Day 21: Is it really day 21 already? Why the Finns are #1 in education

A classroom in Finland
We have been at school for nearly a month now. It once was that this day would begin the first or second week of "real classes" after having gotten the "back to school" first week behind us. Heck, once this week was the last week of summer when we went to school on the Tuesday after Labor Day.

I read an interesting article in this month's Smithsonian magazine entitled "Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? According to the article, Finland doesn't give its students the type of standardized tests that American education systems so love except for one in the senior year. One quote from the essay really stood out for me.

It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is on play and socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns 17. Ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool, where children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care if free.

In the US, many would call this socialism! (It is really a part of social democracy, but few rightwingers know or care about the difference.) It seems to work in Finland, at least.

It's a Great Life, If You Don't Weaken

The Original Flag of the State of Oklahoma
Oscar Ameringer, Oklahoma social activist

(I gave these remarks as a part of the worship service at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City. Every Sunday, one of the lay people give a brief message as a part of the "Prayers of the People" segment of the service. These were given the Sunday following the election in which Republican took over nearly all functions of the state government in Oklahoma.)

Prayers of the People 11-6-10

Some people, knowing who I am and what I am usually up to, have asked me about the election this week and why I think what happened did happen. My reaction is that our fears of each other won out over our love of justice for all. In other words, we are mighty afraid that someone is getting more than our fair share of the pie, and so we think that there should be no pie at all.

The next question I’m often asked is, “What in the world are we going to do now?” I’m tempted to say, “Well, Oregon is looking very good right now.” But to run now I think is rather weak. And as Oscar once said, “It’s a great life. . . if you don’t weaken.”

Oscar? Oscar who? (You ask rhetorically.) Well, Oscar Ameringer of course, Oklahoma Socialist. And yes, Oscar Ameringer, who nearly became mayor of Oklahoma City, was a real Socialist, unlike the Pseudo-Socialists you meet so often these days.

According to a biography written by my good friend and fellow union member, John Thompson, Oscar Ameringer came to Oklahoma from his native Germany right at the time of its statehood and helped to form one of the largest Socialist movements in American history. Ameringer fought for rights of the disadvantaged. He helped found the Oklahoma Renters Union to promote the rights of sharecroppers, and twenty-five years later his writings inspired the creation of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. In 1910 he led the fight against voting tests that disenfranchised African American voters. The opposition he and most Socialists had to World War I was used as a pretext for the American government to largely destroy the Socialist Party in Oklahoma and the rest of our nation, Ameringer died in 1943 in Oklahoma City.
Ameringer once noted that, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”, a statement that runs as true today as it did then.

Oscar lived in tough times, in many ways tougher than what we face now. And I think his advice to us would run something along these lines:

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.
Keep on fighting. Keep on speakin’
Let your truth shine like a beacon.
Cause it’s a great life if you

I Was Liberal Before Liberal Was Cool!

from Talking Point Memos

Over the weekend, Mark Leibovich had an interesting an entertaining piece in the Times on how "socialism" has become the Republicans' new all-purpose smear word attacking Obama in particular and Democrats generally.

Now, you can have a whole conversation about whether ramping marginal tax rates back to where they were in the go-go 1990s really constitutes socialism. But a different point occurred to me when I read the piece. I think this is probably the best evidence there is that the 'liberal' label simply doesn't have the punch that it had going back a good thirty years in American politics.

If it did, they'd still be using it, since it at least has some relationship to reality. But it doesn't, so they're not.

--Josh Marshall