Thank goodness for Peter Greene, who finds the time to read reams of think tank reports and even the daily and weekly promotional materials produced by the U.S. Department of Education. He even reads the Department’s official blog, which regularly reminds the citizenry of what a good job the Secretary and the Department are doing, what a great contribution they are making to the improvement of American education.
Peter Greene came across a recent statement from Arne Duncan that is supposed to be his personal reflections on what he has learned as he traveled the country. Peter says he actually didn’t learn anything new. What he learned is that he has been right all along!
Peter writes:
Many people are unclear about the meaning of “learn.” Learning implies a change of state, a movement from not-knowing to knowing, from not-understanding to understanding. The world has a large supply of people who are not interested in a change of state, and so their interactions with the world around them are not about understanding or grasping or discovering, but about confirmation. They are not looking for a change of state, but of a more solid, comfortable settling into their status quo.
Politics are not conducive to learning. You don’t get many political points for saying, “Hey, I’ve look at some facts, talked to some people, examined the issue, and I’ve come to a different understanding.” In life, we aspire to be, find, foster life-long learners. In politics, learning just gets you a “flip-flopper” label.
So it’s not particularly surprising that in traveling through fifty states, Arne “learned” that he’s always been right about anything. Not once in fifty states did he encounter something that made him say, “Damn. I need to rethink this.”
And more:
Duncan goes on to cite some specific visits in which he was excited to discover that he has been right all along and that his policies are awesome. This is not learning. By the end of this piece of puffery, it’s clear that Arne has learned nothing in five years, but he has collected confirmations of his pre-existing beliefs….
The basic point of writing is that you have something you want to say and somebody you want to say it to. Arne’s essay appears to fail on both points.
I take it as the intersection of Arne in particular and politics in general– a pointless, empty exercise in talking to the air to signify, at a minimum, that you are still doing something, and that nothing has changed (just in case anybody was wondering). Devoid of personality, purpose or passion, it hints at a bureaucrat who has simply lost his moorings and any particular contact with actual human beings and the world they live in, but who may not realize that he’s even adrift.
Take it from me. It is very hard to admit you have been wrong. It is very hard to look at the evidence and publicly acknowledge error. What is especially problematic is that Arne Duncan has taken it upon himself to “reform” American education by imposing the lessons he learned in Chicago. Most people would agree that Chicago is far from being a model for America. But more important, no Secretary of Education in the past 35 years has taken it upon himself to control not only K-12 education, but higher education as well. Frankly, it’s alarming. I wish that Arne had learned in his travels that there is wisdom about education found in schools and universities across the nation, and that one of our great strengths as a nation is that we expect people and institutions to make decisions that work best for them and to operate without mandates from distant government agencies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a shorter version of what Arne has learned:
This.
Aptly stated, Dienne!
The pick and roll may not be working for him but he’s going to continue to do it.
“comfortable settling into their status quo.” That is an important phrase for the entire public ed reform debate, I think. Education, when controlled locally, represents what we have accepted as our status quo and norm. The roles of teachers and the roles of schools have been challenged by reformers because they have not looked at what the school represents in terms of “comfortable settling in their status quo” EXCEPT to turn things against teachers. To reformers, “status quo” is bad. It sounds like, here, Peter is using the term against politicians in the same way, yes? So should anyone ever be comfortable with anything? Could settling into the status quo also be considered settling into good living, as much as you can attain it within in a defined set of circumstances (as teachers seem to have done for the last 50 years?)
Could the Arne situation point to the general problem with the Department of Education to begin with? Can we learn anything beyond just that Arne is no good? Is it because what is would he do as Sec of a department we likely don’t need? Arne is no good because DOE.
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what else would he do, rather
And Obama thinks that the issue with the latest election was immigration. His learning curve has issues, too.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The only thing Arne Duncan thinks is that he is the only who knows what’s right for public education. Everyone else is wrong.
Where’s the ed reform commentary on the for-profit takeover in York PA?
They just privatized a whole district. They rolled right over the people who live there. I would think that would be big news in The Movement.
Think Duncan and The Team will be tweeting out any congratulations on that “charter conversion”? Why not? They’ve been pushing charters on states, nonstop, for nearly 7 years. They just captured a whole Pennsylvania district. Where’s the Sec of Ed to tell us how great CSUSA is and how all public schools should be “learning” from them?
The company is managed by an all-star cast of ed reformers, most of whom used to work in government. He probably knows half of them personally, given the Obama Administration’s laser-like focus on the “charter sector”. Weird silence on such a ground breaking new “reform”.
Chiara: I agree.
The silence is deafening.
😎
One of the things that Arne Duncan has learned—and is a confirmation of his unique ability to think under the box—is that high-stakes standardized testing is a) somewhat good, b) somewhat bad, and in the most “blended learning” sense of all, c) somewhat good/somewhat bad at one and the same time.
And best of all for edupreneurs and edubullies and edufrauds and their enablers everywhere, accountably underlings have proven with unassailable mathematical precision that Arne’s A + B + C = “blending earning” at its $tudent $ucce$$ best.
Problems? Turns out that it’s Arne’s critics that have it all wrong. He’s the one that’s for the kids. Just read these moving words by high-stakes standardized test promoter #1:
[start quote]
Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact. Some schools have an almost obsessive culture around testing, and that hurts their most vulnerable learners and narrows the curriculum. It’s heartbreaking to hear a child identify himself as “below basic” or “I’m a one out of four.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation
Or as he might put it, word salad and cognitive dissonance prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s been right all along.
Rheeally! In a most Johnsonally sort of way, he would high five and chest bump himself if it were possible and didn’t look so immodest…
Although a very old and very dead and very Greek guy had him pegged long long ago:
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
Really!
😎
Thanks, Diane. It is an exceptional person that continues to learn throughout their life. Arne isn’t in that category. You are, and are greatly cherished for that rare capacity.
To answer the question:
To have learned how to be a better brown nosed ass kissing toady sycophant.
I wonder how much all those trips cost the US taxpayers??????