A State Mandated Underclass --

From Indy Bay.org by Tiny/PoorNewsNetwork Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2005

This article is about California and it' s governor:

...Arnold's recent veto of AB1531 which would have allowed school districts to develop alternatives to the mandatory high school exit exam that California students have to pass before they graduate and receive their diploma. AB1531 along with SB385, which focuses on allowing English learner students to take the high school exit exam in the student's first language, were vetoed by the increasingly right wing leaning Govenator on Friday Oct 7th...

...In fact, as I did some research for this story I found that notwithstanding Arnolds's anti-youth, anti-immigrant, jingoist stance the Austrian school system which Arnold is a product of, teaches its children to master three languages, and when confronted with an increasing mono-lingual Slovenian population in one of its districts, began, without protest or fascist policy interlopers to incorporate the Slovenian language into its core curriculum. Not to mention the fact that Austria, like most of Western Europe, is a welfare state that supports its population with low and/or no cost healthcare, child care and housing, cradle to grave. Perhaps, as he states in his message about his veto of 385, "As an immigrant whose second language is English, I know the importance of mastering English as quickly and as comprehensively as possible, in order to be successful in the United States," he should have added that he already knew English when he arrived in the US, because he had the privilege of an elementary and secondary education that included a tri-language curriculum, something all California would benefit from.

"This test discriminates against not just Latino students but all immigrants and students of color...

This is what it increasingly looks like to me: In America we consiously cut people out of the system to make them pieces of the pie bigger for those that don't get cut out, and especially for those that run the system and their rich friends and patrons. We cannot afford to keep supporting this. Unfortunately I am afraid I am sounding more and more like some kind of left wing nutcase, which I do not believe that I am, but the excesses of the right seem to be forcing me that way, and, I can only hope, that more of the electorate are feeling forced that way as well.