Valerie Strauss posted Secretary Duncan’s speech to the charter schools conference, without comment. This is the same conference where the foul-mouthed, misogynistic rapper Pitbull was also a keynote speaker.
I am tempted to raise many questions–about the predatory practices of some charters, about the very concept of “chain” schools, about the racial segregation that charters accept as routine, about harsh disciplinary policies called “no excuses” that middle-class parents would not tolerate, about for-profit charters that rip off kids and taxpayers, about online charters that offer shoddy education while raking in millions…..but I leave the questions for my readers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pitbull speaking. How . . . thoughtful. Part of the “We’ll give you a pair of Air Jordans if you sign up with our school” mentality that informs many inner-city, for-profit charters. ANYTHING to get the fannies in the seats. What happens after the state forks over the per-student bread is… not so important.
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As soon as “count day” is done, then it’s everyone for themselves.
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Goodbye to all the bad apples.
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And, good luck in finding a new school to let you in at this point in the school year.
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At least in Utah, we HAVE TO let them in if they live in our boundaries, no matter the type of student or the time of year. Great for public schools’ test scores!
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Worse, private charters, without the awareness of the parents, can side step the requirements for best practices for their students. How they can supercede the Federal Mandates is clearly in their allowable admitting practices. The whole thing is sickening and there appears no safety net or fail safe for the kids. It is a sham and the questions Dr. Ravitch would ask in her own mind should be on minds of any invetigative reporter who is interested in making education and our children a priority. It takes a long time to set tracks for a train but only a second to throw a monkey wrench in the gears or blow up the lines. What have we done or what have we been a party to? Such a shame!
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And you anti-reformers want to ‘make the trains run on time’ eh? We’ve heard that claim before, and know what comes after it. Improvement is one thing; tyranny is another, and the fundamental idea underlying public schools is tyrannical compulsion. No one defending public schools will admit that, of course, least of all, Diane, and less you. The whining I hear is “Unless I get back my monopoly, I’m not responsible.” You’re never going to get you monopoly back.
Granted, I don’t know where the money will come from to properly serve the disabled (your special care), but gaining public support for proper school funding WON’T come by blaming everyone else for the state of big city public schools, even if that blame is partially justified. The essence is that the unions back progressivism and progressivism attacks economic growth.
Economic growth is the ONLY way to get more money to the public schools, and it ain’t gonna happen as long as the Obama socialists are in power, or the Clinton socialists. I know that most of you have a visceral antipathy to tea party types, but we are going to take back the country from the progressives eventually because the progressives are committed to an unrealistic economic theory, that you can keep squeezing the peasants to produce without the peasants objecting. The moral smugness of ‘the party’ is disgustingly and fundamentally offensive. Give it up, and you might have more allies. Will you? No. Will Diane? No.
The anti-progressives are fighting back with charters and vouchers, while the public schools, with some exceptions, are embracing CCSS. It will result in a disastrous ‘fail’ of some sort in 2014 or 2015, just as there will be with Obamacare once it is fully implemented. Time to jump off the Democrat train before it crashes. The Democrat party claims to be the defender of the working man and middle class. How is that working for them? Not well for the actual individuals, but pretty well for the progressive elites—at least until the counter-revolution.
Just remember, Napoleon followed the French Revolution because the revolutionaries descended into tyranny. Tyranny can never be legitimate government. Even the Egyptians seem to understand that in throwing out Morsi. My suspicion is that progressivism and tyranny are two sides of the same coin. If you’re a proud progressive you must accept your heritage of compulsion. But no one is smart enough manage a command economy. That’s why freedom is the only way to go.
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Gosh, Harlan you got me wrong. I don’t want to “squeeze the peasants,” as you so inelegantly stated. I want to squeeze the 1% or even the 1% of the 1% and the mega-corporations who are already squeezing the peasants. They should pay for the social welfare of the least of us or they will be living their lives in gated communities with armed guards 24/7.
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You are such an honest person, Diane. That is why we all love you and admire you.
Your admission makes my point, however. You still want to squeeze. Upon what basis do you justify it? Just because they have it? (By the way, they don’t have ENOUGH to do the job, even if you confiscated all their wealth.) In my view theft is theft and can’t be justified morally merely on the basis of “need.” You are in harmony with the hundred years of progressive thinking in this country. You’ve won, but it’s falling to ashes in your hands because compulsion is hated, freedom is not.
When you truly commit to freedom, you will begin to succeed in your crusade. Until then, expect the privatizers to continue to try to rip gobbets of flesh from the body of public education. This constitutional republic never guaranteed equity of economic result, only equality before the law. A recognition of that conservative insight is the beginning of wisdom.
Equity has become the progressive monster, of which public education is an important example, along with the Obama IRS, State Department, EPA, Energy, Commerce, HHS, and Homeland Security. Public Education and all these other agencies constitute Ozymandius. VERB. SAP.
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When you succeed in wiping out the government, make sure you don’t wipe out the police and military and firefighters. You will need them to protect you from the populace.
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The public education system is not the government. False extension of the argument. The purpose of the constitutional republic is to protect the people from the central government. The purpose of the state and local governments is to protect the law abiding people from the criminals. The public education system has deeply failed in teaching this constitutionalism. I fault is more for that than it’s failure to lift the poor because the blindness to constitutionalism extends throughout the whole system, not just to the poor. ‘You’ broke it; ‘you’ [progressives] bought it. Man up and take responsibility.
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Harlan does raise a valid point in that if there aren’t jobs, there’s no revenue. No revenue, no money for public works etc.
That said, where has the revenue gone? Some of it has been lost along with jobs….and where did the jobs go? What about all those tax breaks and incentives to the “job creators” who were supposed to create jobs that would jump-start the economy? I’m still waiting for the trickle-down to trickle down – and that scam hit the economy when I was still in high school.
Where has the money gone? To far FAR fewer people than had it even 20 years ago. To the 1% of 1%. The middle class doesn’t have it, the upper upper class does – and we’d like it back now, please. Hell, forget “please.” The middle class is disappearing, along with the jobs, and the revenue for the schools. I disagree heartily with many of the things Obama has done, but I think we would be far far worse off under Republican control. (Disclaimer: I’m generally left-leaning but voted third party this last election.)
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Nelson Mandela
How do we treat the children in this country? Do we ensure that they have safe homes, or homes at all? Do we make sure they are fed? Do we take the initiative to do what it takes to give them a decent education?
Or do we blame the ever-increasingly-unemployed poor and middle-going-on-lower for their job losses and unemployment in the face of government bailouts and corporate tax breaks, shrug our shoulders, and say it’s not our problem that the kids’ parents can’t find jobs, it’s not our problem that they go to broken-down schools at 40 in a classroom, and blame the kids instead of helping them?
I’m sick and tired of our nation’s children, our most vulnerable, being at the mercy of people who see them as numbers, as dollar signs, and/or as inconvenient barriers to further wealth hoarding in the form of not wanting to pay one’s fair share of taxes. If corporations are people, I’d like to see them pay the same tax rate *I* do – and when they break the law, I’d like to see them in jail, same as *I* would be jailed. If Sidwell Friends is good enough for Obama’s kids, and the Lab School is good enough for the Mayor of Chicago’s kids, then I want for MY kids what THEY get. My kids are not Other People’s Children. They aren’t dollar signs. They aren’t data points. They’re HUMANS. And I worry that too many of the 1% of the 1% have forgotten their own humanity. 😦
If that makes me a raging Liberal, so be it. I think it makes me human.
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Socialist countries achieve economic growth and manage to have decent to superior public schools. (Finland, Germany, Canada to name a few)
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How DO they do it? RIGOROUS stratification at an early age. No nonsense about educating everybody for university. If you want THAT kind of control in your life and continue to support statism, you’ll get it. Americans prefer messy freedom, or at least the used to.
J. H. Underhill
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Harlan, we are NOT seeing the emergence of free market alternatives to public schools. We are seeing is crony capitalist alternatives dependent upon federal and state regulation and the public dole that could not possibly survive in truly free markets. It doesn’t matter whether it originates on the right or the left or what rhetoric it uses, tyranny is tyranny. It’s a NewSpeak version of the language of classical liberalism that is being used to defend what is actually happening. It’s incredibly naive to buy into the rhetoric in the face of the realities. Let’s see: Pass a federal law that ensures that almost all public schools will fail. Require states to provide alternatives. Have the Secretary of Education, now a private citizen, found an online virtual school to provide those alternatives, one that depends upon the same taxpayer dollars but siphons off a lot of those into private profits. There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them. The others have much the same general form.
If that’s what you think of as the creation of free market alternatives, then you have started mainlining the Soma.
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Excellent point, Robert, about charters not being truly market driven, but more like Solyndra. I see no alternative way of getting the vampire teeth of the unions out of education, however, and freeing education from its socialist presuppositions. Unconscious symbolism in the BAT. They are Dracula’s minions. Better picture, teachers as zombies eating the brains of their students. I prefer Christ as a model of teaching, and Sakyamuni. Everything else is a madrassa of our own flavor. Mullah madness is the same as Ravitch Rabidity.
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You apparently live on another planet. You don’t seem to understand the meaning of socialism or what a progressive is. Your savior is Ayan Rand and the fiction she produced.
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” I prefer Christ as a model of teaching…”
but apparently not as a model of compassion?
Seriously, Who Would Jesus Let Starve?
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Yes, the five different Jesuses of the 4 gospels and the letters of Paul, not to even mention the suppressed gnostic gospels of James and of Mary Magdalene (the wife of Jesus), probably are united by a readiness to feed the starving, yet I don’t remember his anywhere co-opting the government (Roman empire) to do so.
You can, of course, be inspired by his universal benevolence, and then decide on your own, that His compassion and charity, always individual and personal, should be embodied and ensconced in the state, but one of his incarnations said “Render unto Caesar . . . ” suggesting to me a separation between church and state. But if you think it’s a good thing to have the state take over the responsibilities for charity of individual Christians, you have your wish. How is that working out, in the modern age, in your view?
I love talking about religion, but once one begins, the debates tend to get a little long because one can find support in scriptural verses for almost any social policy position one takes, and that doesn’t even begin to consider the problems of the origins of the texts accepted into the ‘orthodox’ cannon under Constantine, and the rest were proscribed. Some Egyptian Christians were even forced to hide their sacred scrolls in sealed jars at Nag Hamadi in order to save them from the Constantinian general censorship and conflagration after the Council of Nicea. But if you want to open up that ‘jar of worms’ so to speak, so be it.
I’d prefer you to say what YOU believe is ethical and why rather than fencing with Bible verses. But, hey, I’m in favor of bringing the Bible back into the classroom, if that’s what you want. Get those ten commandments up on the wall and lets say a prayer before lunch. It can’t hoit can it?
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Harlan wrote:”How DO they do it? RIGOROUS stratification at an early age. No nonsense about educating everybody for university. If you want THAT kind of control in your life and continue to support statism, you’ll get it. Americans prefer messy freedom, or at least the used to.”
Not quite true – I used to believe the above statement until I personally met someone who was not slated for the university route from one of these countries and he will tell you it is possible to go to college and he did it (after he did vocational training and worked for a few years) and now this person has a very good white collar job.
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I’m glad to hear that the ability to jump paths is not entirely prevented. What I like about American education is that one is never shut out as long as one can pay the tuition.
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Harlan, Harlan…..*shaking head* did you think I meant that our government should embrace feeding the poor, that it should be a societal thing? I think it should be a HUMAN response not tied to the government, but I wasn’t talking about anything larger than yourself when I addressed you thus:
————————————————————–
” I prefer Christ as a model of teaching…”
but apparently not as a model of compassion?
————————————————————–
Nothing I’ve read that you have written bespeaks the compassion that same Christ showed countless times: to the poor, to the sick, to the sinners. While he didn’t say it was up to any government to feed and clothe the poor, neither did he champion the cause of the wealthy job-creators, and even said, among other things, “Blessed are the poor in spirit/they that mourn/the peacemakers” and lots of others – and nowhere did he say “blessed are those who hoard their wealth, make more, and don’t let the poor have any.”
I didn’t come here to “fence with” Bible verses. Heck, I’m not even Christian. Please remember that YOU were the one who brought Christ into the discussion. Were you only referring to his teaching style? Do you think we should primarily learn through parables, especially those delivered to crowds in the thousands? LOL
Or did you perhaps mean something more?
I do not know whether you consider yourself a Christian, and that doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, BUT if you’re going to bring the inspiration for an entire religion supposedly based on love into the discussion, it seems hypocritical (not to mention saddening) for so many of your posts to be so laissez-faire about the poorest and most vulnerable among us – which I consider our children to be. They didn’t ask to be born into poverty, they didn’t ask for their circumstances. And for all we know, the doctor who will cure cancer might be one of those children, given the opportunity to become that doctor.
You say that you would “prefer you to say what YOU believe is ethical” and I think I’ve answered that at the beginning. Here’s what I think is not ethical: the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor and now of the middle class, which is rapidly turning into “the poor;” taking no responsibility at either the individual or corporate level for the welfare of others, including employees (hiring part-time at low wages so one’s employees are eligible for SNAP but not medical benefits while executives make more PER MINUTE than many employees make PER YEAR is morally repugnant to me); making excuses for poor children in impoverished school systems to attend schools in continually worsening conditions (and I’m including school closings, reconstitutions, and charters in that list) and punishing their teachers for the children’s poverty; using money and power to influence the government to set policies and create legislation that is harmful to humans and to the planet. The list could be longer, but that’s where I start. Had the wealthy paid their fair share for the past 30 years, it might be interesting to see where we would be today – but we will never know for sure. And sadly, I think we are past the point of no return and will never ever again be able to return to those “good old days” so many Tea Partiers seem to remember: those white picket fences where everyone was happy and all the families got by on just Dad’s paycheck.
But don’t go accusing me of bringing religion in and fencing with Bible verses when you were the first party to do both.
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I have no problem with private charity. Your critique of the rich at the end, however, can be inverted to get at your real ethics.
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“Your critique of the rich at the end, however, can be inverted to get at your real ethics.”
My “critique of the rich” – at least the ones who have campaigned and lobbied for corporate welfare while fighting against living wages for their own employees – pretty much IS my “real ethics.” It’s not a hidden agenda or anything. *shrug*
I find it morally repugnant that there are people and corporations who are worth BILLIONS but still fight against people’s ability to make a living wage when the 1% have so much wealth that they themselves could just about end poverty here and now in this country. I don’t think we need, necessarily, to return to the days when the mega-rich “rendered under Caesar” (since you brought up the phrase) 91% of their income, but do they need to pay LESS than I do – in some cases not just a lower RATE on their millions of income yearly, but a lower TAX BILL than I do on my mere 5-digit income? Sure, let’s actually HAVE them “render unto Caesar” instead of money-grubbing Wal-Mart style for every last penny.
And since you’re an admirer of Christ’s teaching style, perhaps you remember this gem: “[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
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Several people have come to the conclusion that responding to Harlan is pointless. He only enjoys being a tea bag braggart who adds nothing to the discussion and doesn’t mean to. He just posts his inane comments to irritate. I will not fall prey to his sophistry and I hope everyone else will do the same. Things are far too important to entertain such comments. As Willie opined, such are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
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I love “capping” Bible verses. Remember also what Jesus said to the rich young man to whom he had said “Go, sell all you have and give to the the poor,” and who plaintively asked, “Then how is a rich man ever to get into heaven.” Jesus says: “With God all things are possible.” Ergo: A rich man can go to heaven, but s/he will have to have God’s grace.
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They are ALL private schools whether getting money or not.
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“public” money should be added
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Whoever wrote this speech mentions “all the innovations” that have come from charters. Other than siphoning off tax dollars for private gain, can someone tell me what these innovations might be?
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Deprofessionlaizing teachers and replacing them with flickering screens?
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Bringing to scale segregation and the despicable practice of military style discipline in schools funded by public dollars for low income children of color.
Duncan et al. call education “the civil rights issue of our time” while condoning such practices and setting the progress of civil rights back decades. They’ve gotten away with it because civil rights organizations have been bought off, too: “Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership” http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
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What innovations? Low worker pay with no retirement? That is how they have built their empire. Shame on the Sec. of Ed. for promoting thieves.
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Many examples. Here are two:
1. Teachers who work in a school are the majority of members of the board that runs the school. Teachers set their own salary and working conditions:
http://educationnext.org/teacher-cooperatives/
(The author of this column, incidentally, is a graduate of a k-12 district option in St. Paul that still runs, now as a grade 6-12 option, 41 years after being founded)
2. Students as part of their course work, produce You-tube videos that are of such professional quality that they have been hired by State Farm Insurance, Verizon Wireless and our organization to produce You-Tube videos on various public service topics. Students are inner city students with whom traditional schools have not succeeded:
http://www.hsra.org/
Co founder, co-director of this school also graduated from the district k-12 option mentioned above.
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The scam of charter schools has hardly a thin veneer. They cook the books on their
“success stories” are archaic and unacceptable in their discipline and can expel/edit the students who cross their dungeon entrances. It truly doesn’t rise to a “Dog and pony show” for the gullible, teacher hating public! Just tack on pseudo-philanthropists like
Walton/Gates and their billionaire buddies and evidence of REAL success, sound
educational theory are superfluous. As long as the parasitical corporates can beguile
the citizenry with pompous platitudes, all is well in America.
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Probably, but the three local charters of which I am aware are doing jobs that satisfy their parents. One is a “chain” school, one a Montessori, the third an IB school. In general, you may be right, but here in Michigan, they are working for their families. I cannot accept that they should not be allowed to exist. The intensity of contempt in your post (hardly sweetpea-like) I must reject, although I agree it’s just anecdotal. Here’s an analogy: I may be dissatisfied by “The Church,” but I happen to like my local priest a lot.
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Please, Harlan! Your three examples can counter the nationwide stats on these
corporate money making scams? Shallow evidence, if evidence at all! As to my polemics, ’tis but a natural revulsion to the perverse destruction that this Trojan
Horse of corporate education has done to our public schools, let alone to the teachers who passionately worked within them. You must just love Arnie Duncan’s mentally
challenged rhetoric! He extols what doesn’t exist, except in his fact denying mind.
You need to broaden your base of knowledge beyond your neighborhood. It might
cause you to re-evaluate your caustic assessments of teachers and the public schools of America…but I doubt you will even contemplate the disaster you endorse.
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I kind of get what you are saying, Harlan. My friends in Kansas City feel very lucky to have their very daughters at a French Immersion charter school. Having taught in KCMO, I can tell you that these two girls would not have thrived in the inner city school where I taught (which is now closed). I doubt they would have been placed in that school, but the point is sometimes, for cultural reasons that may or may not encompass race, there are a lot of distractions in the school day for students not accustom to the hood, or maybe to rural settings. I once had a girl stand up in the middle of a music lesson and shout out, “I need me $1.32 so I can get me some chicken after school.” She was a beautiful African American girl, clearly trying to attract the attention of some of the boys in the class, but I can’t see that type outburst going over well for these daughters of my friend. They would be frustrated by it. Whereas, at their French immersion charter school the academic level is high and while I am sure there are outbursts here and there, I doubt it is the norm like at the school where I taught. (btw, many teachers would have called security over that girl—I only called security when chairs were being thrown, or punches—which only happened twice and with the chair I had talked the kid down before he threw it (I had taught him in 1st grade and then in 6th, so he knew me and trusted me somewhat) and a second grade fight (which I was able to break up before security got there).
I definitely support public school. I do know, though, that cultural differences sometimes distract and frustrate focused students. Part of life. . .maybe. But if those distractions are the norm (like they were in the KCMO school where I taught), then a parent does like to have somewhere else to go.
Nothing about this reform business is easy. We have a different set of questions now that we have allowed charters to happen.
And, Harlan, please don’t reply to me if you are going to be snippy, mean, or disrespectful. That would be boooshy, as they say in the hood.
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Criticism accepted Joanna. You’ve been there. I have not.
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You have never worked in a Michigan charter. They are a total waste of money.
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If you say so, DeeDee, it must be true. The one charter at which I interviewed wouldn’t let me leave campus an hour early on Wednesday and Friday to go direct a play to which I had already committed, and that did suggest to me that they cared more for uniformity of rules and not making the other staff mad by my special privilege than they did in supporting their teachers in activities from which they might have benefited if I created a drama club and helped the kids put on a show. I had the luxury of being able to withdraw my application, since I’m retired, but now I almost wish I had stayed in consideration to see if they would have hired a superannuated person who knows all the content and tricks from having taught for 42 years. I didn’t have a contract with the other school where I was doing the play, but I had given my word and you know how old fashioned folk feel about that. Kids usually are great, but I’ll grant you that, the administration there might have had other priorities than enrichment for their students. I saw two big binders of Math CCSS on the principal’s table, so I know what they were up to there (probably). But that school was not included in the three in mentioned as having happy parents and happy kids. I like to preserve the distinction between “all” and “some.” Do you?
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And so we return to tracking, call it what you like, to keep the chair throwing students away from the motivated. Totally in favor, always have been after a career in urban publics.
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Ask Arne to rebroadcast his speech from the same school where Obama announced him as the next secretary of education.
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I will be on the radio Monday, July 8th, at 10 a.m. CST debunking the New orleans “miracle,” including so-called charter “success.”
The show is called The New Orleans Imperative; the host is Dr. Raynard Sanders, former school administrator and co-founder of Research on Reforms.
Listen live at WBOK1230am.com
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Wow, will Arne be on the show? He shares the limelight with Pitbull, why not you?
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I expect no one from the entertainment industry, in DC or elsewhere. 🙂
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Hilarious answer, Mercedes!
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Hi Diane,
Here is my take on Pitbull’s speech, which has also been posted.
Darcie
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=vmrmpz8BAAA.iW1RT-tfz63WdpWAZ7Mpuw.4eCxcxQ6ZUr8gsgA6IqAvw&postId=2932229558166206788&type=POST
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Perhaps this site can be a venue for discussing the manner in which racial segregation and military discipline are packaged so as to market charter schools to families legitimately concerned with the dangers their children face growing up in communities that lack good jobs, good health care, and adequate housing, and other resources available to more privileged sectors of society. One should not underestimate the short-term appeal that such “discipline” has for people who are besieged, worried about the temptations their kids may succumb to and have, in the present moment, relatively little power. Many of the charters have lifted a page, not from the civil rights or radical Black power movements, but rather from the cultural conservatism of Booker T. Washington and Elijah Muhammad. This time, however, the executioners of the “plan” are largely, though not exclusively, upper middle class whites.
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Arne, why do we have charter schools? Should all public schools be strengthened? Why siphon public funds from public schools to create charters? This ridiculous charter system needs to stop. Continuing charter schools cheats all children. Will this be your legacy?
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Haven’t you read. We need corporate charity in this country. You can build a real estate empire through public tax dollars while short-changing staff and students.
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Seems to me that a lot of what Arne was saying in that speech isn’t very close to reality. He cites the most recent CREDO study, for instance, but then goes on to make statements supposedly based on its data or conclusions that I can’t find in the actual study. He also glosses over some very important negatives that CREDO brings up. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a corporatist like Duncan would ignore the inconvenient facts for his cherished ideas (and the money they bring in to his corporate friends.)
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Oh Harlan, your incredibly poor realization of the functions of federal and state government is amazing. In your paradigm of governmental functions you show your naivete, and you unending disgust with public education, teachers and social safety nets that are needed NOW more than ever, due to the tea bag shrews that would deny a child food. Please try to attempt to realize that we don’t live in George’s (that’s WASHINGTON, not “W”) time. Your construct of how the nation functions would be perfect for the 18th century, but laughable for today.
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Oh well, sweetpea, I don’t demand that anyone’s post actually argue the ideas. I am just as happy to accept dismissive name calling and political naivete as an actual attempt to respond to the notion that we are and should be a constitutional republic.
While issues arise in the modern world that do require interpretation of the constitution, in general I think it still is a good framework for government. I even think that other people call it “the law of the land.” I have no idea what you think you would replace it with. We don’t have a king. We don’t have a dictator. The federal bureaucracy does seem to feel that the people serve it rather than it serve the people. Last I heard, the people are still the sovereign in this nation.
You must be quite young. Many young people think that the constitution is “out of date.” But I seldom discover what they mean by that because as soon as I ask them to explain, they tend to suddenly have something else to do.
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Please take this garbage elsewhere.
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Just ignore it, nunny.
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Harlan comes here to bash, blame and recruit more anti-social followers to the tea party. Ignore HIM.
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You are so right! The willfully ignorant will remain so. Best to not take the bait
of his tea party, fantasies. “Ignore him” is wise advise.
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Yes, I agree. Ignore him, but do read him. He has wholesome things to say about the constitution being a document that is supposed to secure (protect) inalienable rights. In some sense, the Constitution is a simple document, at least its fundamental purpose is simple: to guarantee the freedom for people to pursue their individual visions of happiness. That’s what’s unique about it. It doesn’t give happiness, but only the protection for individuals to seek happiness. Owing to much misunderstanding of the constitution, it has been converted into a document controlling individuals.
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I come here to suggest that there may be an on-the-ground political alternative to bankrupting socialist Democrats and bankrupting corporatist Republicans. I don’t use capitals with tea party because it isn’t that organized really. It may eventually be so, but they are individualist constitutionalists whose ideas are worth considering. Cosmic Tinkerer apparently thinks that she can in fact affect the Cosmos, but that is a delusion. The best we can do is affect the society, although in KING LEAR the character says that good social policy can make the heavens seem more just to those whom it affects. We do have a duty to do that. That’s why we have a welfare state. We don’t want anyone to go unclothed or hungry. It’s a long way from that simple, basic goal to “Give us unionized teachers more money to end poverty. ” It hasn’t worked so far, and won’t and can’t. And if you think giving up freedom in order to fix the social universe is a good bargain, I do not. It’s the choice of the electorate, and if that’s what enough people want, that’s what they will get to the detriment of their pursuit of individual happiness. So be it. But, I’m here to tell you there’s another way that will in fact work better, and the tea party has glommed onto it. Consider it.
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sweetpea62013 and others,
The best way to ignore Harlan: Don’t read what he writes.
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I totally agree! It’s more than a waste of time, it’s not worth the intentional
irritation he baits us all with. This is FAR too serious to have buffons
add ALL heat an no substance!
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These are really serious matters. But if my view of the situation seems to be a waste of time, I would skip and go to other posters more congenial to your own view. I’m trying to understand the fundamental motivations of the players, or the fundamentals of the view of the world that produces such antipathy. I don’t fully understand why so many public school people blame others for their plight, and blame them moralistically too, attributing “greed” to the privatizers, as if that explained it all. I think all of us are self-interested, even the hardworking public school teachers.
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As you stated the Constitution, it would be a simplistic document, which of course it is not. I have a major in American History from Ohio State University, am a extensive reader of American history/constitution , so please avoid saying I want a king, or dictator (even though your hero “W” did opine that his job would be easier, were he a dictator). If you don’t see the extensive “executive orders” done under Bush and Obama a TRUE threat to our republic, then maybe your Republican prejudices are blinding you to reality. OR maybe you just enjoy being a polemicist.
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Fabulous reply, sweetpea! I wish we had a like button on this!
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I agree that we have lost constitutionalism under the last four administrations. Can I count on you to find your local tea party group, join, and begin the long slow road of returning the nation to a constitutional republic, a government of laws, not men? Your education and interests perfectly fit you to participate in the education process of the electorate.
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Good thing the Tea Party isn’t the only avenue to reclaiming the Constitution, or to “participate in the education process of the electorate.”
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At the moment, crunchydeb, I am afraid the tea party movement is the only group seeking to educate the populace to their constitutional rights and how they are being infringed upon. Are the Republicans? Far from it. Are the Democrats? Even further from it. Do examine your own commitment to constitutional principles.
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I have long thought that they Tea Party and the Occupy Movement are responding to the same phenomena and really need to put aside the left-right rhetoric and look at their points of agreement and their common enemy: the emerging totalitarian state in which government exists solely to serve the interests of a handful of profiteers.
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Listening to the fireworks outside my window and reading this wonderful ‘conversation’ between the passion driven and concerned blog participants, reminds me how lucky we are to be living in this country. I waited until some of the dust cleared and there was Robert
D. Shepherd coming to the point of something we might consider the Founding Fathers had to reconcile which was compromise and listening to each other no matter the extreme positions of each.
Harlan can get people mad and he has the wonderful intelligence to make his own good arguments, even though I absolutely don’t agree with almost anything he says. However, he stands his ground and makes those that would argue their own positions with him as stronger in their beliefs and better at their argument. I think it must have been that way in Philadelphia all those years ago when a group of men from different points of view came together and founded a country. The sound of Freedom is out side my window and the words of Freedom are alive and well in this blog. Thank you all for being part of my American experience as it is exhilarating.
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Robert, The ultra-conservative billionaire Koch Brothers were behind the formation of the Tea Party. They have a neo-liberal agenda that supports free-markets, deregulation, corporations feasting at the public funding trough, etc. while being against government programs that support progressive social policies for working class and low income people. The Tea Party has just hoodwinked folks into believing the party supports them over corporations. See: The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Tea-Party-Discontent/dp/1583672478
Beyond agreement over government coercion to adopt Common Core, I think that the values of Progressives differ too much from corporation supporting Tea Partiers for them to be able to form alliances.
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sorry to be late to this, but all I need to know is his reliance upon and praise of Roland Fryer, whom he refers to by his first name. Sorry, but what Fryer advocates has been largely deconstructed by people who actually understand education.
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That whole harangue about Fryer, charter school expansion and the ridiculous notion that it would take 100 years to achieve at this pace was like a challenge to profiteers in code: wink, wink, nod, nod, ready, set, RACE…
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