When I lectured in Chattanooga last week, I noticed a strange phenomenon. When I said things bluntly, people gasped. At one point, for example, I responded to a question by saying that the Legislature should not cut education to give tax breaks to corporations. The audience noticeably gasped. There were several moments like that. It occurred to me that the politicians in Tennessee are so eager to attract corporate investment, that it is a sacrilege to question the strategy of cutting education to fund corporate tax breaks.
A thoughtful comment by an educator in Tennessee:
Thanks for the visit. It sparked much needed conversation around these issues. The South seems so willing to sell out to invading corporate giants…perhaps b/c of our long history of poverty. Last to industrialize, means last to unionize, means furtile ground for the invaders. We are the third world the Romneys used to have to go abroad to find and exploit. But, as the Chicago strike indicates, we are not alone in the fight to protect our basic negotiation rights. Unfortunately, I fear that we in the south will be dependent upon the outrage of our northern counterparts who have historically had more practice protesting against those who would sell our souls to the company store. The Rhees of the world will have more traction here for all the reasons the now insulted 47% here still vote Republican: poverty, ignorance, and prejudice. However, nothing feuled the privatization of education in the south like desegregation. As a teacher here for the last twenty-five years, I can attest it is still the prime mover. I’m pretty sure this is true nationally. NCLB is just a clever way to come into this effort through the back door…undetected apparently even by our first black president.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We used to sell business on our states, cities, or towns because of a strong public education system. Their employees wanted strong public schools. If they wanted a strong workforce, they shopped for strong schools. Good schools were good for business.
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Wow, that Tenn educator is very sharp… I wonder how many of my Memphis Jewish friends use the public schools, and it is not only race/class… I think that public education needs to gain a “soul”, soulfuless, ie. meaning, purpose… A sense of transcendence. A New mission is required… And our leaders do not get it… They are testing and trifling.
TY! Neal
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For God’s sake, Diane: go to sleep for a while. Good night.
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Well, I was at your lecture, and maybe I interpreted things differently. In my case, if I gasped it was because I was pleasantly surprised that somebody finally had the courage to say what needed to be said. Finally! Of course, I will have to admit that I am originally from Ohio. I moved here during my 20s, and I’ve been here several years. Sometimes it still seems pretty backward. But I hear things have been tough on teachers in Ohio too.
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Why sleep when there are important things to be done.
One day, you will sleep forever.
Thank you Diane!
Neal 🙂
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I keep saying to myself, you can rest when you are dead.
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Yes, but let’s make it later rather than sooner.
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Okay, lets rise and shine. I have to be in my classroom in one hour and ten minutes.
Tennessee was a border state in the civil war. I lived there as a child, as well as in Georgia and Florida. Your Tennessee reader is pointing his finger in the wrong direction to understand the political “backwardness” of Southern poverty.
In the aftermath of the civil war, the (numerous!) poor whites who had sided with the North were politically active, but their legacy was washed away by a tide of blood and terror. I never knew this as a child, but my own ancestors had joined the Northern blockade fleet that cut off the Florida coast, and were active in the attempt at democratic governance afterward. Here’s a book about it:
It wasn’t the poor whites who rode in the night and burned, hanged, and dragged resistors to death when the confederates took control again. I was born in 1949, while those events were within living memory, and our true history dared not be whispered.
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chemtchr, thanks for that book, I look forward to reading it. I live in East TN the region of the state where the preponderance of the soldiers joining the Civil War fought for the north. The history of E. TN’s involvement in the Civil War is one of fractured families, impoverished farmers and very few slave holders. The land here is mountainous & rocky and not conducive to cotton. E.TN has been historically conservative, extremely religious, very white, and until the last 30 years with the growth of Knoxville & Chattanooga, politically isolated from Nashville & Memphis.
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Thanks for the book. I’ll check it out since I definitely enjoy history.
However, my comment about “backwardness” had nothing to do with southern poverty. It had more to do with prevailing attitude. Where I grew up (in a rural part of Ohio btw), nobody openly asked somebody else about personal matters like religious beliefs; here it happens all the time.
When I said it seems backwards, I was not talking about the whole Civil War thing (even if many here act like it happened last year). Down here, it isn’t considered “manly” to drink through a straw or you’re “gay” (like it matters…) if you wear a purple shirt. There is a Nathan Bedford Forest Day (almost like having a holiday for Hitler). I like it here, but I definitely moved to “Nashville” and not “TN” so much. There are some progressive minds here for sure, so I’m not trying to say everybody has only two teeth or even that people who aren’t progressive do either.
A little less than 10 years ago, I taught in an area of TN where the two presidents who students talked badly about (probably a reflection of home) were Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. Many students didn’t believe me when I said Lincoln was a Republican. With regard to the confederate flag, I like to point out the flag in the classroom and say, “Well I’m an American, and this is my flag.”
As for another example of backwardness, I won’t even get started with what some people consider “due process” for a teacher that would never fly elsewhere. I’ve seen some really bad things happen to good educators, and a good but relatively weak union.
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Diane,
This is an e-mail from one of my close friends who is active in Nashville Democratic politics about the Nashville School Board action denying Great Hearts charter application. We’ve had long conversations about education privatization in TN. She provides a personal perspective of parents on the Nashville School Board:
“There is a whole other angle, however, that I think pro-public school advocates are missing. The obvious thing that is happening is the top-down privatization
movement. The less obvious thing: folks are becoming really receptive to this.
I attending a weeknight gathering this past week, where the issue of the latest mess in Nashville came up. (You know the story: Nashville school board rejected
Great Hearts, saying they didn’t meet charter school guidelines; the state overrode that; the school board voted 5-4 to reject Great Hearts again; now Huffman is
taking $3.4 mil out of the Metro school budget.) Essentially, Metro has no recourse here–the law falls entirely in favor of the state (regardless of who holds the
moral high ground).
The shocking thing to me about this discussion (a private dinner party) was that almost everybody there was ready to throw Metro to the wolves. Most
favored charter schools, liked Bredesen’s policies, Karl Dean’s (pro-charter) policy, favored Great Hearts, weren’t particularly unhappy with Huffman and Haslam.
None were unhappy with the Obama/Arne Duncan approach–not at all.
This was a gathering of ALL DEMOCRATS, except 1 Repub male, who didn’t even open his mouth on this topic. (An aside: this was an animated discussion, and
it probably scared him to be in a group where people didn’t all agree and praise Jesus.)
Income range was solidly middle class to upper middle class. Business owners, professionals, bureaucrats….
(no teachers)
I’ve thought a lot about this, and about what was said by each person, etc. THis was a group who SHOULD have been pro-public schools all the way.
And yet, I had a strong impression that these hearts and minds have been lost.
And for more personal reasons that anything Rhee or billionaires or others were saying or doing.
THIS is what I think I heard them saying: they want public schools to start catering to their own kids.
The want public schools that COMPETE with MBA, Harpeth Hall, St. Cecilia. They want not just one Hume Fogg magnet school (which is a phenomenal
school that everybody wants their kid to go to)–they want MOSTLY Hume Fogg type schools in metro nashville.
(Hume Fogg lacks the posh facilities of the private schools,
but their kids score higher and go to Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc. For a poor kid to get into HF is like winning the lottery; this is where the Obamas of tomorrow go.)
they don’t want to hear as much about poor kids, or people who cannot read—cause it’s old old news. They’re fatalistic about helping them.
They have heard and talked about poverty for a long time and they’ve glazed over.
THis was a fairly liberal crowd; they’re not hostile to the poor, minorities, or to people they see as “disadvantaged.”
But they want public schools for themselves. They want poor kids to have schools–but not in a way that interferes with their own kids getting a super education.
They’d love to have disadvantaged kids in their kids classes–the smart ones, that is.
Basically they want
schools for kids who already know how to use computers and have been reading for years by 1st grade.
If they can get their kids into the topnotch public schools, they send them there (Akin, Percy Priest, Hume Fogg, etc). They’d rather do this than go private.
But they’re never going to send their kids to a school where they’re still teaching reading in 3rd grade. They expect their kids to be reading by end
of first grade (which they’d see as “late”), they want calculus in junior high. They’ll pay more for public schools if the schools have something for them.
Most of all, they are SICK of the bureaucracy of school administration. If they have a problem with at school, they expect solution, and quickly.
If a public administration (and the teacher unions) cannot deliver solutions quickly (and they don’t)–they’re open to having schools run by a business.
Even if the business blows them off–and as we know, private schools will blow you off, if they don’t want to solve your problem.
They’re not interested in working with people who take years to get back to you.
They HATE Metro schools admin, NEA, and they are not crazy about the school board either.
When I say the teachers, academics, teacher unions, et al. have failed in the PR battle,
this is what I mean. These folks used to be on board. Now they are not. They know schools are underfunded.
But if they fund schools, they want them to be schools for their own kids.
Some of these folks LOVED the idea behind Great Hearts; sort of like, “public schools for the rest of us.”
(the rest of us who have iPads)
They don’t blame teachers at all, most think highly of teachers they know.
(And they are not so high and mighty that they don’t know teachers.) But they think the system sucks, is unresponsive, etc.
They think the unions tend to be blind and deaf (though not evil, like Repubs think).
aNd of course, most private sector people think the notion of tenure is absurd, an ancient relic. Job security is so…1955.
I say that because I note that this was one of the issues of the Chicago strike (and I think it’s a loser).
Not sure what the solution is: I wish Diane Ravitch would form a think tank (and hire you, and the other great advocates). And get some better
PR out there, and start a better discussion.
Obviously, most first world democracies have been able to structure successful public systems (tho not perfect). And as I’ve said over and over,
I think putting schools into a commercial model is doomed to failure.
Basically the education establishment needs to present a different better model to overcome the privatizers et al.
They’ll never get traction unless they can convince people that they have a better way.”
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This is an incredible comment / analysis. Thanks for sharing this.
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For better or worse, there has been a long held belief that Metro Nashville Public Schools are bad, incompetent, etc. I believe there are some good schools in Nashville and some bad ones. There is a history of desegregation and bussing that resulted from a lawsuit a few decades ago (I won’t go into it, but look it up if you care to). There have been cases since the suit where children did not attend neighborhood schools, but were bussed across town. The last I heard about this was they were going to stop bussing, but that’s been a while ago and I don’t know what came of it. I do know that my house is not zoned for the two elementary schools that are closest to it. Many people do move out of Nashville (Davidson County) once their children reach middle school; others buy homes outside Nashville for cheaper property tax rates and schools they’d prefer before their children start school. Some people say the schools system is too big… My experience has been that it depends on the school you’re dealing with and the administration there; sometimes it seems good, and sometimes it isn’t. Yet, NMPS is kind of it’s own microcosm.
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Also, I definitely agree that students do get held back by grade level standards. Every student needs rigor, regardless of level, and that includes the highest achievers (or dare I even say gifted). There’s an interesting report called “A Nation Deceived” that you can look up on Google and download a PDF.
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I think the reader made great comments. To his list of factors, I would also add “power”–From my experience, historically Southern culture has placed a strong emphasis on hierarchy and domination compared to the North. Southerners have always seemed relatively more uncomfortable with questioning authority and taking collective action to better their circumstances than Yankees; conversely, the South has always seemed more comfortable with the idea of domination of large groups by individuals and small groups than the North.
I think that has a lot to do with the early histories and geography of both regions. The North was settled by religious and political dissenters and peoples of European heritage, while the South was settled mainly by peoples of Scotch and Irish heritage that were more family and clan-focused. The differences in terrain and climate also made a big difference, with the Southerners being more more isolated than Northerners. And of course, the slave-owning South had to maintain a much more rigid social hierarchy than the emancipated North. I think all of these are important cultural factors, in addition to the resentment engendered by the Democrats’ support of the Civil Rights movement, that have made it more easy for the South to embrace the sorts of politics and economics pushed by the GOP.
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I can tell you there are cultural differences for sure. I was almost offended the first time a student called me sir. Had I done that where I grew up, it would have been considered smart alecky. We were taught just to say, “Yes” or “No.”
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When I was at BreadLoaf in VT, I became friendly with some teachers from South Carolina who were appalled, and silent, when I spoke about union issues and school reform (this was way back in 2001). A NJ teacher who has lived in the south for ten years helped me understand that southern teachers have been made to think unions are the enemy.
Your reader makes an excellent point. The South was the third world northern corporations went to to get cheap labor. Now they are the new northerners, who are being left behind, as corporations outsource. Yes, it is time for our brothers and sisters in the south to step out of their past and join unions and to fight for them. They need to stop being the turkeys that voted for Thanksgiving.
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Moosensquirels is correct. Logic, fairness and “what is right” doesn’t enter into traditional Southern culture, power and knowing your place in the hierarchy is far more important and kept close. Read The Warmth of Other Suns. It describes how brutal African American parents could be in Jim Crow days to prepare their children for a world in which Whites could treat them so much worse.
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Well, I am half Southern, and Southern custom dictates that you avoid bluntness and controversy at all costs. A lot of social interaction consists of smoothing things over. Not that I endorse this — I am also a third generation NYker, whose Southern relatives came here because they didn’t agree with Southern customs. But after living for five years in the South I was shocked by what seemed to be the insufferably rudeness of NYkers. However I quickly got used to it. NYker have other ways of being polite, and one of them is to quickly set you straight when you are wrong.
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What about SOME of the really “polite” southern bell types who say something really mean in a really “nice” way? If you can imagine, “Well that’s the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen…” said in a “nice” and “well-mannered” fashion.
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These parents want what well educated, mid to upper middle income families want: excellent public schools. Anyone is welcome as long as they are there for the same reasons. They are no different than parents in Chicago. Remember white, mid/upper mid class parents were the one group who were more likely to oppose the strike and to support charters. The last high school I worked in tracked the kids into college or career tiers. The most serious students were in the college track and were the only students who had their own books. My students were special ed students. The class was self-contained reading, but the students could be in other mainstream classes or not. In the two and a half years I taught the program it was never set up on time. Student schedules took from 4-6 weeks before students were in the right classes (double period). The computer component of the program took as long if not longer to be in place and textbooks were shared.
I can’t say I blame those TN parents for wanting more for their kids; I loved my students but they had a long way to go and would have been totally lost in the college prep classes and often were lost in the regular tier. Students who are lost for whatever reason do not tend to be assets to high performance classes and are more likely to be downright disruptive. With all our lip service to differentiation and educating the whole child, we are woefully poor at providing a quality education for all students. Rahm Emanuel was ready to warehouse the bottom 25%; I don’t think most people have any idea what a quality education for those kids might look like. It’s easier to educate children who are more likely to come prepared at least with a family that places a high value on education and has some resources to support quality.
So now we are faced with a massive disinformation campaign, ignorance, both willful and innocent, and socioeconomic group tendencies to circle the wagons.
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Great comments— this can all be posted on NYC ed, etc. Looks like a national problem for sure and here in NYC we have plenty of issues! The next Mayor here better be very smart!
We started our own K-5 and now K-8 public school in NY NY…
And NYC is the most residentially segregated in the US!
Lots to say here… I like the think tank idea… Need a Soros-type to fund it…
For now, Neal
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Dr. Ravitch, this is a common reaction by southerners to anyone, especially a “yankee”, who offers plain unvarnished honesty. It has been my experience that many southerners, who are accustomed to beating around the bush, find bluntness to be shocking and even rude.
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I was brought up in Texas and am familiar with Southern culture and mores. I think that everyone has to stand up and defend themselves or lose public education, their school, and their career.
Diane
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I agree with Diane! Strongly! 🙂 TY! Neal
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Cannot help but think of Borat at the dinner party………
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Man, the comments on this blog have been outstanding! I lived, was raised and educated in the Midwest. I left the Midwest in the mid 60s and have lived below the Mason-Dixon Line ever since. There are days I still experience cultural shock.
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Best education discussion on the Internet!
Diane
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Simply put, the people of the south want to depend on the man in the big house to take care of them. The governor, senator, legislator, corporation, banker, mayor etc. It is a southern thing and ingrained in the southern lifestyle. The civil war may have ended a wrong in this country, but it did not end the mentality taught in the homes of southern whites. The reason people gasp is due to your shocking their good feelings towards those in charge.
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