Jan Resseger points out that Betsy DeVos has spent her years in office berating public schools and claiming that children and families are on their own when it comes to school choice. She reminds us of a speech DeVos gave at an ALEC conference where she scoffed at the very idea of a school system. Each of us, in her view, rows our own boat, without regard for others. We are definitely not in this together as a society or a community.
In that same speech, DeVos endorsed the rugged individualism of Margaret Thatcher, DeVos spoke of Thatcher admiringly:
I was reminded of something another secretary of education once said. Her name was Margaret. No, not Spellings — Thatcher. Lady Thatcher regretted that too many seem to blame all their problems on “society.” But, “who is society,” she asked. “There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families” — families, she said — “and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.” The Iron Lady was right then and she’s still right today.
Every family on their own, no sense of mutuality, no connectedness with others. No society to protect the weak and to guarantee rights and responsibilities.
Then came the pandemic, and the world changed. Betsy is still singing the same tired song but the rest of the world recognizes that we are indeed knit together as communities and as a society, with shared responsibilities and needs. society does exist, and we all need it to function effectively. its terrifying to be on your own at a time of great peril that threatens us all, but is especially hard on the most vulnerable and weakest members of our society.
At such a time as this, we gain new appreciation for the ties that both bind and protect us. We turn to public institutions and count on them while the 1% lock themselves away in their cocoons.
She writes:
Despite public schools’ limitations in these virtual schooling months, and despite the inequity that surrounds and permeates them, however, the systemic presence of public schools—spread across small towns, city neighborhoods and suburbs; funded with state-constitution-driven formulas; organized with predictable curriculum; and staffed with millions of teachers educated about pedagogy, developmental psychology, educational philosophy, and their particular academic disciplines—leaves these institutions better prepared to serve students and to survive the current crisis with a strong foundation. Public schools are more stable than the many other institutions families need in these times when most parents have to hold jobs outside the home in order to survive.
Market-based solutions abandon children and families to fight for their survival on their own. The strong will manage. The weak will not. The inequities that already exist will deepen. DeVos’s do-it-yourself philosophy serves the haves and imperils everyone else. We must rebuild systems built around the needs of children and families and the principle of equal educational opportunity for all, accepting that society exists for our mutual protection.
And “rugged individualism” is what got us into this mess. Right now, if I go out to a store, nearly everyone, including employees, are not wearing masks. They stand WAY too close to each other. They don’t care if they spread it to others.
And that’s the problem. No one in the U.S., especially the MAGA crowd, cares if they harm everyone else, as long as they get theirs. And so everyone, including people like Mike Pence and the governor of Oklahoma go out without masks, without social distancing, without any kind of concern for anyone else.
People are dying and no one gives a darn. And now we’re “reopening,” and everyone is crowding onto beaches, state parks, stores, wherever, and the cases will spike.
How many more thousands are going to die because people can’t understand that “love thy neighbor” is more important than “personal freedom?”
Sorry for the rant.
It takes social solitary to band together during a crisis, and sadly we don’t have a leadership that cares about social solidarity. Trump and his minions have encouraged dissent from lawful orders to protect others.
Exactly. But this was happening even before Trump. His lack of leadership is making it much worse, but, at least in my neck of the woods, this concept of “I’ve got mine” has been around as long as I can remember.
Which is weird, actually, because the dominant religion in this area has one of the strongest social welfare systems (outside of governments) in the world. Go figure.
Neither side of the aisle is a robust fan of social solidarity.
The “Don’t tread on me” crowd sure do their fair share of treading on everyone else. I don’t understand their hypocrisy?
You have to read the echo chamber to believe their response to the crisis:
“David Osborne Retweeted
Jeanne Allen
Stunningly sad, inefficient and unnecessary. Charter organizations across the country, some serving tens of thousands across multiple states, figured this out in real time. It’s time for a new model of school!”
It’s all like this- relentlessly negative towards public schools and endless, mindless cheerleading for charter schools.
Most of the schools in the country are closed and the ed reform response is what the ed reform response always is- attack public schools, promote charter schools.
I don’t think anyone who actually runs a public school has time to read the professional public school critics but it’s still amazing to watch the echo chamber all line up and issue the talking points on demand.
David Osborne is showing his true colors. He is no Democrat. Jeanne Allen is from the hard-right Heritage Foundation rightwing of the Republican party.
To open your eyes, check out which phony reformers Jeb Bush has been tweeting with.
The charter school down the street from my house has TONS of cars there every day. I don’t know if they’re making teachers come in or what, but there is NO social distancing there. “Know what they’re doing,” my left kneecap.
Indeed! “Rugged” (onerous) Balkanized individualism for the little people and cronyist socialism via infiltrating and usurping government for the wealthy and corporations. The self styled elites view all other humans as commodities to be exploited, not as citizens with natural rights worthy of being defended. The elites social ideology is the trickle down economy of Marie Antoinette.
VERY well put!
Betsy DeVos is a welfare queen.
They’re all convinced that the Trump Administration’s incompetent response to the pandemic will lead people to discard all public and government programs, but I’m not seeing that at all where I live, and Donald Trump won 70% of my county.
I see nothing but support for the local public school and a real new appreciation for the fact that public schools exist.
In this county the ONLY public or governmental entity that is working at all is the public school system. It’s the only one we hear from, or see. Everything else seems to have collapsed or run away.
Ah, the very astute Jan! However, my mischievous side notes that it really didn’t take a pandemic to show that DeVos is wrong. A mild cold would be enough. Or one cough. Or perhaps a sneeze. There are few humans wronger than Betsy.
Betsy is a naive, misinformed ideologue. I am tired of listening to her propaganda against the common good. She has no understanding of the role of public education in society.
Public schools are anchors of communities. They are the glue that binds communities together. They provide opportunities for diverse students to learn together. Public schools offer students stability in an otherwise chaotic world, and they are an expression of local governance. Our public schools helped build our nation, and they must remain a public service, not a commodity.
Thank you!
Amen to this!
and sadly it is because schools are the glue which holds communities together that those who would gentrify attack them viciously and strategically
Thanks, Diane. I appreciate the help in attracting readers in these very sad and peculiar times.
Jan Resseger
https://janresseger.wordpress.com/
“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone, March 31, 2000
All I can wonder (because we have no charter schools in our town) is who is feeding all these charter school students? I know the charter schools got the money to feed the kids but many students who attend charter schools do NOT live near the school they go to (unlike most public school students). I work at a school with under 300 students, K-8 and we are now feeding about 1/3 of them lunch everyday. So again, I wonder who is feeding the charter school students and what is happening to all that money?
In our district, Oakland Unified, the district is feeding the charter school kids. All charter websites have directed families to go to the 12 district food distribution centers located at district schools, and they can pick up both breakfast and lunch. I preface this by saying no child deserves to go hungry. But the charters did not step up to feed their own kids. I don’t know what they did with the money normally budgeted for meals.
It is an interesting question. To what extent is man a social beast vs a lone wolf? I suspect the proper balance of individualism and social engagement is akin to the balance Plato discussed between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
I doubt, however, if Ms. DeVos ever contemplated what it takes to balance life. It would be a good thing to do, however, while she was hanging out on one of her boats. I guess we cannot all be in the same boat if it requires her budget.
Watch what babies and toddlers do. Consider what they want.
A baby is born in violence, in a tearing away from the mother. From the comfortable womb, awash in the warm salt sea of the amniotic fluid, the child is forcibly and painfully expelled, by rhythmic and extreme contractions. Then the cord, the connection to the mother, is cut and clamped. In a few days, the last vestige of that connection will wither and fall off. Consider a creature of the sea, thrashed by pounding, rhythmic, breaking waves, carried immutably forward, and finally left stranded on a beach, mangled and dying on the sand as the tide recedes. Do the child and the stranded creature feel the same? It is very likely. Birth must feel like death. Little wonder that the first sound that each of us makes is a cry.
But in that cry is our hope. Is it any wonder that what the baby seeks in that cry, with all its little being, is reconnection? Hold me close. Keep me warm. Comfort me. Let me feel your breathing, hear your heart beating. Inspiration and expiration, Systole and diastole. Let the waves wash over me. Rock me in that eternal rhythm.
Birth is a tearing away. Life is all about reconnecting. Think about it. Our basic situation in this life is that your mind/spirit is over there, and mine is over here. But just about anything of any importance that happens—parenting/nurturing, talking, writing, mentoring, having sex, communicating, making music and art and science and culture generally—is about bridging that ontological gap between the self and the Other.
Every baby is born into separation, into a parallel universe of its own separated consciousness. Everyone one is born with an intense desire to bridge that gulf between the self and the Other, to reconnect.
Anyone who has observed babies and toddlers closely knows that they are by nature generous, nonviolent, social, cooperative, and have to be taught not to be so. They have to be damaged.
Our blood, btw, has the same proportion of minerals–salt and iron and so on, found in sea water. This is an evolutionary memory of the amniotic sea of the great mother from whom all life sprang.
“A baby is born in violence, in a tearing away from the mother.”
Can’t agree at all with that analysis, Bob. Not at all.
Babies develop nociceptors (receptors for pain) in the first trimester. Newborns have high levels of stress hormones. Both suggest that birth is a traumatic experience.
I don’t remember what it was like before, but nowadays, newborns come into a world where Betsy DeVos and Brett Kavanaugh are confirmed appointees, and that indubitably must be a traumatic experience.
LOL. Good point, LeftCoast!
Beautifully said.
thank you, bethree
Beautifully written, Bob. I am not sure about the violence aspect of birth. What I have contemplated is the trauma of birth that the mother experiences. I never felt so much admiration for a person as when I watched my wife produce our child. She worked harder than a steel driver.
I fear we are closer to societal collapse than anyone can now imagine or is ready to admit. The pressures will build and if not addressed comprehensively and soon we will see food riots in this nation by mid-summer. We are coming to the realization, as Zola wrote, “the reluctant acceptance of one master and one master only: the need to eat.” Levels of desperation will grow exponentially and if we continue on the current path of meager, minimal band-aid responses, it will explode with the heat of summer. And public education is at the center of our social cohesion and aspirations for the future and is literally fighting for its existence: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/district-layoffs_n_5ea9d25fc5b6ad0a43178b88
This IS happening in the wealthiest, most powerful nation in world history. We have the money and resources to get through this. The billionaire and monied classes are finally proving that billionaires and great wealth should not exist. We are seeing Marx’s axiom that profit for rich is theft of labor. And the response of vested powerful interests is proving to be sickeningly predictable. When will the military be ordered to take control? Will the grunts, who have come overwhelmingly from the working classes, follow orders if martial law is declared locally or nationally? They always have. If the Idiot determines that he must rely on the military and stop the November election in the name of national security, how will we respond? It’s not a theoretical notion anymore.
I am reminded of an excerpt of the last essay Hannah Arendt wrote, “When the facts come home to roost, let us try at least to make them welcome. Let us try not to escape into some utopias—images, theories, or sheer follies. It was the greatness of this Republic to give due account for the sake of freedom to the best in men and to the worst.” We have long ago quit trying to live up to greatness—I would argue we never did. It’s certainly nowhere on the horizon right now.
And for something completely different, any mention of Thatcher always conjures up this wonderful, spontaneous chant at a British soccer match. How similar might the chants be here someday soon and to whom will they be directed?
Betsy thinks each of us rows our own boat, without regard for others.
That explains why she has 10 yachts, so she can have her crews run over all the rowboats, and kayaks that are the only boats the middle class can afford without adding more debt to their credit cards and/or student loans.
Then there are those that live in poverty. Betsy the Beast sees them floating on inner tubes paid for by the taxes she doesn’t pay, and her yachts crews have standing orders to run them over first before they turn back to plow unhder the middle class rowboats and kayaks.
Besty wasn’t born thinking like this. Her parents, family, and friends taught her to see herself as a predator and everyone else as her prey.
The rush to reopen schools before sufficient testing and contact tracing is in place is suicidal–stupid in the extreme. How often do people have to be told that people can be carrying this virus and exposing others to it without themselves showing any symptoms? We need hundreds of millions of tests. We need a national database for contact tracing. We need the personnel to do all that contact tracing.
But we have no leadership.
The US has a population of some 330 million.
About 6 million have been tested.
2%?
Leaving children and families to fend for themselves is a feature, not a bug. God will provide. If He doesn’t provide for you, well, I guess you’re just not worthy of His Grace. Better luck in the afterlife….
.”Public schools are more stable than the many other institutions families need in these times when most parents have to hold jobs outside the home in order to survive
I can attest to this, as one who works as a special to the almost exclusively-private sector PreK schools. Just the fact that they hire PT “specials” who work for multiple schools to provide essentials like gym, music, art, science shows the shoestring budget. Typical “lead” teachers do not have BA & are paid peanuts; you’re hard-pressed to find anyone w/Early Childhood degree outside of director. This thing – PreK – is patched together small-biz/ franchise, & will collapse under the weight of the pandemic. It’s one of those services which is essential by many [ed-researched] lights, but lacks social/ govt support.