing new in the world, and in particular it has not been caused by feminism…

Note: MA LA COLPA NON È DEL FEMMINISMO

The entire enterprise of modernity, however, could be understood as a project to keep manliness unemployed.

Note:MODERNITÁ

Christianity, a religion that puts the honor of gaining salvation in the next world above worldly honors that engage the ambition of manly men.

Note:IL MONDO EFFEMINATO DALLA CRISTIANITÀ

With Machiavelli the modern idea of “security” was born, the very antithesis of manliness. Although he began by deploring the fact that manliness sat idle, he ended by keeping it there.

Note:MACHIAVELLI E L’IDEA DI SICUREZZA

Manliness henceforth would be occupied with making humans more powerful rather than making them better. Machiavelli called this “prudence;” but I have to say it was not wisdom.

Note:PRAGMATISMO ANTI VIRILE

After Machiavelli the modern notion of rational control took shape.

Note:CONTROLLO RAZIONALE E SICUREZZA

“increasing the bounds of human empire without end.”

Note:IL MOTTO: AMPLIARE IL GIARDINO DELL’UOMO

Our rational control, fearing courage more than fear, will do without manliness and will seek to supplant it and to keep it unemployed by means of measures that encourage or compel behavior intended to be lacking in drama.

Note:ASSENZA DEL TRAGICO

we have replaced the manly man with the bourgeois, a character who has several faces, none of them manly.

Note:IL BORGHESE E L’UOMO D’ONORE

A professional is formed by uniform education and judged by objective criteria, not tested by manly deeds.

Note:FORMAZIONE

“Professional calm’ not manly passion, characterizes him or her,

Note:SELF CONTROL

Professionals treat each other with “professional courtesy” but never with chivalry.

Note:CORTESIA E CAVALLERIA

They are unmanly because they want longer or less troubled life rather than a short, eventful life in the noble manner of Achilles.

Note:   SALUTISTI

Meritocrats are unmanly to the extent that they think their merit should be recognized and promoted through an educational system that does the manly job of self-assertion for them by giving them honors they do not have to claim or fight for.

Note:IL MERITOCRATICO EFFEMINATO

Commerce is unmanly because it is materialistic, willing to settle for gain rather than victory,

COMMERCIO: GUADAGNO VS VITTORIA

Edmund Burke laments over the imprisonment of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, that no one was man enough to avenge her: “But the age of chivalry is gone.

Note:  BURKE SU MARIA ANTONIETTA

Burke’s exclamation in praise of chivalry amounts to a defense of aristocracy against the foremost modern revolution on behalf of democracy.

Note:   ARISTOCRAZIA VS DEMOCRAZIA

What in manliness makes it the target of modern progress? We may sum up the characteristics of manliness as they have been developed, for all of them are obstacles to rational control.

Note:VIRILITÀ VS CONTROLLO

It seeks to be theatrical, welcomes drama, and wants your attention.

Note:VIRILITÀ E DRAMMA

Manliness favors war, likes risk, and admires heroes.

Note:GUERRA RISCHIO EROISMO

To be sure, thanks to the failures of rational control, manliness has not disappeared. We have professional sports in which manliness is more apparent than in, say, professional education, but our athletes, so much more concerned for getting money than spilling blood, could never be confused with gladiators or knights.

Note:  SPORT

Commerce is unmanly, yet there is manliness in the spirit of commercial enterprise, so that Tocqueville can say that “Americans put a sort of heroism into their manner of doing commerce.”

Note    :IMPRENDITORIALITÁ VIRILE

We see that the disparate features of manliness discussed in this book and just now summarized have in common the fact that they express – better to use my favorite word, assert-the importance of the individual.’…. Rational control tries to… diminish the importance of the individual….

INDIVIDUO

Rational control believes in individualism rather than individuality, an individualism of individuals effectively alike,

Note:   INDIVIDUALISMO E INDIVIDUALITÁ

The danger in unemployed manliness comes from too little manliness and too much of it.

TROPPO O TROPPO POCA

The great Tocqueville dwells on this possibility; he sees democracy in a long trend toward similarity in its citizens and conformity in their behavior.

CONFORMISMO EFFEMINATO

To oppose this trend he would rely on every democratic institution of self-government that strengthens individual pride.

Note:IL RIMEDIO DELL’ AUTO GOVERNO

Tocqucville holds on to manliness as the remedy for democratic despotism

VIRILITÁ VACCINO ALLE DEMOCRAZIE

Yet if we turn to Nietzsche, we find the danger of too much manliness.

PERICOLO TROPPA VIRILITÀ: NIETZSCHE E IL SUPEROMISMO

The communists spoke of “the struggle for peace;” but they were always much more interested in struggle than in peace. They were war lovers as much as the Nazis and with the same ruthlessness.

Note:GUERRA!!!!!

One thing we cannot do is to go back to a society in which women are kept in the home and men are free to leave it.

SOLUZIONE REAZIONARIA

Tocqueville congratulates American women for willingly accepting the confines of the household, the “yoke” of marriage, in view of natural differences between the two sexes.

TOCQUEVILLE SULLE DONNE

woman’s movement was a manly enterprise, an assertive claim to rights long denied. But it was womanly in its choice of means, particularly in the idea of raising consciousness. It was also womanly in the character of the anger that fueled it.

FEMMINISMO: MASCHIO NEI FINI FEMMINILE NEI MEZZI

Our gender-neutral society needs to readopt the distinction between public and private that is characteristic of liberalism. In public it should be gender-neutral, in private not.

PUBBLICO E PRIVATO

Our gender-neutral society is, thankfully, much stronger formally in public law than it is actually in private. But so often in our private lives the two sexes live in embarrassment and confusion.

IMBARAZZO PRIVATO

in constructing the gender-neutral society it has been following an illiberal impulse by trying to impose the liberal state upon liberal society.

TOTALITARISMO

To protect women’s careers we need a gender-neutralstate, but the gender-neutral society gives no respect to the liberal distinction between state and society

CONTRADDIZIONE