Elitism may be a dirty word in some circles, but not to EduShyster.
She here commends the graduates of tony private schools who work so hard to see that their lesser brethren can go to “no excuses” schools where they will learn to sit up straight and keep their eyes on the teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hey, it’s Hard Times at Ridgemont High ….
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“Members of Generation R seek more special opportunities for a select group of students—just like they had.They view education through the prism of their own specialness.” There you have it. No thought for the greater good since they are unused to thinking in such terms.
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Mercedes,
Have you gotten a chance to look into the Wilson writings?
Duane
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The “elite” have blinders because they can’t handle the truth about the lives of children who cope with poverty. Poverty is a concept they cannot grasp. They do not have real answers to the challenges that poverty presents and that makes these “gifted” problem solvers very uncomfortable. To assuage these uncomfortable feelings, they create their own realities. They organize schools that cherry-pick students, expel the unmanageables, and tweak stats and test scores. The real difficult students they keep out of sight, not even seen in their peripherals. They then pat themselves and other reformers on back as successes when the misery of poverty continues whether the “elites” see it or not.
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Look at it from another angle. How hard is it to understand that the children of those who give orders want the children of people who are like their parents’ subordinates to attend schools where they will enthusiastically embrace the “virtues” of compliance and low level skill sets? Why would anyone fancying herself/himself a member of the “virtuous” elite think that the vast majority of us [the “undeserving” poor] should get anything better than a chance to serve them? Their only proviso is that in the eyes of this select chosen few the true mark of our merit is the unconditional embrace of their view of us: fit to hew wood and carry water whilst they do about the serious business of, well, whatever it is they say they are serious about. “Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die.”
I remember many years ago attending a class in Mexico where the teacher explained how Diego Rivera [the well known and controversial muralist who embraced various political viewpoints] enraged the Mexican elites of the early twentieth century when he had the effrontery to display on public walls not the faces of the edubullies of that time but their servants! What sort of art was that? Not the portraits of the heads of the wealthy/famous/powerful households but the members of their lowly staffs! People who didn’t understand their proper stations in life! This was pure insanity!
I do not know how others posters to this blog will react, but props to Michael J. Petrilli who was not afraid to say aloud what the other “edreformers” actually think: the needs of the deserving few outweigh the needs of the undeserving many. Forward into the nineteenth century! So he gets my nod for the MikeTalk Plaque [aka LettingtheCatoutoftheBag Award] for 2013.
🙂
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KrazyTA,
You see the problem is that you just don’t understand. You, unfortunately, have been exposed, obviously, to thoughts and ways of thinking that the hinder your progress in supporting the elites. Wasn’t it Plato that said that only the “philosopher kings” should rule and the rest should know their place in order to be “happy”? Obviously, you do not know your place, and it’s not among the “philosopher kings”. I think G. Carlin says it well about who owns what in the world.
In other words, this scenario has played itself out many times before in human history (at least the “Western” version). (And I know you know that, eh!)
Duane
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“NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR”
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