We’re not talking about second amendment advocates, creationists vs.
rational scientific explanations, nor doves vs. hawks on a war and peace
issue. The ‘movement’ away from sanity, accountability,
responsibility, humility, and reasonable arguments is being led by a
variety of MBA-type wonks who never spent a day in front of a classroom
yet use everything made up at their disposal to denigrate public
education.
Could it only be in public school where they teach
when writing a paragraph the topic sentence is followed by support
statements? You would think so since so many with the ‘Superman
Syndrome’ think that if you make a bold statement, nothing that follows
has to be supportive and if it is, it’s made up.
The list of
topics demagogued to death include charter schools vs. public education,
evaluating teachers based on student performance, the evils of the
unions, and how it’s better to use inexperienced and less paid Teach For
America neophytes rather than tenured professionals with advanced
degrees.
Support for public education is with so many other
campaign promises that President Obama has rejected, reneged, reversed
himself on, or misrepresented his position in order to win the
Presidency. (For example we can include closing Gitmo, supporting card
check, supporting a public option, opposing consolidation of the media,
opposing the excessive human and civil liberties attacks of his
predecessor, etc.) Now we see in his education platform that it is based
on the advice of so many illustrious educators like Arne Duncan, Bill
Gates and Oprah.
It is they who have the mic spewing illogic,
union/teacher bashing hysteria, and a fistful of data made up faster
than could come from a slide rule. As they used to say regarding
computer programming, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Their ‘supermen’
cheered the firing of an entire staff in a high school in Rhode Island
for low test scores. Missing from the narrative that made its way
through main stream media is that the students were majority English
Language Learners, or that it was the only high school in the poorest
city in RI. Poverty’s data has no weight when dealing with test scores.
So what that it was a highly dedicated and professional staff. They
couldn’t work the “miracles” that the private schools often do or
charter schools pretend to. The numbers said it all. Apples trump
oranges all the time.
There are many voices out there, even if
they’re sailing against the wind. The June issue of the ISR
(International Socialist Review) devotes an entire edition to exposing
the real reasons why our students are being commodified and why charter
schools are winning the grants but failing to produce what they
promise. In the NEA Today, January 21, 2011 edition it prints a
teacher’s response to Oprah.
http://neatoday.org/2010/09/24/a-teachers-letter-to-oprah/. Where else
do we get to see real criticism of Oprah and her sham knowledge of
pedagogy? After all, Oprah doesn’t have the mic, she owns it.
So
what’s to be done??How about teachers getting off their asses and doing
something. How about teachers’ unions stop groveling for crumbs from
Race To The Top and organize with other unions to stand up to the
bureaucrats and corporatists who do not have every students’ interest in
mind, only those who fit their corporate models of success. In other
words, students who can help to increase the bottom line of the testing
company, the charter school, the think tank; any corporation that sees
students as a commodity and not a living learner. If only teachers
could strike!
We see how immigrants in 2009 were able to shut
down cities (especially in California) with massive demonstrations,
echoed all over the country. If only teachers could be so organized to
shut down city after city demanding that this country return to its
values of supporting public education!
So what will be done?
We
teachers are not asleep. We’re just merely exhausted. We’re beaten
down. But we’re not on our knees. We are organizing. This July 30 we’ll
be marching in DC with the Save Our Schools March and National Call to
Action. Join its Facebook page (with the same name) and get involved.
We
certainly don’t have any friends in the White House. In his State of
the Union Address he heaped praises on teachers. Yet in the next breath
he pushed his Race To The Top as a model for educational excellence.
Right. Destroy public schools. Promote privately run, tax paid charters.
Increase the profit margin for testing companies.....
But
everyone knows a teacher. Maybe you’re married to one or one lives on
your block. Maybe you tried to talk your kids out of being one but damn
it they had the calling and just wouldn’t listen to you. Let’s remember
that in the US we have a long history of struggling for what’s in the
public interest: union rights, civil rights, suffrage, public education.
Join this march in July and begin to take back public education from
the ‘Billionaire Boys Club’*. Teachers need some kryptonite and here’s a
beginning.