A note from a teacher who was one of those rehired for a turnaround school.
Thank you, Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, for the unnecessary damage you inflict on schools, communities, students and teachers, all the while publicly proclaiming that it’s “for the children.”
| Yesterday I made a sojourn into my school, one of the 24 closing schools. (I say my school because I was hired back although the bloodletting that followed the ridiculous interview process fills one with survival guilt.) I called first to make sure the building was open and was told “Yes” and headed in to feed my classroom fish.
When I arrived at school you would have thought I was trying to penetrate the Pentagon or CIA. I was told by people, first security, then 2 APs and a secretary I “cannot be in the building.” I kind of told them that I had called first and just kept on walking to my room. I half expected to be physically stopped although that did not happen. Whatever the reason for making the building a no-fly zone, all the recent events have left me and many of my colleagues shell shocked. I am naturally cynical but not paranoid however this whole process has left many of very suspicious. The scars of these last few months will not be limited to teachers; the students will bear scars as well. A little paranoia and a distrust of people in suits may turn out to be beneficial in an evolutionary sense. Still, I wonder what directive they may have gotten from the Chancellor and what mischief the mayor may be cooking up to get out of this decision. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Second City Teacher” makes a very interesting comment on Fred Klonsky’s blog:
Recently, I have started thinking of Mr. Bloomberg and cronies as perpetrators of the “Big Lie” up there with Hitler and Stalin. I have been afraid to say this out loud because I felt it to be to incendiary. Maybe it is about time we all get angry enough to stop the lies. Thanks to Jon Awbrey and the comment by “Second City Teacher.”
Comparing education reformers to Nazis — you stay classy, Ravitch commenters.
Commenters exercise freedom of speech.
So do I.
So do you.
They’re absolutely free to say whatever they want. They’re just incredible tasteless and insensitive to Holocaust victims for doing so.
Anti-democratic movements always start small in democratic countries.
It shows nothing but respect for the lessons of history to listen for the echoes of inveigling rhetoric that led, step by step, to historical horrors. And then to call it out for the mind that hides behind the mask, lest we forget and repeat the mistake of holding our tongues again.
Nicely said!
You might want to read “Stalinizing American Education” by Lawrence Baines from the 9/16/11 Teacher College Review before you condemn the equation of modern American education reformers to fascist regimes. The parallels between the former Soviet system and today’s reform-speak are chilling.
“In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was mired in recession. Poverty and unemployment, especially among the peasant
class, were rampant. Although the existing educational system was efficient and progressive, especially
considering schools’ negligible funding, most Soviet children did not attend school. The Soviet government, led by
Joseph Stalin, instigated a series of educational reforms designed to obliterate the established educational system
and to create a new centralized structure that would increase literacy, create “good citizens,” and transform the
Soviet Union into a global power, particularly in the areas of science, mathematics, and technology. The
similarities of Soviet educational initiatives in the 1930s to American educational reform today are as discomfiting
as they are striking.”
Click to access Stalinizing%20American%20Education.pdf
The commenter simply points out a very obvious similarity between the rhetoric of Chicago’s school reformers and the nearly identical verbiage in Mein Kampf. How is this “tasteless and insensitive” when it is true? What does “classy” have to do with it? Don’t working class teachers have the right to talk back to our business overlords in the new libertarian utopia of American education?
To answer your last question, NO! And if a teacher talks about socioeconomic class differences you will be labelled as being too “political” and then properly sanctioned-“yes master beat me more until I understand”.
From a prior post:
We have been under increasingly what I have called for years the “Sovietization” of public education. I modified that phrasing to “McDonaldization” so that Americans, who had a hard time understanding that concept as the Soviet Union is long gone, would be able to understand. Why is it that if this country became so great (and I reject that characterization) from the end of WW2 to the mid 70′ we didn’t have “standardized education” but an eclectic mix of whatever the local school boards determined-not that all were rosy and good. But if I were going to destroy a country and its potential I certainly would “standardize” everything, especially the public education system a la the USSR.
Americans understand the concept that one cannot get a gourmet meal at McD’s. And I use McD’s as the example, not to criticize them and the model-standardization-they work under as it works tremendously to make the owner of the McD’s a ton of money (the workers certainly don’t see their fare share of it). It appears that the folks in the USA want a gourmet meal (by definition non standardized) at McD’s prices. And that just doesn’t work in the public education realm. We don’t want to pay for the messiness that is non-standardized “gourmet” education.
Jake McGuire, you must be new to blogs, else you would have recognized Goodwins’ Law in action. If comparisons to Nazis offend you, better stay away from the internet.
From Wikipedia:
Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies[1][2]) is an observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”[2][3] In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes some comparison to Hitler and the Nazis
Godot’s Law —
As the number of Nazis in a population increases, the probability that someone will notice it approaches 1.
Please read full article…link below:
Nadelstern designed the department’s network school support structure upon the premise that principals should mostly be left alone, as long as they deliver performance results. When he left, Nadelstern said he was confident that his deputies would carry on the work they had been doing with him.
But in a working paper published late last week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research group associated with the University of Washington, Nadelstern says the department has lost its way. Instead of thinking about what would be best for students, officials have considered what would be best for Mayor Bloomberg, he says. Rather than trusting principals to make the right choices for their schools, officials are mandating instructional changes. The department is frittering away federal funds centrally rather than distributing them to schools. And instead of using the network structure to support schools, the department is using a “ruthlessly efficient structure for micromanaging” them, he writes.
http://gothamschools.org/2012/07/03/former-top-official-gives-scathing-review-to-does-current-state/
Something must be done before more schools are taken over!!! What are we doing to the next generation??