Reading a Christmas Carol for Our Own Times

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1. kenpreviti says:

   December 25, 2012 at 6:47 pm

   Thanks for sharing this. It means a great deal to me.
   Coming personally from poverty and having the great good fortune of winning scholarships to college, those two hidden children haunted and haunt me. I spent decades teaching and still wish I had accomplished more. Resting on my laurels has never been restful for me.
   We have to continue uncovering the profitization/privatization that disguises itself as education reform. Thank you for your leadership and guidance.

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2. Fred Klonsky says:

   December 25, 2012 at 7:13 pm

   Thanks, Diane, for posting Ken’s meditation on Dickens. Thanks for bringing a long-time activist but new blogger the attention of your readers.

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3. Lehrer says:

   December 25, 2012 at 9:17 pm

   There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
   ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

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   • Ken Previti says:

     December 25, 2012 at 11:55 pm

     You said it. The hypocrites wanted even the bakers’ oven, which needed to be kept burning 24/7, to be closed to poor people who had no individual ovens to cook their once weekly full meal on Sunday. They brought, as the Cratchits did on Christmas day, their meals to the baker to cook. In the name of God, the hypocrites wanted to deny the poor this one opportunity because nothing resembling work should be done on the Sabbath.
     The corporate education reform hypocrites want public schools closed for “underperforming” thus denying the poor of any hope for an education. Now if the hypocrites were paid (privatization) for a charter to be run at a profit, some kind of scripted education could be offered – in the name of Education Reform (deep bow and polite murmurs of approval).
     Corporations, in spite of being people, know no shame.

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