Priorities of community-organizers don't rank education highly but might authoritarianism.

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Who Killed Teach For America? By Joe Klein
In the midst of the 2000 Presidential campaign, George W. Bush had a private breakfast in Los Angeles with members of Teach for America (TFA), the exemplary national-service program that sends recent college graduates to teach for two years in the poorest urban and rural school districts. "Everyone came out of that room glowing," said Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA. ...optimistic that TFA, one of the flagship AmeriCorps programs, would have a future in a Bush Administration. Indeed, Kopp was invited to sit in the First Lady's box at Bush's first budget message to Congress in February 2001. At the same time, Teach for America was designated as one of five education and literacy programs that would receive special attention and support from Laura Bush. In 2002, the President in his State of the Union address called for increased national service and then illustrated what he meant by visiting a Teach for America school in Atlanta. "I am proud to stand up and talk about the best of America and Wendy Kopp," the President said. "I hope young Americans all across the country think about joining Teach for America."...Bush aides approached Kopp and encouraged her to quadruple the size of the Teach for America infantry, from 1,000 to 4,000 per year. (Each TFA teacher serves for two years and receives $4,725 per year in college scholarship money.)...Kopp began to hear that AmeriCorps' priorities had changed. Programs that encouraged voluntarism would be favored over so-called professional corps like Teach for America....she was assured... that Teach for America's annual grant from AmeriCorps--about $12.5 million in scholarship money and $1.5 million for operating expenses--was safe. ****Despite being paltry
"chickenfeed"***...a form letter arrived in the Teach for America offices from the Corporation for National and Community Service. "We regret to inform you," it said, "that your application was not selected for funding."..."There had been no warning."...Teach for America's fate was far more drastic; it had been zeroed out, eliminated. "We are no longer an AmeriCorps program," Kopp said...having Orwellian conversations with functionaries at the Freedom Corps and the Corporation for National and Community Service. ...TFA was axed because it doesn't encourage community volunteer work; its members merely teach school in poor neighborhoods.
There is a legitimate philosophical difference here, and it involves the difference between voluntarism and service. Voluntarism is the act of doing valuable things that fall just outside the normal scope of governance. Service is more intense: it is a full-time commitment to do the most difficult public works--policing, teaching, social casework. The Police Corps, which exists outside AmeriCorps, and Teach for America are exemplars of the latter. They are unabashedly elitist; TFA accepts only 13% of all applicants. They involve rigorous training programs. And the goal is to leverage the altruism of the best and the brightest college students, putting them to work on the toughest jobs in the toughest neighborhoods--and, in the process, to help create a new generation of leaders like the "Greatest" generation, imbued with the spirit of sacrifice ...
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Rife With Bogus Idealism, Waste, AmeriCorps Doesn't Need To Exist IBD By JAMES BOVARD author of "Attention Deficit Democracy" and eight other books. President Obama signed legislation Tuesday to triple the number of AmeriCorps members from 75,000 to 250,000...the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act is about "connecting deeds to needs."...the signing ceremony and a $5 billion multiyear outlay for AmeriCorps came one day after Obama called on his cabinet members to trim $100 million in wasteful government spending.Paying people on false pretenses to do unnecessary things is the soul of AmeriCorps. Since President Clinton created this program in 1993, politicians have endlessly touted its recruits as volunteers toiling selflessly for the common good.But the average AmeriCorps members receives more than $15,000 on an annual basis in pay and other benefits....most AmeriCorps members go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups...gig is more of a career stepping stone... AmeriCorps' prestige has perennially been at war with its boondoggles.During the Clinton administration, AmeriCorps members helped run a program in Buffalo that gave children $5 for each toy gun they brought in — as well as a certificate praising their decision not to play with toy guns. In San Diego, AmeriCorps members busied themselves collecting used bras and panties for a homeless shelter.In Los Angeles,AmeriCorps members busied themselves foisting unreliable ultra-low-flush toilets on poor people.In New Jersey, AmeriCorps members enticed middle-class families to accept subsidized federal health insurance for their children. Nowadays, many AmeriCorps programs are hailed in the media for projects that produce little more than sanctimony among participants: • In Florida, AmeriCorps members in the "Women in Distress" program organized a poetry reading on the evils of domestic violence. • In San Francisco, AmeriCorps members busy themselves mediating elementary-school playground disputes. • In Montana, AmeriCorps members carried out a drive encouraging people to donate books to ship to Cameroon. • In Oswego, N.Y., AmeriCorps members set up a donation bin to gather used cell phones for victims of domestic violence. AmeriCorps is beloved by politicians because it provides ample photo opportunities of them doing good deeds..AmeriCorps advocates claim that AmeriCorps members spur 1.7 million other Americans to volunteer each year. At best, this is the Tom Sawyer Model of Virtue: some people getting paid to sway other people to work for free. In reality, AmeriCorps members have no such suasive gift. AmeriCorps routinely counts anyone who works in a project that AmeriCorps members "manage" as a new volunteer.Thus, if 20 people are already working at a house building project where an AmeriCorps member temporarily supervises, all 20 can be counted as AmeriCorps-generated volunteers.At the signing ceremony, Obama declared that "we will measure our progress not just in number of hours served or volunteers mobilized." But in reality, AmeriCorps has always relied on Soviet Bloc-style accounting to justify itself.For instance, program defenders often assert that "540,000 AmeriCorps members have contributed more than 705 million hours of service" since 1994.Many individual programs evaluate themselves with raw numbers that mean little.AmeriCorps members are leading a donation drive for items to ship to the Pennsylvania National Guard in Iraq..."Our goal is to collect 200 pounds of donations." AmeriCorps has never performed a credible analysis of the value of the service that its members produce.Instead, meaningless aggregates are "close enough for government work" to prove that AmeriCorps is a cornucopia....AmeriCorps puts a smiley face on Uncle Sam.
America has enough real volunteers: It does not need mass production of government-issue bogus volunteers. The glorification of AmeriCorps should awaken Americans to the bogus idealism permeating Washington.
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http://tinyurl.com/djn2bz
Expanded Americorps has stench of authoritarianism SFExaminer Editorial...both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community-service jobs increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. ...multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism...House passed the measure overwhelmingly, while only 14 senators had the sense and courage to vote against it...Last summer, then-candidate Barack Obama threw civil liberties to the wind when he proposed “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the regular military. The expanded Americorps is not quite so disturbing, but a number of provisions in the bill raise serious concerns...legislation threatens the voluntary nature of Americorps by calling for consideration of “a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people.” It anticipates the possibility of requiring “all individuals in the United States” to perform such service, including elementary school students....summons up unsettling memories of World War II-era paramilitary groups by saying the new program should “combine the best practices of civilian service with the best aspects of military service,” while establishing “campuses” that serve as “operational headquarters,” complete with “superintendents” and “uniforms” for all participants. It allows for the elimination of all age restrictions in order to involve Americans at all stages of life. And, it calls for the creation of “a permanent cadre” in a “National Community Civilian Corps.” ****Almost at the point of calling it "ObamaJugend."****
But that’s not all. The bill also calls for “youth engagement zones” in which “service learning” is “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This updated form of voluntary community service is also to be “integrated into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula” at all levels of schooling. Sounds like a government curriculum for government-approved “service learning,” which is nothing less than indoctrination.****One can only wonder at the math/science credentials of Americorps people vs. Teach For America.Probably better loved by the teachers' unions since they are equally unqualified in math and science and don't even take a teaching job away from union members.**** Now, ask yourself if Congress members who voted for this monstrosity had a clue what they were voting for. If not, they’re guilty of dereliction of duty. If they did, the implications are truly frightening.