The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

July 12 2015 / Interview by Ryan Leach  /  Bored Out Magazine -

Ryan Leach: I’d like to talk with you about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It was an Act pushed through Congress by the Bush Administration. The Act forces States to administer tests to students to check for educational growth. At best NCLB seems misguided. Teacher preparation courses advocate for a higher level of learning. For example, Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning—which was a bedrock of the teaching program I attended—places rote knowledge at the bottom of the cognitive domain; and rote knowledge is exactly what these tests gauge. Why was this Act implemented? What effects has it had on Public Education?

Noam Chomsky: I haven’t done a careful study. Others have though. It should have been anticipated that NCLB would have a negative effect on teaching—if the purpose of teaching is to help children develop their sense of curiosity and independence of mind; and help them explore topics of interest to them and so on. If the goal is to create automatons, then it’s an effective program. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from teachers, students and parents about it. Just a couple of days ago a woman told me about her sixth-grade daughter. Her child was interested in a topic brought up in class. She asked the teacher if they could discuss it further; the teacher told her that they couldn’t do it because they had to prepare for a test.

Leach: I worked as a teacher in a public elementary school. To me and many of the pedagogues I taught with NCLB was the bane of our existence. Quite often we would have to rifle through subjects and quickly address facts that students needed to know for tests.

November 26, 2023 / Edward Hasbrouck / Draft Resistance News - Hundreds of people were arrested in sit-ins and other direct actions against draft registration in the 1980s, particularly at Post Offices during the mass registration weeks in July-August 1980 for men born in 1960 and 1961 and in January 1981 for men born in 1962.

Additional mass arrests took place outside court hearings in the cases of several of the 20 men eventually singled out for prosecution for publicly refusing to register, and during a blockade of Selective Service headquarters in Washington, DC, on 18 October 1982. (See these posters for some of these sit-ins and blockades.)

The consequences of these arrests were varied, but in some cases — particularly when arrests occurred inside Post Office buildings, which are generally areas of exclusive Federal jurisdiction, rather than outside on streets or sidewalks subject to state and local jurisdiction — included Federal charges.

The “Boston 18” were arrested inside the Post Office and courthouse in downtown Boston during the January 1981 registration week. The Post Office counters where draft registrations were being accepted by postal clerks were located on the second floor, inside the building, which also housed the offices of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Attorney, and the courtrooms and judges’ chambers of both the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The fact that the sit-in took place in the same building as their offices may have led them to take it more personally and respond with more severity than they might have to an action elsewhere, but there’s no hard evidence of that.

The Boston 18 included Mark Bader, Elisa Barbour, Bill Beck, Carol Bellin, Chris Cutelis, Elizabeth Davidson, Mary Dore, Diane Dunfey, Ed Feigen, Carl Gerds, Sean Herlihy, Chuck Hughes, Gary Sachs, Rich Schreuer, Barry Shea, Anne Shumway, and Cynthia Waillette