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Occupying The Narrative – Part 2

Published April 16, 2012 on Society Closed
Tags: #Occupy, 1%, 99%, abortion, Adam Smith, ALEC, Children's Health Insurance, Class Warfare, Food Stamps, Greed, Koch Brothers, Medicade, Medicare, Paul Ryan, Pell Grants, Politics, religion, Scott Walker, social contract, Veteran's Health Care, women

As far back in social history as you care to look the pervasive social conflict has been between haves and have-nots. Kings and vassals, gentry and peasants, nobility and bourgeois, landed and serfs, rich and poor. We have not today early in the 21st century evolved much beyond that kind of social differentiation if at all with the 1% and the 99% gulf. In spite of a wide array of attempts to ensure political accountability and social equality the social contract has been and continues to be relentlessly undermined by greed. Greed for money, power, property, possessions, notoriety/fame, sanctimony – you name it and there are people hungry for it. There being no such thing as “enough” for some people it is, for them, an unremitting obsession. Since we live in a finite world it is a given that there is just so much of everything to go around; it follows then that the more some have the less there is for others to have. As Adam Smith, the 18^th century Scot social philosopher, put it, “Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality … Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

Obviously in a competitive world with limited resources there must be winners and losers and in this contemporary American society it seems losers worship winners and despise fellow losers. A neat trick of brainwashing in which losers more identify with winners and which, paradoxically, impels them to act against their own best interests. Winners take more and more leaving less and less for the majority and with disregard for the social consequences thereof. Sadly what is taken includes the future of young people. This then is the essence of the 1% / 99% conundrum, #occupywallstreet, and the basis for claims and denials of class warfare.

It used to be the case that the 1% didn’t seem to feel any need to be subtle or discreet but that seems to be changing as public awareness of the disparities increases. Conspicuous consumption seems to be on the wane, and is now increasingly replaced by denial of disparity, and that is all the more disingenuous and dangerous. Politicians who identify with and are themselves members of the 1% have stood before television cameras to bald-face declare there is no such thing as class warfare, as did the current speaker of the US House of Representatives not so long ago. Perhaps these folks sense something dangerous may be afoot. As an aside, one must wonder just who the House of “Representatives” represents; I’m certain it isn’t me or anyone I know. Contemporary American politics is probably the best worst-case example of how money and power are at the root of every civil law and regulation proposed and passed. It’s all about money and power and, increasingly, about religion – Christian religion.

Is there a Republican war on the separation of church and state? The founders of our American democracy so cherished that freedom they left England in opposition to a state religion. On March 26^th, 2012, on the steps of the US Supreme Court, presidential candidate Rick Santorum declared, “Rights come from our creator, they are protected by the Constitution of this country. Rights should not and cannot be created by a government because anytime a government creates a right, they can take that right away.” Now there’s a declaration for you and I’ll bet the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are rolling over in their graves. The framers, it is clear, were not deities, they were – guys and they created the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Santorum recently sat through a Louisiana Christian preacher’s sermon during which the preacher shouted out for anyone who wasn’t a Christian to “get out” of the country. We are truly on the outer fringes of sanity and civilization. We could be losing our balance and heading for an Inquisition if someone like Santorum becomes president.

Is there a Republican war on women? In Idaho, State Representative Chuck Winder questioned whether or not women understand that they have been raped. A woman in Texas described how she was required to listen to a physician describe a “gravely ill fetus” before she could abort it. Then we have Georgia State Representative Terry England who, in matters of abortion, compared women to pigs and cows before his legislature. England was speaking in favor of a bill that would require women to carry to term a dead or dying fetus. In Mississippi, Rennie Gibbs has become the first woman to be charged with murder following the stillbirth of her baby. In Arizona lawmakers are moving a bill through their legislature that would allow an employer to fire a woman using birth control as a contraceptive.

Is there a Republican war on the poor and disadvantaged? Wisconsin Representative, Republican Paul Ryan is proposing a budget that would, in the words of The Huffington Post, ravage “programs for the poor, elderly, disabled, young, veterans, jobless, and students” because he says, programs such as food stamps, health insurance, Pell Grants, and veterans’ hospitals are “demeaning”. Incidentally, Ryan, himself, is not a veteran but he was an Oscar Meyer Wienermobile driver. Among the casualties of Ryan’s proposed reforms and budget cuts would be Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; in addition veterans care would be cut by 13%. Ryan’s claim is that a social safety net, “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.” When a veteran comes back from Afghanistan without his legs knowing of Ryan’s concern for his dignity will certainly make a difference. Half of the savings Ryan is claiming for his budget come from health insurance programs. Ryan himself, as a US congress person, has health care paid for by the taxpayers that exceeds any other government health program.

What about money and politics? David Koch, one of the two billionaire Koch brothers has stated publicly that he will spend $60 million, a bit more than chump change, to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections. The Koch brothers also gave generously to the current governor of New Mexico during her election campaign in 2010. Another of their protégés, Scott Walker, current Governor of Wisconsin, is now facing a recall election following his first year in office. Walker recently stated rather disingenuously that he should have “anticipated there would be money and resources brought in from other places” to defeat him. Of course he didn’t mention where his own money comes from. Not to worry, bubby, the Koch boys have your back as their greatest fear, in David’s words, is that, “If unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power.” Imagine that! One of Walker’s first acts as Governor was to disenfranchise public employee unions, including teachers. The same agenda has taken place in many other states as well.

So now what? We are, I believe, at a defining moment in the history of the United States. In all of my 74 years on the planet I cannot recall anything quite like what is going on now. Even during the most virulent period of the anti-Vietnam war protests there was a sense of one country, one people disagreeing. No, I’m not forgetting outrages like Kent State or the bombing of the Army Math building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin – Madison (I was there, I heard the blast.). We have certainly had our moments as a society, as a country, as a people. Somehow each moment segued into the next with a better situation than what preceded it. Those were times, however, when the media were not so entirely pervasive and when any nut case with an anti-social agenda could not so readily spew venomous hatred over the airwaves or internet as do Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox “News”. Glenn Beck in a recent internet post declared the possibility that the unarmed young man who was shot to death in Florida a few weeks ago was the attacker. Beck supports the claim of self-defense by the self-appointed vigilante who killed the young man. Beck used his web site to slime a dead kid with insinuations that the kid may have smoked marijuana at one time.

What can we do to stem this gruesome sociopathic red tide of hatred and disinformation? The narrative has been, as you can see from the foregoing, largely in the hands of right-wing sociopaths and political opportunists funded by billionaires with an anti-democratic dystopian agenda. With some politicians it seems not a matter of what will they say next but of what won’t they say next. The right-wing agitators are getting most of the media attention right now and it’s time for the voices of humanity, intelligence, and reason to speak up and occupy the narrative. This is a difficult assignment; it is too easy to get angry and vituperative in response to such outrage. Instead it is necessary to become quietly deliberate and persuasive without making people feel talked down to or patronized. It will take patience, and truthfulness. The future is being constrained by greed and when there is nothing attainable to aspire to but joblessness or low-paying survival wages the future is foreclosed. A Las Cruces newspaper recently ran an opinion piece by a right-wing academic whose opinion was that New Mexico needs lower wages and lower taxes on corporations. This guy preached the gospel according to ALEC at a church in New Mexico and sponsored by the so-called Rio Grande Foundation. Nuff said!

The public must be educated. The public must understand we are all in this together, that the divide-and-conquer tactics being employed to pit social groups against each other is a deliberate, well-financed strategy. The opposition is wealthy, influential, and powerful. Right now they own the space we need to occupy. Occupying the narrative, you will be educators and skilled warriors whose task it will be to help the enemy destroy themselves. Teach about ALEC and its sponsors. Teach about legislators who introduce and pass legislation written for and by international corporations for their own benefit. Teach about the corrosive influence of money and religiosity in politics and the public space. Teach about politicians who will sell themselves for a trip to a vacation resort or even for a cheesy banquet. How cheap are they selling themselves for? Aren’t their constituents supposed to have first dibs on their loyalty? Did we elect ALEC or them? Do constituents have to ply their elected officials with resort trips and cheesy banquets to have public interests represented? These are the lessons you can teach, the questions you can ask. It’s a dialectic, it becomes a narrative joined by all who want an equitable political future – who want a future.

This essay appears in the April edition of Light of New Mexico

It Is Class Warfare

Published March 24, 2012 on Society 2 Comments
Tags: Adolph Hitler, billionaires, Class Warfare, George Wallace, J.P. Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, John Boehner, Julian Zelizer, Michael Bloomberg, Millionaires, NYPD, Rick Santorum, social contract

No matter how you slice it what is going on in the United States today is in fact class warfare. I recalled recently a paper I wrote as a graduate student in the 1970s titled “A Few Drops of Phenomenology”. Never mind that there are books piled on top of books written on the subject by, among others, some of the most eminent philosophers of the 20^th century I wasn’t then attempting to one-up those guys nor am I now. What I was trying to do then, as now, was to explain to myself the bewildering array of perceptions and actions centered on the same phenomenon, the same object, the same event, the same body of knowledge. It seemed at the time, and probably because I had never much thought about it before then, that nothing could be the same for everyone. Yet so much of what passes for discourse and the daily stream of events assumes such; something along the lines of normative agreement. We are all in this together, all men are created equal, common goals and values, all for one and one for all, united we stand, and all of that sort of social organizing which is little more than normalizing propaganda; these are the socializing mantras to which we are all subjected from childhood. These form the basis of the belief system we call the social contract.

I recently watched a video of a preacher, a Christian preacher in Louisiana, demean and demonize just about everyone who wasn’t present and who wasn’t like him and his congregation. He wanted everyone else, he shouted at the top of his lungs for all non-Christians to “Get Out!”. He meant out of the country, by the way. I’ve seen a few period newsreel films of Adolf Hitler addressing crowds during his rise to power in Germany and the Reverend Dennis Terry’s rhetorical style is identical. In the preacher’s audience was Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum who stood up and roundly applauded the hatred spewed by the so-called “preacher”. Of course, when the speech and Santorum’s presence was posted on the internet the candidate, who was shown being blessed in a laying on of hands by the “preacher”, backed away. Beep, beep, beep, beep!

Such pandering has become a style of politics and is reminiscent of George Wallace and his four presidential campaigns. Here’s what Wallace had to say after his first unsuccessful run for governor of Alabama in 1958. “’After the election, aide Seymore Trammell recalled Wallace saying, “Seymore, you know why I lost that governor’s race?… I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again.’” Here we are 54 years later and the same dynamic, the same corrosive rhetoric with cleaned-up language is being used across the board by candidates and their supporters. This time it is Muslims, and “foreigners” (read – Hispanics), gay rights, non-believers of whatever religion is at hand, people on welfare (Remember Ronald Reagan and his “welfare queens”?), health care, women’s health, birth control, gun control – the list goes on and on and on. And let’s not forget Georgia state Representative Terry England’s comparison of women needing to abort a stillborn or dying fetus to pregnant cows and pigs. The hot button issues of our national disaffection, dysfunction, disillusionment, and disintegration as a society never mind community.

Another example, as if we really need more, of social dysfunction is reflected in how certain cities, certain mayors, and certain police departments respond to the #occupy movement. Class warfare is when billionaire mayors such as Michael Bloomberg’s allow their police department to brutalize not only demonstrators but even the press. Another billionaire, Jamie Dimon, chairman, president and chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase donated $4.6 million to the NYC police department during last year’s #occupy demonstrations. Is it reasonable to ask what he got for his money? Between 2001 and 2011, Dimon’s company, J.P. Morgan, paid 4 billion – 877 million dollars in fines and penalties to various governmental authorities here and abroad for illicit financial activities. During the dust-up over the collapse of banks and the rise of #occupywallstreet, The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, himself a millionaire with a net worth said to be around $2.1 million dollars, criticized President Obama’s plans to reduce the deficit and charmingly characterized populist activity as creating class-warfare in the United States where, according to him, no such thing exists.

Which brings us to the pernicious American delusion of equality. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Princeton Professor Julian Zelizer on the topic of class warfare:

ZELIZER: Americans often and historically like to think of themselves as a classless society. There were even polls during the height of the Great Depression which famously showed that many Americans thought of themselves as being in the middle class, even those who were struggling with unemployment and who had nothing to subsist on.

There is a belief in this country that someone who doesn’t have a lot of money, one day, has the opportunity to have a lot of money. And because of this, it’s often been very hard for those on the left to use the notion of class conflict as a rallying cry as a way to organize social protest.

Here you have the belief system on which the American social contract is based and woe be unto those who would challenge this delusion with phrases such as “class warfare”. The haves, including the millionaire members (a majority) of the US Congress object. A protester’s sign during the #occupywallstreet summarized the argument: “They only call it class war when we fight back.”

Classlessness is the salving delusion for the American middle-class. Even though they don’t really belong to a middle-class they maintain the delusion with reinforcement from the mass media and politicians. In their own minds they live upwardly-mobile in a classless society a contradiction which constitutes a necessary delusion – the glue of the American social contract that binds us together as a society. This is the normative agreement which keeps things from getting out of hand and, at the same time, keeps them from getting better.

This essay first appeared at: http://www.thelightofnewmexico.com/

Occupying The Narrative

Published March 8, 2012 on Schools , on Society Closed
Tags: #Occupy, ABCD-F Act, ALEC, education reform, Hanna Skandera, NCLB, on Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Politics, privatize public education, privatizing schools, public education, school reform, schools, social contract, Sussana Martinez, teacher unions, teachers

OK, folks, today’s assignment will be to explore the influence in your home state by an organization called ALEC, or American Legislative Exchange Council, and what to do about it.

Let’s begin with a little quiz:

1. Are you aware of the Washington DC-based organization, ALEC, which is funded by the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals in the U.S.?

2. Are you aware that ALEC exists to write what they euphemistically call “model legislation” to hand to your elected officials for them to introduce to your legislature for the purpose of passing business-friendly laws which will govern your life and the education of your children? No mention will be made that these new laws were created in Washington DC and not by your legislator.

3. Do you know that New Mexico’s ABCD-F Act is based on ALEC model legislation and that every bill having to do with education in the 2012 Legislature was originated by ALEC as “model legislation”?

4. Are you aware that the highly publicized Occupy-crashed banquet in Santa Fe was hosted by ALEC for sympathetic legislators?

5. Do you know about the all-expenses-paid sojourns at exclusive resorts to encourage legislators to introduce and pass ALEC-provided “model legislation”?

Does any of this trouble you? I hope so. It certainly bothers me.

A group of legislators in Wisconsin have now introduced a bill that would require that organizations which introduce legislation through compliant legislators register themselves as lobbyists. I would call it the “Truth in Legislating Act.” The story, reported in the Madison Capital Times on Feb. 17, quoted the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Mark Pocan: “ALEC is like a speed dating service for lonely legislators and corporate executives. … The corporations write bills and legislators sign their names to the bills. In the end, we’re stuck with bad laws and nobody knows where they came from.” It goes without saying that this form of legislative monkey business is patently dishonest and it seems to be endemic across the U.S. as legislators are wined and dined by ALECian lobbyists, fat-cat donors to their political campaigns who also designate individuals to be appointed to critical positions of authority (e.g. our very own Hanna Skandera) at the state level. This same pattern has been seen in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and other states, as well as New Mexico.

The authors, of a March 2012 Phi Delta Kappan article, Julie Underwood and Julie Mead, both of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wondered how such a consistent pattern of legislation could appear across the country. “How could elected officials in multiple states suddenly introduce essentially the same legislation?” they asked. Their conclusion after considerable research shows ALEC to be behind it. The UW-Madison professors, no fans of the organization’s motives, wrote that “ALEC’s positions on various education issues make it clear that the organization seeks to undermine public education by systematically defunding and ultimately destroying public education as we know it.”

For your edification, here is a list of New Mexico legislators with published ALEC ties:

House of Representatives

Rep. Paul Bandy (R-3), ALEC State Chairman^[140] and Guest at the December 2010 International Relations Task Force meeting^[27]
Rep. Jimmie Hall (R-28)^[19][141] and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Alternate
Rep. William Gray (R-54), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Alternate
Rep. Nathaniel Quentin Gentry (R-30), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Alternate
Rep. Rick L. Little (R-53), ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
Rep. Alonzo Baldonado (R-8), ALEC Education Task Force Member
Rep. Dennis Roch (R-67), ALEC Education Task Force Member
Rep. Paul Bandy (R-3), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
Rep. Nora Espinoza (R-59), ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force Member
Rep. Larry A. Larranaga (R-27), ALEC International Relations Task Force Member
Rep. William R. Rehm (R-31), ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force Member
Rep. Anna M. Crook (R-64)^[16], ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Member
Rep. James R.J. Strickler (R-2), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task ForceMember
Rep. Thomas A. Anderson (R-29), ALEC Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force Member
Rep. Dennis J. Kintigh (R-57), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force Member

Senate

Sen. Kent L. Cravens (R-21) , ALEC State Chairman, Public Safety and Elections Task Force member^[142]
Sen. Sander Rue (R-23),^[143] Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Member
Sen. George K. Munoz (D-4), ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
Sen. William E. Sharer (R-1)^[16], ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
Sen. Mark L. Boitano (R-18), ALEC Education Task Force Member
Sen. Vernon Asbill (R-34), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
Sen. Sue Beffort (R-19), ALEC Health and Human Services Task ForceMember
Sen. William H. Payne (R-20), ALEC International Relations Task Force and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
Sen. Rod Adair (R-33), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force Member

And here is a list of New Mexico legislation inspired by ALEC:

HB 386 (introduced 2/7/11) “Transparency in Private Attorney Contracts” is similar to ALEC’s “Private Attorney Retention Sunshine Act”

HB 318 (introduced 2/2/11) “Crime of Organized Retail Theft Act” is similar to ALEC’s “Organized Retail Theft Act”

HB 45 (introduced 1/10/11) “Eminent Domain Federal Property Condemnation” (Sponsor: Rep. Paul C. Bandy) is based on ALEC’s “Eminent Domain Authority for Federal Lands Act”

SB 324 (introduced 1/31/11) “Licensure of Secondhand Metal Dealers”[8] is similar to ALEC’s “Responsible Scrap Metal Purchasing and Procurement Act”

House Joint Memorial 24 (introduced 1/27/11), “Requesting Governor to Withdraw New Mexico from the Western Climate Initiative” is similar to ALEC’s “State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives”

HB 229 (introduced 1/27/11) “Parental Notice of Abortion Act” is similar to ALEC’s “Parental Consent for Abortion Act”

SB 195 (passed 2/17/10) “Sunshine Portal Transparency Act” is similar to ALEC’s “Transparency and Government Accountability Act”

HJR 5 (introduced 1/20/10) “Resolution to Allow Health Care Decisions” is based on ALEC’s “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act”

HB 105 (introduced 1/19/05) “Income Tax Deduction for Organ Donation” is similar to ALEC’s “Organ Donation Tax Deduction Act”

This is a list of ALEC education “model legislation” which became bills introduced in the New Mexico Legislature.

ABCD-F Act — passed

Education Accountability Act

Having to do with schools, teachers and administrators:

Career Ladder Opportunities Act

Teacher Quality and Recognition Demonstration Act

+ Great Teachers and Leaders Act

A further report on legislation introduced by New Mexico legislators on behalf of ALEC can be found at: ALEC inspired bills in the 2011 legislative session.

How we deal with this legislative infusion for the benefit of powerful corporate and financial interests is a question that must be answered before our entire body of law has been replaced by laws written by those interests and for their benefit How do we deal with legislators who are willing to sell out their constituents in return for an expenses-paid trip to an exclusive resort or a fancy meal?

Strategy vs. Tactics

I think attacking ALEC, which has millions of dollars in its war chests donated by the largest corporations in the world, is a futile strategy. Also, attacking the legislators who so willingly surrender their responsibilities for paltry rewards—“atta boys” and banquets from ALEC and its sponsors—will not pay off; what will work is to identify them as such publicly.

Shouting and chanting and storming meetings are tactical; educating is strategic. It is imperative that the narrative high ground be seized, that the narrative be occupied and educative. There is no need to attack ALEC when simply pointing out to the public who they are, what they do, whom they have bought and the effect on people’s lives and well-being would be sufficient. Of course this will take patient, concerted and continuous effort to pull off, but then the 2012 legislative elections aren’t until November. There is hope. There is still time to organize and to keep the narrative going long enough and strong enough to occupy that narrative. And, it is much easier to address these issues from high ground than by slinging mud and thus alienating the public.

It must be realized, I believe, that the general public does not have the interest or faintest clue about the machinations and goals of ALEC. That sort of apathy illustrates the general reality gap between activists and Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public and, if the issues are polarized along political party lines, the gap gets wider. In any event, the ethical and moral issues here have nothing to do with party because there are ALEC toadies with outstretched palms on both sides of the aisle. They are neither Democrats or Republicans but ALECians.

The campaign against ALEC must always, I think, focus on the issues and the impact of those issues on the public For those whose support you seek, the story has to become their personal narrative. If you do this right, ALEC-free candidates will come looking for you. And when they seek your support it wouldn’t hurt to require a solemn pledge to not succumb to ALEC. Think of yourselves as educators, Occupy, and you are on the road to effecting significant social change. The only people you want to alienate are the ones you don’t like, not the ones whose support you need to create change. At all costs avoid becoming the narrative yourselves; remember, it’s not about you, it’s about the truth.

Sources:

ALEC Exposed home page <http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed>

ALEC State Chairmen <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_State_Chairmen>

ALEC model legislation <http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed>

ALEC model legislation – education <http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Bills_Affecting_Americans%27_Rights_to_a_Public_Education>

list of politicians <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Politicians>

New Mexico legislators w ALEC ties <http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Politicians#New_Mexico_Legislators_with_ALEC_Ties>

Originally appeared at The Light of New Mexico:http://www.thelightofnewmexico.com/

The NYPS Blues

Published March 5, 2012 on Schools , on Society Closed
Tags: Arne Duncan, current-events, easy target, Edunazis, Hanna Skandera, Politics, privatize public education, privatizing schools, Repugnicans, Rupert Murdoch, schools, social contract, Sussana Martinez, teachers, testing

The NYPS Blues

Is the war against public education guerrilla class-warfare conducted through surrogates? It certainly looks like it. I have always believed that if something looks like “it,” behaves like “it,” and smells like “it,” odds are “it” is “it.”

The “it” in New York City came when the anti-teacher/anti-public education mayor and the ever-devolving New York Times published the results of a citywide teacher evaluation. The person who created the evaluation openly cautioned against publication of the results as they are not, in his opinion, a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness for a number of technical reasons, including that the evaluation system is new and interpreting it at this early date is an inaccurate and uncertain proposition. He ought to know. Yet, the billionaire crusader mayor of New York joined by the New York Times proceeded to do just what was warned against. In such a circumstance the first question that comes to mind is one of motives. In both cases the motives seem abundantly clear.

Teachers are an easy target for political hacks who have an unrelenting agenda to privatize public education and who are looking to make points with a misinformed public. In the case of the NYT, one must wonder why a national newspaper with what were once impeccable credentials is transforming itself into an over-priced upscale version of the National Inquirer or some sort of Murdoch sensationalist rag. You can’t tell me that the sophisticated editors at the Grey Lady are unaware that once something has been published, no amount of self-serving mea culpas and Public Editor penance will undo it. The damage was done and done willfully, and it cannot be undone. Period. The implications and consequences of what is going on in New York are clear for the rest of the country.

The “it” moment in New Mexico came when, in a case of NYPS Blues, Edunazis went after teachers and schools in an even more despicable manner. Last Thursday (01/02/12) morning, NM PED storm troopers conducted a raid at Albuquerque’s Sierra Vista Elementary School. The troopers removed teachers from classrooms for interrogation in response to an anonymous tip that irregularities had taken place amounting to cheating on tests. Substitutes had to be found for the teachers being questioned so there would be no interruption in the normal school routine. It should go without saying that a civilized inquiry could have been conducted after school hours or on a Saturday. No one’s life was in danger, the school wasn’t going to be blown up, children weren’t being abused, no one was selling drugs in the corridors; clearly there was no emergency to merit the SWAT team tactics. Taking into account the PED’s trouncing during the legislative session, this was a very deliberate publicity stunt. And to top it off, all of this well-publicized sensationalist melodrama was justified on the basis of an alleged anonymous “TIP”? I smell a rat.

The PED’s persistent hidden agenda would not have been as well served by a respectful and civilized inquiry, now would it? For the second consecutive year the Legislature didn’t hold a confirmation hearing for the PED’s Dear Leader, and her proposed antediluvian new school initiatives went down in defeat as well. Was the dramatic raid was a face-saving acting out? Of course it was.

I think it only fair to ask where New Mexico schools are heading with this police-state behavior by the PED. I can’t imagine a more humiliating and disgraceful treatment of teachers than what took place at Sierra Vista school. What’s next, re-education camps for teachers al la Chairman Mao or perhaps Siberian-type work camps – you know, gulags for those who won’t buy into the PED program? The PED program being to prove by whatever means that public schools are failing in order to justify privatizing them. The tactics appear to be: If you can’t get in the front door, break in the back way.

Remember that New York Mayor Bloomberg’s first Chancellor of the public school system, Joel Klein, took a meat-axe approach to the city’s vast school system. The charge then was that the schools and teachers were inefficient, failing and a budgetary drain on the city. The creation of charter schools would be the answer, the public was told, which prediction ultimately proved to be far from true. Klein moved on, not surprisingly, without any substantial or lasting achievement to become Rupert Murdoch’s main man. You will recall Murdoch as the bloke from Down Under who sees public education as a $500 billion opportunity for entrepreneurs like himself, with the help, no doubt, of Mr. Klein. Mayor Bloomberg next gave the Chancellor’s job to a woman business executive, Catherine Black, who had no background and no experience in education at all except her own schooling and that was likely not at P.S. 101. Thankfully, she lasted only a short time and was basically embarrassed out of office. In New Mexico we have Hanna Skandera who also is unqualified by any measure to be a Secretary of Education anywhere. We also have a Governor whose election campaign received substantial contributions from donors with school privatization agendas and who, no doubt, want their investments to pay off in the form of privatized schools.

While these and other Republicans have not been alone in their persecution of public education – I would include our neoliberal US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, in this mob – there has been a notable transformation from the kind of Republican once represented by Dwight Eisenhower. We now have a new breed, Repugnicans – a group for whom profit in any endeavor reigns supreme and for whom shared social outcomes such as an educated public are but a quaint and dim memory of a more civilized and humane time. Across the country they are spreading an epidemic of sociopathy and destruction of the American social contract, especially where it comes to public education – a very bad case of the NYPS Blues.

This post may also be viewed at: http://www.thelightofnewmexico.com/

Trojan Horse

Published January 20, 2012 on Schools Closed
Tags: curricula, education reform, Hanna Skandera, K12, on Schools, parenting, public education, Rupert Murdoch, school reform, schools, social contract, Teach for America, teachers, testing

TROJAN HORSE

Senate Bill 427 a.k.a. “The A-B-C-D-F Schools Rating Act”-talk about a “gotcha.” This piece of work makes the Trojan Horse look like a party favor.

Double Standards

Not that this is a new fast shuffle; in the Spring of 2011, Secretary-Designate Skandera overruled the Public Education Commission’s 2010 decision to disenfranchise three failing charter schools for falling below acceptable achievement standards. Ms. Skandera “declined” the Commission’s ruling stating she would decline decisions based on failure to meet Standards Based Assessment tests because such tests are an “obsolete metric.” So, what is the Skandera-sponsored A-B-C-D-F Schools Rating Act about if not test-score-based metrics? The Act says specifically that public schools will be rated according to the New Mexico Standards Based Assessments. Yet the PEC was overruled for basing its decision regarding the charter schools on Standards Based Assessments. Charter schools are defined in law as public schools and as such the same standards must apply. The same people who pronounced the metrics to be obsolete had, just a few months earlier, incorporated them into legislation.

More is More

The questions don’t stop here either. According to the act parents may move their children from a school rated F to “the statewide or a local cyber academy” neither of which are included in the rating system nor are academic standards for these entities referred to or provided for in law. The A-B-C-D-F Act states that growth “means learning a year’s worth of knowledge in one year’s time.” You will look in vain for a definition of “a year’s worth of knowledge.” What hat did they pull that one out of? Further on in the Act you will find reference to “proven programs” and, once again, without definition. This kind of flim-flam puts public schools on very shaky ground having to meet unspecified and undefined requirements such as “a year’s worth of knowledge” and presenting “proven programs.” What proven programs are they talking about? Where will we find these proven programs? Who has proven the programs and what were their qualifications? Is a “year’s worth of learning” the same for Ms. Skandera as it would be for Governor Martinez? What metrics should we use to determine if either of them has acquired a year’s worth of learning?

TO WHAT ENDS?

This A-B-C-D-F Act business, and it is a business, is an unmitigated disaster and a well thought out strategy in my opinion to set up public schools in New Mexico to fail. The Trojan Horse is here to open the gates for privatized for-profit schooling ultimately taking control away from communities and parents and placing it in the hands of corporations. I suspect what Skandera and company have in mind is quite simple. Just as is the case now with some social services and prisons, the state will contract with private entities such as Teach for America or K12 to run our public schools. The New Mexico Public Education Department this past November issued a purchase order for Teach for America indicating that business is already being done with that entity. Rupert Murdoch, speaking at a recent conference in San Francisco, a gathering at which our Secretary-Designate also appeared, had this to say, “When it comes to K-through-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” Murdoch’s education business is called Wireless Generation. The vultures are circling!

Once the schools have been contracted out we can say goodbye to parental and community input – say goodbye to public education. The schooling factories of the future, while generating sweet profits for the corporations that run them, will soon be churning out standardized “graduates” ready to be plugged into whatever corporate enterprises need them. It should also be noted that none of these reforms cops to what they will do with slow learners, under-achievers and the kids and parents who simply don’t give a damn about education. The requirement for human teachers/trainers will be minimized, as will be their wages. Cyber machines will handle the kids more efficiently in this scenario and without requiring health insurance, retirement plans, sick leave, wages or respect. Oh, and one more thing – they don’t go out on strike for better working conditions. Gotcha!

This essay first appeared in The Light of New Mexico – print and web editions 2/14/12

The Tenticles of Profit

Published January 5, 2012 on Schools Closed
Tags: ALEC, curricula, education reform, Koch Brothers, NCLB, on Schools, parenting, privatizing schools, public education, school reform, schools, social contract, teacher unions, teachers, testing

PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE TENTICLES OF PROFIT

A new reality is beginning to unfold. This other-reality is inhabited by fabulously wealthy people who want, indeed are compelled, to become even more wealthy since having all but a tiny percentage of the real world’s income is not quite enough – they apparently want it all. The May 2011 edition of Vanity Fair reports that 1% of the US population takes in 25% of all income and holds 40% of the nation’s wealth. http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105 There is today, it seems, an epidemic of consummate sociopathic greed by people who profit on everyone else’s losses and who buy politicians with the same ease normal people buy groceries. To further their ends the other-reality hosts pool-side gatherings at plush resorts for ambitious and eager other-reality wannabes to discuss how best to go about achieving their agendas. In these settings the wannabes rub shoulders with the other-reality folks and offer their services and willingness to assist the sponsors in their quest for an even greater slice of the National Pie. We can only wonder what the rewards can be for providing such assistance. One example, perhaps, of what possibilities might exist is revealed in how Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, cheerfully responded to a caller he thought was one of the multi-millionaire Koch brothers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBnSv3a6Nh4

Privatizing Public Education is one potential source of new wealth being explored by the other-reality people. Achieving control of the Public Education system which has existed, for better or for worse, in the US for more than a century, requires operatives appointed to governmental offices of education willing to carry out the agenda, New Mexico being one such example. Why not start the take over process with politicians who could use a little financial help with their campaigns provided by “Foundations” dedicated to the preservation of Democracy? A little help here and there results in such appointments to public office as I have described above and pretty soon you are on your way to grading schools and grading teachers and, in the end the inevitable conclusions that students are failing, teachers are failing and, of course, public schools are failing. Our only hope then in this scenario is privatization.

If you think the above is exaggeration please check out the following web sites which were provided by a reader of one of my earlier essays, “Hemingway” and I share his annotations here, with my thanks:

” Hemingway

August 2, 2011 • 9:23 am

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sponsored model bills aiming to privatize public education, eliminate teacher’s unions, and make American universities adhere to the right wing and libertarian viewpoint.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_Teachers

http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&Template=/Templates/TemplateHomepage/ALEC_1502_20070319T102535_LayoutHomePage.cfm

The Kochs have given ALEC contributions exceeding $1 million—not including a half-million loaned to ALEC when the group had financial problems. “The Kochs’ mistrust of public education can be traced to their father, Fred, who ranted and raved that the National Education Association was a communist group and public-school books were filled with “communist propaganda,”

http://www.thenation.com/article/161973/alec-exposed-koch-connection

Interestingly ALEC was behind the scenes in Wisconsin in the education fight. Read this article by Dr. William Cronin.

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/

This is wrong! ”

The Koch Brothers and others of their political persuasion it should be pointed out are not, lest we demonize them, the only example of moneyed people financing a social agenda. Money is power of course and the willingness to use it for social change has always been with us as a society. Recall the Carnegies and Rockefellers and presently Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and so on who are using their fortunes to sponsor scientific exploration and the advancement of technology and knowledge and create a safer disease-and hunger-free world.

WHO IS FAILING WHAT?

Let’s examine the failing schools agenda and how it is being rationalized for public consumption. Are teachers failing? Who says so and what is their agenda? Here is an exchange between the actor Matt Damon (whose mother is a teacher) and a “reporter” from a Libertarian “news” organization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFHJkvEwyhk&feature=player_embedded

Teachers seem to have become a favorite soft target for the industrial reformers. Teachers are a convenient target for several reasons including their own unions which have failed to seize the moment and take control of the narrative. As an example of the assault on teachers, one of Governor Scott Walker’s first legislative “achievements”, in his opinion at least, was to disenfranchise Wisconsin teachers’ unions. An August 10th, 2011 item on the KOAT-TV web site details the problems teachers in Albuquerque are going to face with a 7% increase in class sizeshttp://www.koat.com/news/28819192/detail.html And, rest assured these class size increases will result in matching increases in standardized test result failures. This will be one more blow against the autonomy and authority of classroom teachers setting them up as scapegoats for politicians. Teachers will be blamed for the failures and the privatization band will strike up its familiar marching tune – “Privatize, privatize – Oh the results you’ll see. You won’t believe your eyes!

http://www.utahnsforpublicschools.org/policycenter/KeyLessonsClassSizeandStudentAchievement.htm

Tests can also exert a corrupting influence as we recently saw in the exposure of wide-spread cheating of No Child Left Behind test results in Atlanta, Georgia. According to ABC News in reporting the story at the time: “In Georgia, teachers complained to investigators that some students arrived at middle school reading at a first-grade level. But, teachers said, principals insisted those students had to pass their standardized tests. “Teachers were either ordered to cheat or pressured by administrators until they felt they had no choice, authorities said.” In New Mexico 87% of schools fell short in the state-wide evaluations. Are schools failing? The best answer is probably, yes, and for good reasons. Are privatized schools doing better across the board? Not really.

It isn’t that privatized schools, as such, are instruments of some hidden social control agenda, many are not. The KIPP charter schools, for example, are first rate. The administrators, teachers and students are motivated. The educational results gained by these schools are excellent with a high number of graduates going on to college although I am not in favor of using that as an absolute metric for assessing schools and public education. But, more importantly KIPP schools motivate their students to learn. They mentor and develop their teachers in earnest, they engage parents, and they engage children holding their attention for a longer school day and week than public schools do. The “sample daily schedule”, as posted on the KIPP web site, gives teachers two hours of prep time between 8AM and 3PM, during which time they also teach 3 one-hour classes and get a 40-minute lunch break and get an hour for “advisory meetings”. The hours 3PM to 5PM are a blend of electives, prep and meetings. These particular charter schools are educating children with great success.

However, in spite of all the good these schools do the question remains – why can’t public schools do the same? Why can’t the existing public schools system be charged with the same responsibility, given the same resources and accomplish the same results?

AUTHENTIC EDUCATION

I have stressed many times in these essays that education is not a manufacturing process and uniformity is not the objective of authentic learning. There is no such thing on Earth as a “Standard Child” and by that reasoning alone standardized testing as the ultimate measure of pedagogical success is false out of the box. To claim otherwise is to trivialize human nature and human experience – it is, in fact, dehumanizing. To contend that standardized testing is a fair and proper method of assessment betrays a diminished view of humanity and ignorance of the educational process. The key to authentic education is interest and when interest is absent so too is authentic learning. Needless to say authentic learning and teaching go hand-in-hand and neither can function when a teacher cannot devote an appropriate amount of time to each learner. So, when a school system increases class sizes and decreases the number of available classroom teachers no claim to authentic teaching and learning can be made. This is a prescription for failure writ large. Class sizes must be adjusted to reasonable levels if effective teaching and learning are to take place. Next parents must be as fully engaged in the process as they are required to be in the charter school schemes.

In a recent news report( http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/education/social-promotion-could-be-on-agenda) about the push to eliminate, by statute, social promotion in New Mexico, Robin Gibson (A fourth grade teacher at Sandia Base Elementary School) said, ” … it’s unreasonable to think all students learn at the same pace. Kids are all coming from different backgrounds and we need to work with them and not punish them for something they can’t control.” So, what is the answer to this push, this fixation, to punish kids who don’t learn at the same rate as test writers think they should? How about doing away with grade levels at the elementary level and rather setting performance standards for matriculation? So simple. This is what REAL school reform needs to be about, the simple recognition that children, just like adults, do not all learn at the same rate. Next, in the lower grades do away with the fixation on standardized testing. Tests can certainly be useful as diagnostics (their only real value actually), instruments of policy and policy making or, just as easily, justification for the privatization of public education.

There are people out there waiting to pounce on failed schools and failed school systems. The hucksters will promise greater instructional success with lower costs and greater uniformity of results across the board. This will be brought to you by people who have social control and profit foremost in mind. These entrepreneurs can buy with ease politicians and acolytes; the real victims will be children and the greatest loss will be felt by society itself. Is this the new reality we wish to subscribe to, making rich people richer and, at the same time, impoverishing public education and consequently our children? It will be a hollowing out of the social contract and of our civil society. These possibilities cannot be taken lightly and certainly cannot be dismissed as paranoid rant – it has happened to other countries and societies throughout history and it can happen in the US just as easily. It does us well to consider that those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it.

What must we do to make schools safe from privatization and loss of public control? In my opinion perhaps the most important first step must be to depoliticize public education. This is a matter of grave consequence as partisan politics have no place in the process of schooling. Authentic school reforms must be immunized against politicization, commercialization and interference by people whose only qualification is that they have managed to be elected or appointed to public office. Educators must speak out forcefully, defend their expertise and demand control of the process of schooling. I think class sizes must be held at a level where each child can receive proper attention. How can teachers teach where class sizes clearly exceed any possibility of individualized attention? I cannot emphasize this class size issue too strongly. Each child as a learner is a unique center of experience and each child learns at a rate particular to that child so how then can any normal human teacher accomplish the level of individualized attention required to instruct each child with large class sizes and why aren’t parents up in arms over this breech of trust? Parents must be fully integrated into the educational model as the ultimate source of motivation and discipline. Being educated and being able to test out are two vastly different things. The question is, simply put, what are we after in public education – educated individuals or test-taking automatons?

A New Tower of Babel

Published January 5, 2012 on Schools Closed
Tags: ABCD-F Act, Bill Gates, curricula, cyber academies, education reform, Henry Giroux, Koch Brothers, NCLB, on Schools, parenting, public education, Rupert Murdoch, school reform, schools, social contract, teacher unions, teachers, testing

THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL

” [H]uman community depends on language” say the authors of the language chapter in the book Deep History (Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, Univ. of California Press, 2011). The authors use the lesson of Babel described in the bible as an example of the power of language. According to the Babel story everyone spoke the same language until someone had the bright idea of building a tower so tall they could reach heaven. Their idea didn’t sit well with the proprietor of heaven so he “confounded” their language to prevent the project from proceeding. In short, control language and you control people.

Deliberate inversion of language has always been a favored tool of propagandists and demagogues. Consider just for a moment the current revulsion for and fear of the term “class-warfare” on the part of the 1% class. Another gem is referring to public education as “government education”. “Cowabunga Battyman, th’gummint’s after the kids!” In Orwell’s novel 1984 the users of “Newspeak” employed “doublethink” to manipulate the residents of the country.

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.

Newspeak and doublethink are now the “indispensably necessary” staples of the venality and political agendas sweeping across the US in the guise of education reform. By deliberately employing language contradictory to common usage and understanding, these interests are confounding the public narrative. The best example on a national scale is No Child Left Behind, which uses carefully contrived testing to leave not only children behind but teachers as well. In these so-called reform programs teaching becomes testing and failure is all but assured. In New Mexico we have the ABCD-F Schools Rating Act to insure failure, failure as defined by interested parties leading ultimately to privately run schools, online course work and what the Act itself refers to as “cyber academies” which, interestingly enough, are not included in the required ratings under Section 3 of the Act. The objective truth here: testing is not pedagogy, it is not curriculum and instruction, it is a strategy to set up public schools to fail and machine learning to prosper.

If you have any doubts about this strategy read the story in the Washington Post about a fellow who is a school board member, a corporate executive with a BS and two master’s degrees. He took the 10th grade reading and math tests required for students in his school district. He said he managed to “guess” the answers to ten out of sixty math questions and scored a “D” on the reading test. Is it any wonder then that these innocuous sounding rating and testing programs like ABCDF and NCLB are condemning public schools to failure? We must rightly ask, why? What’s in it for the perpetrators? What do they stand to gain?

Minions of wealthy business interests have moved across the country installing themselves into state governments and sundry “foundations”, spreading the idea that public schools are a failure and they have the solution – privatizing public schools, privatizing teacher education and installing high-tech teaching devices. Why? Because people like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch boys, Bill Gates and a host of others, having financed politicians as a down payment, are salivating over their potential profits. Rupert puts that potential at $500 billion.

The Tuesday, December 6, 2011, New York Times had two editorial pieces on education. One piece offered a “how to” as in “How To Rescue Education Reform” that sounded a death knell for teachers, describing “Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education“. In both articles what I found more interesting than the standard hollow circular arguments debasing public education and human teachers was that the three authors are all affiliated with Stanford University, as is the New Mexico Secretary-Designate of Public Education. Coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not.

A viable democracy requires educated citizens capable of critical thinking and a strong sense of community. There is no social dimension to cyber or any other form of machine learning. Machines, by their nature, isolate learners from the social context provided by public schools and from the democratizing influences of that community. The 21st century Tower of Babel has been constructed and the intent clearly is to confound the narrative in order to dismantle the finest, most democratic and enabling institution this country has ever had, public education. At what price?

Henry Giroux, in Education And The Crisis Of Public Values, (Peter Lang Publishing, 2012) writing about what he calls the politics of humiliating teachers, public schooling and marginalizing youth put it this way.

Despite these grave circumstances, we seem to lack the critical language, civic courage, and public values to recognize that when a country institutionalizes a culture of cruelty that takes aim at public schools and their hard-working teachers, it is embarking on a form of self-sabotage and collective suicide whose victims will include not only education, but democracy itself.

This essay originally appeared at:http://www.nmpolitics.net/

A LITTLE HISTORY

Published December 19, 2011 on Schools Closed
Tags: ABCD-F Act, Bill Gates, curricula, education reform, Herbert M. Kliebard, Jeb Bush, Koch Brothers, NCLB, on Schools, parenting, Politics, public education, Rupert Murdoch, school reform, schools, social contract, teacher unions, teachers, testing

A LITTLE HISTORY

What bothers me most about the current war against public education is that it is a-historical. It is as if schools suddenly went bad a few months ago or coincidentally with Jeb Bush needing something to keep himself busy when his term of office in Florida expired. Without any education credentials whatsoever Jeb is now on the leading edge of the assault on public education and teachers. Foundations and acolytes scattered across the country are feeding the frenzy along with a little help from friends and buddies such as Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch boys and so forth. Without intending cynicism this to me resembles class warfare more than a little.

As the saying goes, those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it so I thought perhaps a small dose of history would render a bit of perspective to the snake-oil presently being offered by the newly ordained “experts” and their minions. This is also the first time teachers are being cast as villains so I will add here parenthetically, that anyone who thinks teachers control the curriculum in public schools is dangerously misinformed. Control of pubic education is and has long been in the hands of administrators, school boards and state and federal agencies. Teachers hold the lowest spot on the policy totem pole but they carry the greatest liability and the most intimate consequences.

Teachers are the public face of educational policy and so have become targets of opportunity. One television advertising campaign being used to promote mechanized education even goes so far as to demonize teachers as inferred child molesters. This malicious campaign was created by a national consultant who when speaking to wealthy education industry investors advised them that rather than “intellectualize ourselves into the [education reform] debate…is there a way that we can get into it at an emotional level? … Emotions will stay with people longer than concepts… We need to hit on fear and anger. Because fear and anger stays with people longer. And how you get the fear and anger is by reframing the problem.”

Reframing the problem is quite easy so long as no one engages the public narrative from a factual historical perspective. Even a well meaning public or a well intentioned state legislature can be easily manipulated with expertly applied misinformation and distortions doled out by unscrupulous public opinion manipulators and well placed operatives within governmental agencies. Government programs with simplistic innocuous sounding names like No Child Left Behind or ABCD-F – reflect professional advertising and propaganda to reframe the problem. After all, who would openly admit to wanting to leave a child behind. The unscrupulous lust for profit seems to have no moral, social or ethical boundaries. The running narrative placing blame on teachers and public schools has no rational justification. This distortion however is a time-honored technique of despots used throughout history to isolate and demonize minorities. The programs cited above are intended to create failure and thus frame the public dialog. In truth while schools and teachers are certainly not perfect I regard such propaganda campaigns as sociopathic. They are about money, not about children.

The short history of public education from the early 1800s to the present is a record of relentlessly evolving ideas about content and methodology, that is, curriculum and instruction. Generally speaking, public education seems to have absorbed in one way or another all the reforms initiated from the early 1800s to the present. In the 1820s there were Mental Disciplinarians, then Developmentalists and the Social Meliorists who were followed by the Social Efficiency movement of the early 20th century. There were others but these were the most influential and they provided the foundational ideas on which modern American curriculum and instruction were built. Over time the ideas embodied in these movements wove themselves into the fabric of American schooling so completely that they have become indistinguishable. I think it most important to point out here that not one of these influential movements spanning two centuries was ever motivated by profit.

In the early part of the 19th century and into the next the United States was primarily an agrarian society and what public schooling there was reflected that. Starting in the early 20th century the country began its transition to an industrial society. The industrial period ran through two world wars and America became the undisputed industrial giant of the entire planet. Public education was geared to the needs of an industrial society. Now, in the early 21st century we are becoming a post-industrial society and public education will again evolve to accommodate the needs of the new reality. There have been a multitude of other forces and influences on public education of course but those above are the broad strokes.

It is important also to note that at no time in the span of this history has any one educational movement held complete sway. In fact it seems that as they emerged each went to work with the others. Eventually parts of each became woven into the fabric of the educational experience. Today the US is a diverse society with a large but not dominant agricultural economic sector and, though somewhat diminished, a nevertheless vigorous industrial sector continues as well. Like all of history nothing is all the same everywhere all of the time but the parts and the influences of everything are wherever we look. In the future as in the past public education will reflect the times and the people. America needs people who can think critically, learn readily and reflect the values of the community. Public education’s mission is to encourage learning as a value and as a commitment to the society at large; this requires educating children not training them as if they are destined to become robots.

n.b. An excellent study of the history of American curriculum is:

The Struggle For The American Curriculum 1893-1958, 2nd ed., Herbert M. Kliebard, Routledge,1995

this essay first appeared at: http://nmpolitics.net/index/

Fire Two Teachers and Call Me in the Morning.

Published November 23, 2011 on Schools 1 Comment
Tags: ABCD-F Act, Bush, curricula, education reform, Elwood Cubberly, George W, NCLB, on Schools, public education, school reform, schools, social contract, teacher unions, teachers, testing

Fire Two Teachers …

“Fire two teachers and call me in the morning …” seems to be the cure-all that neo-liberal and right-wing activists are banging their drums for. The next move after the “ABCD-F” scam will be to legislate recognition of mail-order teaching degrees from online diploma mills. Wanna bet? Recall that our secretary-designate of education has placed on her PED Advisory Board David Saba the CEO of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, a private company and publisher of self-paced online teaching certification programs. The train is coming down the tracks right now as public schools, public school teachers and teaching are attacked and denigrated.

Another private organization, “National Council on Teacher Quality” has published a little document titled a bit disingenuously, “Increasing the Odds – How Good Policies Can Yield Better Teachers“. The ultimate purpose of this document published in 2004 is to disenfranchise university and college-level schools of education and, most importantly, teachers and teachers’ unions. It is a call to dumb down the practice of teaching and learning to the extent that the authors claim there is no value to be gained from teachers earning masters’ degrees. So much for the value of education.

A problem cannot be solved without at least some measure of understanding and historical perspective as to what exactly the nature of the problem is and how it was arrived at. In other words, what are we talking about when someone says public education is failing? The condemnation of public education is a manufactured stampede to the destruction of that institution. The public needs to ask a lot of questions about the motives and intended purposes behind this condemnation. How are schools failing? Why are they failing? How did this all begin, when and where?

This entire early 21st century school reform argument is, I think, fueled by organized pretense and sophisticated public relations propaganda. When someone presents solutions to a problem without clearly defining that problem and its nature their motives and methods are to me suspect. When rapacious billionaires like Rupert Murdoch salivate for their piece of what they see as a lucrative education market, something other than authentic school reform is on their minds. Last year when Rupert acquired a school performance tracking firm, Wireless Generation, his take was, “When it comes to K-through-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” Murdoch later told an assembly of educational reform crusaders in San Francisco this past October, “Put simply we must approach education … willing to blow up what doesn’t work or gets in the way.” This week (11/15/11) the Walton (Wal-Mart) family’s foundation gave $25.5 million to the KIPP charter school system. Public schools, public school teachers and teachers’ unions beware – you are definitely in their way. You are on the target list. Duck and cover isn’t going to do it for you either, you are going have to come out swinging if you want to survive this onslaught.

SOME PERSPECTIVE

The problem with public education and the solution appeared with the George W. Bush administration and, as a result, we were “gifted” with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) scam. The program, when stripped of its rhetoric, is essentially a testing regime starting with children as young as 4 years of age. Tests emanating from Washington DC and prepared by private testing companies, as might be expected, determined that kids were not learning to read and do arithmetic. Soon school systems, in order to retain federal funding, were pursuing better NCLB test scores by one means or another and you may recall the scandal that happened in Georgia. Atlanta teachers, on orders from their administrators, were altering test scores. Other teachers around the country began “teaching to the test”. Suddenly public education was on the ropes.

In my estimation, NCLB is the domestic propaganda equivalent of Iraq’s WMD – a problem created to rationalize and facilitate a “solution”. Another gift from the Bush dynasty, including brother Jeb who overnight became an education expert. And who were the beneficiaries of this gift that keeps on giving – kids, teachers, the public? Seed Money for Conservatives spells out who got the goodies: Shortly after the act was born in 2001 the US Department of Education doled out nearly $78 billion via NCLB to “private, for-profit and/or religious schools.” The two principle actors at the Department of Education at that time were Eugene Hickok and Nina Shokraii both with long histories with pro-privatization outfits like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform.

While the Bush 2005 budget provided the smallest spending for education compared to the nine preceding years, a $50 million experiment for school vouchers was approved diverting that money from public schools to private ones. From 2001 thru 2003 the US Department of Education gave $77.76 million to various groups all advocates for privatized education, including K12, founded by William Bennett. (Remember him?) You might recall our current secretary-designate of education, before she was posted to NM, was the CEO of Laying The Foundation, Inc. a private teacher training company. If you have harbored any doubts about what this new wave of school reform is about you now have a few things to think about.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

In the late 1800s when mass public education was in its infancy social needs and conditions were very different from what they are now. Public schools taught personal hygiene with as much intensity as they taught the alphabet. Why? Because living conditions were enormously different in those times. Punctuality was a major curricular objective among the teaching objectives in city schools in those times. Why? Because employers wanted reliable employees who could be counted upon to arrive at work on time and be prepared to carry out their tasks. The first writing on curriculum and instruction in the US was the work of industrial efficiency experts and academics such as Elwood Cubberly, who in 1905 had this to say about the purpose of public education:

“[Schools should be factories] “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.” – Elwood Cubberly, Dean of Education at Stanford (1905)

LEARNING TO LEARN

What do children today need to learn in order to have a successful future life? A child entering public school this past September will not enter the work force, at the earliest if he or she matriculates from high school, until 2025. Who even has a clue what the world will be like in 2025? And therein lies the rub.

After a life-long involvement in teaching – elementary school children to graduate students – I will say without hesitation and without diminishing the value of other essential skills – learning to learn is, the most vital skill anyone can acquire. While content rapidly becomes obsolete the skill of learning lasts a life-time. Firing or demeaning teachers because students aren’t learning to read at a rate determined by someone who doesn’t know the individual children is a scam to justify hiring low-cost educational workers, installing high-cost teaching machines and hiring expensive “consultants”.

Testing is not by any stretch of the imagination teaching and it ought not to be the curriculum either. Razzle-dazzle machines are not teachers they are merely an impoverished implementation of low-level Skinnerian operant conditioning. Schools are not factories, children are not “products” to be “manufactured” and public education is not a market to be exploited . Teaching and learning are human-to-human activities, and this process has been going on since pre-historic times. The simple fact that we are still on the planet suggests success for the relationship. Let’s keep it that way.

This essay was first published at: http://NMPolitics.net