There comes a time when the seemingly disparate parts of a puzzle fit together. Or the time when you see the pattern on the rug.
That’s when you see that the attacks on teachers, the concerted efforts to roll back collective bargaining rights, the frequent–and false–claims that public education is failing, the advocacy for virtual schools, movies like “Waiting for Superman,” laws that advance privatization….a pattern emerges.
These are not isolated events.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the pattern that you are seeing with education is but a small part of the pattern the billionaire boys club has for society as a whole. All the links you’ve posted about the decline of the middle class and the rise of poverty are all part of it too. Banana Republic – coming soon to a country near you! (And I’m not talking about the clothing store.)
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Great piece on the coming train wreck that was public education. Alas, while I see the pattern too, for me the color is a bit darker. Like medical care, I doubt we’ll see any real interest in containing costs; the private sector will just sacrifice quality for profit, each year delivering less at an inflated price.
I expect that if the game as it now appears plays out, we’ll eventually see the for-profits and the legislature arguing ironically and cynically for greater tax payer education subsidies “for the children”. When the public complains and demands “parental control”, “choice”, and “accountability”, they’ll be told they’re too ill informed and untrained for such complex judgements and that everything is just fine–with a little more money.
When dealing with narcissists and psychopaths, two common personality types often encountered in business and politics, I’ve learned over the years to see many of their statements–and especially accusations–as Freudian projections; and I try to invert the claims so that instead of a “you” or “they” I insert and “I” or “we”. I’m quite happy with the predictive power of this technique.
Just remember the line at the end of that old Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”:
“That book, ‘To Serve Man’, it’s . . . it’s a cook book!”
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I used to think Agenda 21 was just a theory…………
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Yes, this is game over for public education as we know it. We have about as much chance of stopping or slowing down this process as a serf overthrowing a king during the Middle Ages. Most of the public is going along with the teacher bashing propaganda. The majority of Americans are hopelessly ignorant and unable to think critically about anything. The deeper (underlying) problem is that we have too many people for a Post-Industrial society. We have enough people for an Industrial society, but that went away long ago. Today, there simply aren’t enough jobs. The elite aren’t interested in pretending to educate the poor anymore or offer an expensive babysitting service for free. Wealthy kids go to private schools, and the rest of society can learn on-line at home from their basements. This is how it will be, especially for the cities.
There is some truth to the fact that kids don’t appreciate what is given to them for “free” and obviously, most American kids have failed to take advantage of free education. Perhaps by offering two choices -private schools or on-line schools (no school at all really) then kids who did go to school would actually take education more seriously. This makes some sense to me. That is why Oprah Winfrey built her school in South Africa and not in Chicago. She said that the kids in Chicago just wanted fancy shoes, but the students in S.A. actually wanted to learn. Even Socrates talked about public vs. private education and foresaw this problem.
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“Even Socrates talked about public vs. private education and foresaw this problem.”
And the Athenian Rheeformers certainly took care of him!
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What I find so interesting is that these conservatives believe in simple solutions to the problems of education, teach to test, bust unions, end tenure, evaluate teachers by test scores, etc. My experience as a parent activist in a true turnaround school is that it required hard work, trust, and cooperation between teachers, parents and administration. Improvements in retrospect were incremental and it took years to “turnaround” our school. I should note that my son’s elementary school is an NYC zoned elementary school.
One thing that is clear to me is that the path to changing, and hopefully improving, schools and school systems, is neither simple nor straight. This is a lesson that today’s “reformers” fail to grasp. Unfortunately, the “reformers” who seek to remunerate themselves or their patrons probably understand this all too well and have other motives.
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Henry James • The Figure in the Carpet
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It frustrates and surprises me so much that others do not see this pattern, or they simply do not care what is happening to education.
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My Version …
The Place Where Three Wars Meet
One of the interesting things about the curse of our nation’s interesting times is the chance we have to observe how that triple threat — the War on Democracy, the War on Education, and the War on Science — work hand in hand in hand to wreak havoc on every core value of American society our parents and teachers impressed on us in what now seems like ancient days.
The inseparable bond between democratic government and public education is no doubt obvious to anyone whose mind and character have been nurtured by the lessons of progressive education — perhaps too obvious to understand how anyone could fail to see how each will die without the other.
At any rate, most of us can probably see how the war on democracy and the war on education are just two fronts in a larger campaign to nullify the core values that our Founders labored to give birth on this Continent.
But the war on science? Or inquiry, knowledge, research, truth — however you want to put it? What is that about? Where does that come into the fray?
For one thing, think of the armory of double-think-tanks that constantly bombard the public with barrage on barrage of agenda-driven reports, the host of which tanks operate in exact opposition to the way genuine researchers are trained to conduct historical and scientific research.
For another thing, the public is now so inundated by the rain of abuse on our university-educated teachers that — unlike every other civilized country in the world — they forget the role that academic freedom plays in conveying the truth about realities not-to-be-denied to the generations that will have to face those realities squarely and without the escape of wishful illusion.
So you can’t have a really good war on democratic education without a multi-pronged assault on academic freedom, communication, information, inquiry, journalism, knowledge, research, science, and truth. Now can you?
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The War on Science is as necessary as the War on Education in the ultimate war, which is the War on Democracy. The War on Science allows the powers that be to undermine any sense of truth, so no one knows what to believe. We’ve seen it with global warming. The science is solid that global warming is happening and it is human caused, but the deniers have obscured the truth by making it seem like there’s legitimate controversy on the matter, which translates to people not feeling terribly urgent about it because, after all, we really don’t know if global warming is real or not.
We’re now seeing the same thing with class sizes. Again, the science is definite that smaller class sizes = more learning, but a handful of “studies” have emerged to undermine that truth. And again the deniers have their “studies” conveniently packaged so they can “prove” they’re right. In order to prove them wrong, you’d have to be willing to dig through avalanches of diverse sources to look at study after study. Although the weight of the evidence is clearly on the small class size side, the research isn’t neatly organized and packaged in one handy link.
Similar assaults are occuring on so many fronts to undermine core values of our society – things that ten or fifteen years ago we all thought were settled issues. Torture, creationism, even the negative effects of smoking are again “questionable” or “controversial”. It’s all a cover for the billionaires to do what they want, because we don’t “know” that what they’re doing is harmful (even though we do know). Given this lack of “knowledge”, all us ordinary folks can do is trust the “experts”, who are defined by the media.
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The media-made “evil scientist” has been around for quite a while. It has worked well to erode the public trust in science.
The media-made “evil teacher” is being created in its image. Will it stick? Will it destroy the public trust in education? There are more of us teachers than there are scientists and we are in every school in every neighborhood caring for their children. My students and my students’ parents still trust and respect me. We can stop this one. The billionaire-owned media may win the attack on science, but it will be much harder to win the attack on teachers and public education.
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Diane-
Here’s a link to an article published in Wired magazine in 1992:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/hyperlearning.html
The article is written as an open letter to Information Industry Executives and opens as follows:
“Dear Information Industry Executive:
Could your business benefit from a few hundred billion dollars in new sales? Good. Let’s talk.
This trend began when you were working with Bush I… I’m glad you’ve seen the pattern… let’s hope others do before public schools go the way of the Post Office
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