International Baccalaureate fails when integrated with American Education.

THERE IS NO REASON TO VOTE PRO: HE CANNOT ARTICULATE ANY LINKAGE BETWEEN HIS PRESCRIPTIONS AND PRACTICAL, WORLDLY EFFECTS SCHLAG, PROFESSOR OF LAW@ UNIV. COLORADO, 1990 (PIERRE, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, NOVEMBER, PAGE LEXIS) In fact, normative legal thought is so much in a hurry that it will tell you what to do even though there is not the slightest chance that you might actually be in a position to do it. For instance, when was the last time you were in a position to put the difference principle n31 into effect, or to restructure [*179] the doctrinal corpus of the first amendment? "In the future, we should. . . ." When was the last time you were in a position to rule whether judges should become pragmatists, efficiency purveyors, civic republicans, or Hercules surrogates? Normative legal thought doesn't seem overly concerned with such worldly questions about the character and the effectiveness of its own discourse. It just goes along and proposes, recommends, prescribes, solves, and resolves. Yet despite its obvious desire to have worldly effects, worldly consequences, normative legal thought remains seemingly unconcerned that for all practical purposes, its only consumers are legal academics and perhaps a few law students -- persons who are virtually never in a position to put any of its wonderful normative advice into effect. AND, HIS CONCEPTION OF COMMUNICATION IS NORMATIVE- THE PRO VIEWS LANGUAGE AS A NEUTRAL CONDUIT FOR THOUGHT, WHICH NEGLECTS THAT MUCH OF LANGUAGE IS INEFFECTIVE- SCHLAG, PROFESSOR OF LAW@ UNIV. COLORADO, 1990 (PIERRE, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, NOVEMBER, PAGE LEXIS) One answer is precisely that normative legal thought conceives its own linguistic situation in just this unproblematic manner: "getting its message across." Normative legal thought establishes and sees itself as transmitting important "substance" through already existing, relatively unobstructed channels of legal communication. This conception of language as an empty, neutral, already extant conduit for thought is itself linguistically embedded in our metaphorical understanding of language. See Michael J. Reddy, The Conduit Metaphor -- A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language, in METAPHOR AND THOUGHT 284 (A. Ortony ed. 1979). Unfortunately, as Reddy demonstrates, this conception greatly overestimates the possibility of successful communication and greatly underestimates the need for active intervention on the part of the participants in constructing communication. B) IMPACTS: FIRST, NO HARMS- HIS DESCRIPTION OF THE STATUS QUO PRESUPPOSES A RATIONAL, AUTONOMOUS SUBJECT THAT NOT ONLY DESCRIBES THE BUREAUCRACY, BUT ALSO OUR AGENCY TO ACT AS EMPOWERED CARTESIAN EGOS- IN REALITY, THESE SUBJECT POSITIONS DO NOT EXIST SCHLAG IN 1991 (PIERRE, COLORADO LAW PROF. 139 U. PA. L. REV.801, APRIL) For these legal thinkers, it will seem especially urgent to ask once again: What should be done? How should we live? What should the law be? These are the hard questions. These are the momentous questions. [*805] And they are the wrong ones. They are wrong because it is these very normative questions that reprieve legal thinkers from recognizing the extent to which the cherished "ideals" of legal academic thought are implicated in the reproduction and maintenance of precisely those ugly "realities" of legal practice the academy so routinely condemns. It is these normative questions that allow legal thinkers to shield themselves from the recognition that their work product consists largely of the reproduction of rhetorical structures by which human beings can be coerced into achieving ends of dubious social origin and implication. It is these very normative questions that allow legal academics to continue to address (rather lamely) bureaucratic power structures as if they were rational, morally competent, individual humanist subjects. It is these very normative questions that allow legal thinkers to assume blithely that -- in a world ruled by HMOs, personnel policies, standard operating procedures, performance requirements, standard work incentives, and productivity monitoring -- they somehow have escaped the bureaucratic power games. It is these normative questions that enable them to represent themselves as whole and intact, as self-directing individual liberal humanist subjects at once rational, morally competent, and in control of their own situations, the captain of their own ships, the Hercules of their own empires, the author of their own texts. It isn't so. n5 And if it isn't so, it would seem advisable to make some adjustments in the agenda and practice of legal thought. That is what I will be trying to do here. Much of what follows will no doubt seem threatening or nihilistic to many readers. In part that is because this article puts in question the very coherence, meaningfulness, and integrity of the kinds of normative disputes and discussion that almost all of us in the legal academy practice. 2. SOLVENCY TURN: HIS RHETORICAL PERFORMANCE SHIELDS US FOR RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATERIAL PAIN AND SUFFERING- DELGADO IN 1991 (RICHARD, COLORADO LAW PROFESSOR, 139 PA. L. REV. 933, APRIL) But what is the cash value of all this priest-talk in the law reviews, in the classrooms of at least the "better" schools, and in the opinions of at least some judges? Are normativos better than other people? Are we better off for engaging in normative talk, either as speakers or listeners? Pierre Schlag, for example, has described normativity as a zero -- as a vacuous, self-referential system of talk, all [*954] form and no substance, meaning nothing, and about itself. n82 This description may be too generous. Normativity may be more than a harmless tic prevalent only in certain circles. 1. Permission to Ignore Suffering The history of organized religion shows that intense immersion in at least certain types of normative system is no guarantee against cruelty, intolerance or superstition. n83 In modern times, social scientists have tried to find a correlation between religious belief and altruistic behavior. In most studies, the correlation is nonexistent or negative. In one study, seminary students were observed as they walked past a well-dressed man lying moaning on the sidewalk. n84 Most ignored the man, even though they had just heard a sermon about the Good Samaritan. The proportion who stopped to offer aid was lower than that of passersby in general. The researchers, commenting on this and other studies of religion and helping behavior, hypothesized that religious people feel less need to act because of a sense that they are "chosen" people. n85 I believe this anesthetizing effect extends beyond religion. We confront a starving beggar and immediately translate the concrete duty we feel into a normative (i.e., abstract) question. And once we see the beggar's demand in general, systemic terms, it is easy for us to pass him by without rendering aid. n86 Someone else, perhaps society (with my tax dollars), will take care of that problem. Normativity thus enables us to ignore and smooth over the rough edges of our world, to tune out or redefine what would otherwise make a claim on us. In the legal system, the clearest [*955] examples of this are found in cases where the Supreme Court has been faced with subsistence claims.