progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL They have not spent time reading Rawls and Marx, in the Chinese case despite their underlying Government, they are striving for success, they are competing. They do not play games where everyone wins, there are many who do not make it and they have to "deal with it". Frankly it is the Rawlsian ethic of having the least do as well as the most, the idea of communal ownership of even one's intellect, that gives rise to what we see in the US today. In contrast to the every Rawlsian Gutmann is Joel Klein who states: "JOEL KLEIN: The most important thing is to bring to K-12 education college graduates who excel in math and science. Those countries that are doing best are recruiting their K-12 teachers from the top third of their college graduates. America is recruiting our teachers generally from the bottom third, and when you go into our highneeds communities, we're clearly underserving them." Yes, teachers are from the bottom third. To teach Math and Science one needs the nest educated. Thus if one has a PhD say from MIT in Math or Science, and if one has taught for say 30 years, one is hardly qualified to teach Geometry in a public school. Why, no certificate, no training in overhead projectors, no experience in the training of the psychology of dealing with inequality amongst class members, not training in developing a Rawlsian ethic, and not a member of the teacher's union. Now back to Gutmann. She states: "MS. GUTMANN: The single biggest lever for economic innovation in our society is education, and it's not a direct lever of the President. So what he can do is only really fund excellence initiatives, and they have to be distributed to the states. And I think the key here is making K-12 education more competitive on the ground. Let me give you an example. When the stimulus went through, $10.4 billion was put in for [National Institutes of Health] funding. That money in biomedical research is going to generate the innovations of tomorrow. There has to be at the K-12 level an understanding of how the federal government can incentivize competition." The single biggest lever for innovation is NOT education, that is necessary but not sufficient, it is an entrepreneurial environment, the willingness to take risks, to seek regards, to better the competition, to outright win. That is antithetical to a Rawlsian like Gutmann! Thus Klein is correct in his assessment whereas Gutmann is well off base. Yet it is the same ad hoc propiter hoc arguments of Gutmann that are used to justify the current Administrations efforts. In reality it is competition and reward that motivates and stimulates not the idealists of Gutmann. I can remember many of the idealists in the 50s and early 60s, and for the most part, I believe without exception, the developments came from the entrepreneurs, not the idealists! Page 186
The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 7 VISIONS AND VIEWS We now want to return to the question of why some become neo-progressives and some neo-individualists. To do this we do two things. First we look at a somewhat philosophical structure which concentrates on people and their world views as expressed I the architectures of the entities which they design. Then we go back and look at socialism a century ago and then look at the Obama administration. We then try to ties the philosophical structure and 7.1 ARCHITECTURES, WORLD VIEWS AND INTERPRETING GOVERNING STRUCTURES We now will look at a general construct for political systems and how the various approaches we have been discussing may fit within them. We do so by introducing several concepts, principally that of architecture and world view. Let us start with a simple example and then we will extend it to the political domain. Here is how it may work. Let us consider a builder of academic buildings, such as would be done on the MIT campus. The powers that be on the campus decide they want a new building to house some group of researchers, say electrical engineering and computer science, a group which has been separate and apart since the beginnings of computer science. But we now want them together. They go off to an architect who will design the building and then have it built. The building will then create an atmosphere for getting these two groups to work with one another. So off the group goes and seeks out an architect. For each and every architect there exists some example of how things may be, how buildings should be, as say Frank Lloyd Wright would design them, and we use this example, this paradigm, as the foundation for say that school. Let us call this the Wrightian school for wont of a better term. There may be a large group of such architects and they all share the same view, say openness and large windows and whatever. Thus we say they have the same world view of how to design. There may be other architects with other world views with other paradigms. We may have the Classicists who like large marble columns and grand openings. We may have the avant guard types with sweeping windows. But the first two points are that there are examples or paradigms which in turn inspire world views for groups. Now the architect must have a roof, walls, windows, and other elements which define a building. The engineers define these things, it may need a foundation and the like. The elements are the general parts of a building, they are needed to make it work, they have been approved in some code. The architect using his world view may move them around, give each a different emphasis, a broader or lesser focus, but each must be there. Now the architect may have a variety of effectors, technologies, materials that he can use for each Page 187
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progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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