Remember that the emergency manager in Detroit imposed a new teachers’ contract in which class sizes would be allowed to rise to absurd levels?
Remember that the contract permits classes of up to 41 children in grades K-3, up to 61 children in grades 6-12?
Remember all that?
The emergency manager just said in an opinion article in the Detroit Free Press that “it’s a good contract for our children.”
Yes, it’s always “for the chidden.”
It’s for the children when they test them and rank them by their scores.
It’s for the children when they lay off their teachers.
It’s for the children when they lay off the school nurse and the social worker and the librarian.
It’s for the children when they close their school.
It’s for the children when they privatize public education.
No matter what you think, no matter what it appears to be: It’s for the children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
when they say “we’re doing it for the children” it’s almost always not
that phrase is meant to distract people from challenging them.
what i can’t understand is why no one challenges them when they make that comment.
why doesn’t anyone say, “where is the evidence that this policy is going to be good for the children?”
when we do not challenge those that say, “it’s for the children” we are giving them tacit approval that their words are true.
on a side note, if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
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A lie never becomes the truth, no matter how many times it is told.
The Nazis did believe in the propaganda technique of telling a lie again and again until it appeared to be the truth.
But the truth has a habit of eventually freeing itself from the lies.
And the truth will out.
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The Dr. Josef Goebbels Method works both ways. Tirelessly point point what you have written to the point of implicitly ridiculing their catch phrases
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I always feel so sorry for the people who live in Detroit. They are really on tough times. My husband moved from there, and he can’t believe all the LIFE we have here in IL. He says, “In Detroit, they are merely surviving. Here, they are LIVING.” Good luck to them – those who can’t afford to move, and have no power to change things. 😦
-@JoyKirr
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Virtually every harmful movement in the 20th century has portrayed itself as a visionary movement created to improve society. Movements, good or bad, march under the same banner of humanitarianism and good intentions.
What is unique to harmful movements is that they thrive on the idea that some powerless and demonized group is the obstacle to fulfilling the grand vision; and that obstacle must be neutralized or removed. The victims are transformed into perpetrators.
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“. . . that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily,” J. Goebbels
“The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” the aide-K. Rove
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I have never gotten over Rove’s overweening arrogance in that quote. It’s especially frightening that he is describing policy makers, who I firmly believe should be very aware of reality and not believe their own press.
But the arguments are correct in another way, in that people view the world through the lens of their own ideas and values. Realities that do not fit their preconceptions are ignored, and alternate stories are appealing. We need to be offering an alternate vision, not just attack the unrealities in the “reform” camp’s arguments.
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What this often boils down to is a challenge thrown at teachers: “if you really cared about the children, you’d take huge pay cuts. Then these other cuts wouldn’t have to happen.” If you balk at this, you are being greedy and focusing only on the needs of adults. Of course, this plants the assumption that more funding for schools is not possible or desirable – which is precisely the argument they are trying to establish. They’ve been very successful at this.
As George Lakoff says, “the facts will not set you free.” This is a battle over values, and we need to take the fight there. And educators can’t do it alone.
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When a politician says “it’s about the children”, believe that about as much as you should believe an athlete when they say “it’s NOT about the money”.
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