This is the first of three posts written by Professor Mario Waissbluth about education in Chile. I invited him to contribute to the blog, because Chile represents our future if we continue our present course of action towards a market system built around the principles of testing and choice.
Chile´s Education (I): The most pro-market system in the world
Mario Waissbluth
This is the first of three columns on the contradictory condition of the Chilean educational system.
Today, I shall describe the political, socioeconomic and educational model.
Tomorrow, I will show the evidence and results of 35 years of for-profit hyper-privatization, and extreme teaching to the test.
Finally, I will provide some ideas for the necessary change of course, to alleviate the damage caused by the most segregated school structure in the OECD (after the small city-state of Macao).
Following Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, Chile started the most extreme neoliberal experiment in the world. No exaggeration here. The Tea Party would pale with envy. Designed by the Chilean disciples of Milton Friedman, the so called “Chicago Boys”, it was applied systematically (with the help of a bayonet) from 1973 until its replacement by a center left coalition in 1990.
This coalition basically continued extreme right policies – though with more social spending – because of cleverly designed constitutional constraints, plus an army keeping discrete and courteous watch from its quarters. Quite a few center-left politicians also acquired a taste for the wines of deregulated free market. Since the 2010 presidential elections, the very same group of Chicago boys and girls have been in power. Not their sons. The very same ones. Young Pinochet’s aides are today’s cabinet members and senators.
The basic principle of the model in education, health, pensions, and whatever you might think of, is subsidiarity: minimal role of the state, minimal regulations, low taxes. You take care of your family and that’s it. If you can pay for your education, health, or pensions, you do it. If you cannot, you don’t, and the state provides you with inexpensive and low quality services or protection.
Chile beats the hell out of the US in income concentration. Considering capital gains, the richest 1% takes 30.5% of the pie, as compared with 21% in the US, 11% in Japan and 9% in Sweden.
Public school enrollment has dropped (and keeps dropping) from 80% in 1980 to 37% today. Aside from 7% of students in fully private schools, public and private institutions compete for the coveted per capita voucher.
Now, get this: two thirds of the 56% of private voucher (charter) schools are for profit, and they can charge on top of it to parents. Therefore, the richest ones mix their sons with their socioeconomic peers, the middle class with the middle class, and so on down to the poorest which go mostly to free public schools. Subsidiarity by the book. Until now, anyone can set up a for-profit subsidized charter school anywhere, without any quality requirements whatsoever.
Teacher training also became fully unregulated. Today some universities and institutes “sell college degrees” (for a profit) to students who do not understand what they read when they enter to Schools of Education, and generally do not understand what they read when they obtain their college degree. National certification and examination of teachers is, of course, voluntary. Freedom. Freedom. The market will solve everything.
On the other hand, compulsory curriculum is extremely detailed. Therefore, teachers in Chile have 1700 class-hours per year, as compared with an average of 700 in the OECD countries. And testing… oh… you will envy it. Standardized national testing with consequences such as school closures (guess which) and bonus payments: it is applied in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11. Later on, admission to the university is based almost exclusively on the results of… a national standardized test. Teaching to the test motivates all sorts of cheating in the tests, plus plenty of academic skimming to get better test results, the very basis of school competition.
The students exploded first in 2006, then with more force in 2011 and 2013. They are questioning not only the educational model, but also the Constitution and Mr. Friedman’s legacy in full.
Tomorrow I shall describe the results of 35 years of pro-market, fully deregulated economic policy and education. The law of the jungle, but with cannibals. Some of the results are good. Most stink.
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Mario Waissbluth (www.mariowaissbluth.com) has a PhD in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974). Currently he is a professor at Universidad de Chile and President of Fundación Educación 2020, an advocacy movement for equity and desegregation of the chilean school system (www.educacion2020.cl). His soon to be published book, with Random House (in spanish) is “Change of Course: A new way for chilean education”.
Let’ not forget Mr. Paul G. Vallas’s strong ties to the Chilean government:
Excerpt from
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1roMn5960E4J:http://www.bridgeportedu.com/Superintendent/Superintendent%2520Bio.html%2Bpeter+vallas+chile&hl=en&gbv=2&ct=clnk
“The second project came at the invitation of the Government of Chile, which has asked Mr. Vallas to assume responsibility for turning around and improving test scores in 1,100 of Chile’s lowest performing schools. Based on this invitation, and his work in Haiti, Mr. Vallas formed The Vallas Group, Inc. He has recruited a world-class team of educational experts with specific expertise in all functional areas of education including curriculum and instruction, teacher training and re-training, student and teacher assessments and interventions, and organizational and finance management. Mr. Vallas’ management of the project in Chile is ongoing . . . . ”
Pinochet and Vallas: both dicatators . . . . one national, the other local.
The CIA was influential in the military coup that overturned the democratic election of Salvadore Allende and replaced him with Pinochet -who was friendly to US corporations. According to declassified CIA documents
“immediately after the Allende government came into office, the U.S. sought to place pressure on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemispheric interests, such as Allende’s total nationalization of several U.S. corporations and the copper industry. Nixon directed that no new bilateral economic aid commitments be undertaken with the government of Chile.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/09/11/world/main232452.shtml
Chili was the Chicago Boys privatization purity experiment.
Everyone should read ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ by John Perkins for deep, personal insight into the operations of the US led World Bank, the CIA, & public/private partnerships around the world . His compelling personal story is of economic globalization according to Friedman’s dogma. He worked for an international consulting group in South America and West Asia to convince governments to privatize their debt and to seize natural resources from the native populations that US corporations could extract & sell on the open market.
And Bush, and Obama, and Duncan . . . are what?
Complicit. At a minimum.
But possibly much worse.
Ah, PSP, you present me with a false dichotomy. I don’t think I said “social” value, but certainly I do mean economic value. Are your words in quotes a direct quote from one of my posts?
This is excellent. Thank you. I am glad to have a country that is ahead of us on this road so I can use it to illustrate points when talking to brand-happy, cliche-following, less informed folks. (Not dissing my fellow citizens, I just have my radar up where they may not). I hope I can use this to help somehow.
And I will add again that I may just be a southern preacher’s daughter, but Friedman’s ideas on education are flawed. You cannot have a monopoly on something that is not intended as a market. Maybe on the areas within (food service, janitorial service) but to say that a state has a monopoly on public education is like saying the Register of Deeds has a monopoly on housing public records. He misses the point of public education entirely.
They aren’t just flawed–they’re evil.
I’m deeply confused by this comment, Joanna. The Register of Deeds does and should have a monopoly on public records doesn’t it? Are you saying that the local government should or should not have a monopoly on education?
Harlan, I am saying the term does not fit.
The purpose of the Register of Deeds is to house public records, and it does not make money doing so. The purpose of public schools is to serve the public and it does not make money doing so. Would we want the housing of public records to be privatized? That does not sound like democracy to me.
Not a monopoly, in the way Friedman meant, because the purpose is not profit-driven.
It’s like saying cats have a monopoly over dogs. The concept does not fit the purpose. I think Friedman meant “we can’t make money here because of the government.” Well, yeah. It’s a government service. Its purpose is not that of a market.
Excellent comment, Joanna!
We have to find a way to push back against those people who speak of “Government Monopolies”. They are either just using these two words as code for “Let’s Privatize Everything” or they’re just too obtuse to understand the difference between “monopoly” and “community”.
In an actual monopoly—which has a precise, specific economic definition—a small group of people reap very large monetary rewards from their exclusively control of these—often vital—products or services.
In a community, everyone is free to participate, with equal access and influence, and a system that benefits ALL members of the community is developed and implemented.
And that Community System is open to all, and available to all, regardless of your income, wealth, job, position, title, connections or anything else.
Some people just can’t make this distinction; perhaps they’ve been too indoctrinated over the years and their constant, exclusive reliance on things like Fox “News” and the equivalent, only reinforce their doltish, moronic and often self-destructive beliefs.
However, others—like the men who OWN and RUN Fox “News” and the equivalent—understand this distinction all too well. They just don’t want it to succeed. They WANT everything to be privatized—meaning in the hands of people like themselves, for their benefit only.
Thanks you, Robert Rendo, for putting Paul Vallas and the rest of his Chicago team into the perspective we need on Chile, then and now. I hope readers have the patience for me to add some footnotes and some perspective on other stories about the “Chicago Boys” (from an alumni of that same university that now has a building named for Milton Friedman…).
The “free markets behind bayonets” model in Chile became such a scandal that at one point Milton Friedman himself tried to deny his intimate involvement in the Chile thing. Eventually, he gave up on that lie.
These three chapters updating the narrative will be extremely helpful to those of us in the USA in another way than just history. We need to keep examining the Chicago Boys of Chile (then and now, including the “Vallas Group”) and the Chicago Boys of the USA (today, from the U.S. Department of Education to every state ed board pushing “Common Core” and the rest of the privatization agenda, from charters to the deregulation of teacher training).
As we’ve mentioned in these comments and elsewhere (for decades actually, in Substance and at substancenews.net), Arne Duncan’s neoliberal agenda was field tested in Chicago (even before Duncan was raised from obscurity to the position of “Chief Executive Officer” of Chicago Public Schools in 2001) from 1995 on (first under Paul Vallas during the early years of mayoral control). One of the things that got me fired and blacklisted after our 1999 publication of the ridiculous “CASE” (Chicago Academic Standards Examination) tests was the fact that the Chicago Boys (then Vallas; today Duncan et al) have to sustain the “confidentiality” of their black box so-called “standardized” tests. Once we open the box and show how silly the secret sauce really is, democracy can flourish. (But in Chicago, they went nuts, sued me for a million bucks for “copyright infringement” etc etc to protect these sacred objects).
One of the things we learned in the course of that fight was that it didn’t matter what test it was. The key was that the test had to (a) rank and sort children, schools, and teachers and (b) had to be kept secret at any cost. Both of these aspects are still central to the neoliberal attack on democracy, teachers and teacher unions, and democratic public schools.
Paul Vallas’s successor as “Chief Executive Officer” of Chicago’s public schools was a once obscure child of privilege from the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park cocoon named Arne (that’s the spelling; you pronouce it like Arnie…) Duncan. Duncan’s eight years as CEO of CPS were one lengthy part of the field testing of the neoliberal experiment for the USA, thanks to mayoral control, a craven union leadership (ultimately replaced by the current CORE leadership) and a corporate media that would fit right into the fifth season of “The Wire.”
“Renaissance 2010” was the central project of Duncan and Chicago’s elite during those years, praised as “courageous” by the city’s elites. It was a vicious attack on inner city public schools and resulted in the destruction of nearly 100 of the city’s real public schools and the racist elimination of real educational opportunities for more than 100,000 children while purging Chicago or more than 4,000 mostly black teachers. While there are other aspects to what the Chicago Boys were doing in Chicago from 1995 through 2008, they all fed into what would after November 2008 become the national American agenda.
Arne Duncan brought the entire package with him to Washington, D.C. in January 2009 when he was made U.S. Secretary of Education by another Chicago Boy, Barack Obama. The neoliberal ideologues, from the White House to every office in the U.S.Department of Eduction, have been carrying out these agendas since.
In Chicago this month, we are on the “pension” part of the neoliberal attack, as pioneered in Chile three decades ago. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the corporate elite is trying to focus blame for the “billion dollar deficit” (that disappeared, by the way, three weeks ago; details available from substancenews.net) that Chicago Public Schools claimed solely on the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF), ignoring all the facts.
The struggle that has been made in Chicago against the Chile/Chicago Boys/neoliberal agenda since CORE was elected in 2010 to lead the Chicago Teachers Union continues to broaden. The scholars and analysts who are exposing it locally (Lipman; Gutstein; Saltman, and others) and nationally (Ravitch; Weiner) are helping to build the movement for truly free, open, and democratic public schools for all children in the USA. But the devastation — especially the racist destruction of Chicago’s inner city mostly all-black public schools — since mayoral control began is now a matter of historical record here. It should be shocking, but is being largely ignored by the corporate elite and the corporate media.
And let’s remember: The Chicago Boys and the Chile model includes another “C” — the CIA. The coup d’etat that murdered Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 (August 28 isn’t the only anniversary we need to be marking in the next few weeks) put Augusto Pinochet into power and the Chicago Boys in command of the economic policies of the country. But that coup d’etat also murdered thousands of activists much like those of us working to lead the Chicago Teachers Union and our community and student partners here in Chicago.
The objective of our enemies in Chile during the late 1970s and early 1980s, which was a success, was to erase a generation of rank-and-file leaders. The viciousness and brutality with which that was done is a matter of historical record. The fate of Victor Jara is one of the most famous examples, but the fate of Midhelle Bachelet’s family is more typical.
Our rulers are ready to go to extremes to preserve and defense their system. That’s one of the reasons why it takes a new generation to recover and begin building a movement after the vicious destruction of a previous peak of democracy and freedom. As we continue to expand that movement in the USA, we owe thanks to people, like the one here, who are reminding us of our ancestors in these struggles. The neoliberal attack on democratic public schools and teachers is a key part of the overall agenda. Not the only part, but a key. Cowed and atomized teachers are a necessity for tyranny. And with all our imperfections, our teacher unions, with democracy such as we have in Chicago at the core of the work of CORE and our allies, are one of the last best hopes for us to fight off the current attacks, replace the current Chicago Boys with true democrats, and then extend and expand the promises of democracy.
Our government has always aided and abetted the neutralization of any South American leaders who are not staunch, free market capitalists. We have become the second wave of conquistadores who just won’t leave the Central and South Americans alone.
Yes, Robert, and our union has often functioned as a lapdog for the worst tendencies within the government.
As George Schmidt correctly points out, so-called education reform as we have come to know it received it’s first try-out in Chile, as a direct result of the September 11th (“The First 9/11”), 1973 fascist coup against the elected Allende government.
It’s perversely symmetrical that “The Chicago Boys,” having been givien a blood-stained free hand to privatize education in Chile, began their neoliberal project in the US by targeting the Chicago public schools.
The Chilean coup was aided and coordinated with the help of the CIA, which was knowingly assisted by the AFL-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Labor Development (AIFLD). Albert Shanker, then head of the AFT, was a Vice President of AIFLD.
AIFLD was an aggressive exponent of Cold War ideology. As Norm Scott has famously pointed out, it’s Al Shanker holding on to the landing skid of the last helicopter taking off from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975. He supported the Vietnam War well past it’s bitter end.
AIFLD was a CIA and State Department front group in efforts to undermine Left-wing governments and trade unions, and was especially active in Latin America.
In Chile, staffers from AIFLD and the CIA were integrally involved in a truckers strike that played a significant role in undermining support for Allende, and which created consumer shortages that magically disappeared the instant the military took over.
During the Contra War in Nicaragua during the 1980’s, Shanker and AIFLD were open supporters of the Contras, notorious for their widespread violence against civilians, and supported by covert, inconstitutional deals between the Reagan Administration and the Iranian government.
Sad to say, but in a very real sense, just as Randi Weingarten is proud to “collaborate” with those who would destroy public education and teaching as a profession, our union has been “collaborating” with the forces of reaction for decades, helping to place us in the position we find ourselves in today.
http://www.thenation.com/labor s-cold-war#axzz2bijMvqee
Thanks George, I am glad that you mentioned the elimination of educational intellectuals. Your conversation rounds out why this was necessary after the coup d’état in Chile. I had always wondered.
It was never a surprise that Paul Vallas had “interests” in Chile (and Haiti). Nor that the same racist, fascistic practices the US has enshrined in their foreign policy would be practiced against the “hated” and feared “minorities” in this country.
So now the ploy of finding a clever cover for these policies on a national and fast-tracked model has become crystal-clear–run a person of color for president, Barack Obama, who will dutifully, even zealously, implement the neo-liberal policies of the corporate, anti-labor elite (it’s not just the Chicago Boys, although they are certainly front and center thanks to Obama).
Arne Duncan must be removed. It’s virtually a human rights issue that such a man could be Secretary of Education. I know there is currently a case before the International Commission on Human Rights (I may have the details/name wrong) against Chicago for closing so many predominantly African-American schools and forcing children to cross gang lines or to make otherwise dangerous journies through their urban wasteland (AKA Rahm Emanuel’s cash cow)–but there should also be investigations of Arne Duncan’s tenure in Chicago and the continuation of his harmful policies right now.
See here http://www.scribd.com/doc/155603470/Letter-of-Allegation
and here
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/groups-opposed-chicago-school-closures-seek-un-intervention-claim-human-rights
CT parent/educator:
Thank you for posting both links. I appreciate your comments and the sources you provide. We must unite!
I seem to sense, George Schmidt, that “true democrats” = communists or people like Morsi, in Egypt, and that “the promises of democracy” mean “the promise of Marxist control of the educational system and country,” perhaps very much like Chavez’s Venezuela and Argentina. Please disabuse me, if you are actually pro-capitalist.
I am pro-capitalist, but I think public dollars for public schools are for public schools. I don’t think that is Marxist. I think it is common sense in democracy leadership. Less control from the DOE would/could steer us away from what smacks of Marxism.
I like the state of NC. It is my home. Other people do too. It is their home. Just because I think we should have some basic services offered, and offered well, directing public dollars for their intended purposes (public schools for all of our children) does not cry “Marxism.” Capitalism does not imply anarchy just as democracy does not imply Marxism. You are painting with too broad a brush.
Hey Harlan,
1953 is calling you! Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn are waiting for you to continue their work.
Now run along and make sure that there are no “commies” hiding under your bed, little man!
My goodness, Puget Sound Parent, you can be extraordinarily nasty. Do you think that kind of belittling comment sets a good example for your children?
Thank-you for this excellent description of real consequences of the Friedmanite dogma. Its followers have been reconfiguring Roosevelt’s New Deal for 50 years by conflating free markets as the answer to all policy problems from the Cold War, to our natural resources, energy, and now to education.
If they could privatize the air we breath we would all wear O2 meters and pay per breath.
Thamk you fpr your comments. Tomorrow I will describe the educational results of this model, and the following day the agenda of reforms we are proposing, to try and “tweak the nose” of the most pro-market system in the world. It will not be easy. Mario W.
Thank you, Mario. Que vivan los estudiantes!
Many voices are still singing it, in many countries, but here’s Victor Jara’s own voice from his own Chile.
We will all be most interested. Do you see yourself as a communist?
Creepy.
Do you see yourself as a fascist, Harlan? Is that why you’re defending Augusto Pinochet and the neo-Nazis that took power in Argentina in the mid-seventies?
Are you advocating a right-wing military coup here in the USA, Harlan? Is that due to your frustration that most Americans don’t share your twisted, retrograde, fanatical views?
You need to remember that Pinochet came to power in reaction to a socialist/communist government. I’m not defending Pinochet, just critiquing the logic of those who want to take over the school systems again and indoctrinate their students with communist ideas. I’m a constitutional conservative. I am totally against the fascism of the current administration, and of any administration. I believe in the genius of the people if they are allowed to flourish in freedom.
What’s your philosophy of society? You sound like someone put thistles in your beer.
I am so thrilled to see this series on Chile! I have repeatedly written about it, but finding detailed resources to share with others has been rather challenging.
While the education piece is a very critical ingredient, it really is just one component of the neo-liberal agenda to privatize all public services that can be privatized, to the benefit of wealthy elitists and at the expense of the already floundering masses, so it truly does amount to class warfare.
This series will help people to more readily view the big picture, especially when the dots are connected between pertinent US officials and agencies –thanks to astute bloggers here!!– and aid them in seeing the end-game that awaits us playing out in Chile today. Remember, Pinochet stepped down in 1990, so we’re talking about policies that have become so entrenched there that they lasted for over 20 years AFTER democracy was restored.
Why people aren’t seeing what’s happening here is beyond me, especially when it’s evident that big business and Wall Street are given preferential treatment, and billionaire Warren Buffet so frankly admitted, “There’s class warfare alright, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war and we’re winning.” I guess people need eye-popping experiences to really get it and stop being so apathetic.
Thank you so much for this!
It is certainly going to help ME to connect the (red) dots.
Harlan, You will never perceive the big picture, because you are looking through your Tea Party sieve for erroneous communist plots, when the issue is capitalism run wild –and you champion that.
For everyone else who is actually capable of connecting the dots and who does not want to let themselves be used as a tool to promote the cause of elitist greed and power –and control over the masses– as Harlan does so wittingly, please see:
Bill Moyers & company, “Taming Capitalism Run Wild” http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-taming-capitalism-run-wild/
After viewing the above Moyers piece, be sure to catch the following which includes a follow-up segment with economist Richard Wolff on Curing Capitalism:
What Has Capitalism Done for Us Lately?
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-what-has-capitalism-done-for-us-lately/
Yeah, but Harlan, that’s only because those “red dots” are permanently affixed to your cornea.
Not to mention what is now hardwired into your brain.
People harass me for talking about poverty all the time. I come from a middle class, white family, and I was sheltered away from the poor and needy. I attended a middle class and upper class private school just south of Detroit.
After teaching in public schools since the late 90’s (and having never walked in one until I began to teach), I now the see the world I was sheltered from. It is a world of poverty.
I agree that people should be responsible, but when the game is rigged, even responsible people falter in finding work. Once the jobs are gone, families suffer, and this seemingly “responsible behavior” becomes a smoke and mirrors argument.
Public schools essentially saved me from the closed mindedness that comes from this conservative mindset. I understand now what we need. We need strong public services (including education), strong labor unions, and a government not run by corporations.
Shame on my family for raising me to believe I was something special, and everybody else was not because they were not willing to work as hard as I was. What a crock.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/18/1111575/-Two-Americas
Great article. The info about the education system is unbelievable. I think it is funny how all of the people like Jeb Bush and Duncan claim that they are promoting charters to help give poor people choices, yet, when people really look close, the choices are not good choices. People will often send their children to the closest school due to limited transportation. The whole privatization movement is one big fat lark. The media has done a poor job of exposing how bad the corporatized schools actually are. I can’t believe how easy it has been to take over minority schools and claim you are actually doing it to help them. The schools have a limited curriculum and people exploiting tax dollars at the top. Unbelievable. It is amazing to read about what happened in Chile and how you can see people are trying to force this junk on the American people.
The coup isn’t as savage as the one in Chile, but pro market thugs are moving on higher education access here, too. The California Community College system was my own gateway to the University of California, So this news from the San Diego Free Press just stopped me in my tracks.
“…the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) … announced that City College of San Francisco was losing its accreditation in July of 2014. … ACCJC’s decision had very little to do with the quality of instruction and much more to do with imposing a new business model on community colleges that narrows their mission and opens the door to more privatization in American higher education. And San Francisco is being used as an example to intimidate other colleges to fall in line with ACCJC’s questionable “reform” agenda.”
And of course, people are coming forward to defend their Community College, and even better: The ACCJC is being challenged.
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/_CCSF_News_of_its_Death_is_Greatly_Exaggerated__11679.html
The issue has always been allowing education to be controlled at the local level by parents. We can go deep into the weeds with political banter. What has been happening is this country, and no doubt in other countries before us, with school closures and the move toward eliminating large schools, is the removal of the power of the family and the community and replacing it with the state. The school choice movement is another vehicle to destabilize organized parents, along with blaming them for the economic conditions which impact their children’s education. Both right and left are participants since the Citizens United decision and even before. Enough of cold war rhetoric.
I was studying abroad in Chile in 2011 during the second round of student protests. I was surprised by the low academic level of the somewhat prestigious university I was attending. At one point, I offered to collaborate with a group of students in my physics class. About half the class was repeating the course, and we were all struggling. I had been watching free MIT lectures online, which had helped me understand some of the content of the class. On the other hand, I was still struggling with the format of the class and was barely passing. I offered to explain some of the concepts in Spanish using the MIT videos, if they would help me to do better in class. No one took me up on my offer. In fact, they seemed confused by the proposal. One girl responded, “But we don’t have to understand physics, we just have to get the right answers on the test!”
My semester was cut short by the country-wide “strike” of college students, and with nothing else to do and no way to know when classes might resume, I spent a lot of time marching and talking with students. I was teargassed by faceless policemen in swat outfits during a peaceful protest. I watched students defend themselves in the only way possible–by throwing rocks at the police force’s armored trucks. I ran from burning rubble in the streets, and crossed a picket line to take final exams so that I could leave the country with credits to take back to the US.
But what frightened me most about the protests (and what frightens me now, now that I am going into my first year as a public school teacher) was the realization that the Chilean students did not even know how to fight for their educational rights. Many students’ education was so poor and so undemocratic that they could not form an effective civil rights movement. Over and over, I watched them make basic mistakes that caused them to be ignored or ridiculed by the government, media, and middle and upper class citizens. The protests eventually ended with no tangible improvements for the students. If the US eventually gets to the point that Chile is currently at, there may be no way to reverse it.
This is very relevant in Sweden. We and Chile are the two countries that have gone farthest in a “marketification” of our entire school system. We se a galloping rise in inequality and segregation. I look forward to reading the next two posts!
I’m glad there is only one John Birch Society (or is it Atlas Shrugged) nut case replying here, but at least he is doing so using a real name. To answer the “Commie” question, which I guess should be phrased “Are you now or have you ever been…” (a whatever the boogyman is this week), the answer is a guffaw, followed by a big Yuck Yuck…
Last night in Chicago I went to the event helping to plan the Chicago portion of the March on Washington commemorations. One of the great things about the event (held at the Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church at 30th and Wabash, another one of those Commie outfits) was that people were reviving an accurate memory of the history of the famous March on Washington, beginning with the fact that it was originally a “March for Jobs and Justice” organized primarily by those Commies — the churches and labor unions across the USA. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was the last of ten speeches that hot afternoon, and contained much more than is usually excerpted.
Last night at Mount Carmel we were reminded by every speaker that the march for jobs and justice was aimed at justice for the working class — and led by people who were red baited then and since. At the time of the march, I myself was a junior in a segregated and white (two black students) Catholic high school in Newark, and one of our readings in “U.S. History” was “Masters of Deceit” by J. Edgar Hoover. It was a best seller in the 1950s and early 1960s, while its author was bugging every move of the leaders of the civil rights movement and the men and women who organized the March on Washington.
While J. Edgar Hoover’s screed has long since gone out of fashion (and Hoover’s megalomaniacal attacks on democracy partly exposed, including his racist obsessions with Martin Luther King Jr.), I think it’s been replaced by the equally crazy stuff by Ayn Rand and the others of that ilk. And as their power and money have increased, they have been force feeding “Atlas Shrugged” and that other propaganda on high school students as readily — but more cleverly — than an earlier generation. When my eldest son entered public high school in Chicago in 2003 at Whitney Young (nice symmetry this summer with the March on Washington history), he came home and told me he could get “extra credit” in English by reading a massive book. I thought “War and Peace” or “Moby Dick” or maybe even “Anna Karenina” (which I had taught as part of my Advanced Placement English literature classes for years).
“What big book do you have to read?” the naive father asked, before mentioning Tolstory or Melville or some others that were coming to mind.
“Atlas Shrugged… And I can enter an essay contest, too…”
Instead of screaming about this particular bit of lucrative propagandizing by the crazy right wing, I decided to participate and learn as much as I could. After all, this was the 21st Century and no sane teacher would bring into a classroom “Masters of Deceit” like my U.S. History teacher had done back in the year of the March on Washington.
So I worked with my son to follow the meanderings and overstuffed musings of John Galt etc. Meanwhile, I also took the time to note that during years when we were unable to “afford” books in most real Chicago public schools, every high school had a box or two of “Atlas Shrugged” in a closet somewhere — unless the teacher was like my high school teacher and was foisting that propaganda on a 14 or 15-year-old. It turns out the Ayn Randies (and as history has shown, they were quite randy) had been spending millions of dollars offering not only the “free” book but prizes in the essay contests promoting that crazy version of freedom and so-called “free markets.”
Now to put all this in context, Chicago, Chile, the Chicago Boys then and now.
At some point during the first year of Arne Duncan’s reign as “Chief Executive Officer” of Chicago’s public schools, I wandered around CPS headquarters and noticed, on the 19th floor of that now infamous building at 125 S. Clark St., one of the rental units: John Galt Solutions, consultants.
John Galt Solutions.
Arne and these guys at least have a sense of humor while they are fleecing humanity. But it’s that sadistic kind you read about in stories from the past.
John Galt Solutions. Isn’t this what the Pinochet years were in Chile, and the Duncan years are in the USA?
I don’t know if they are still there, but they have certainly been around in spirit, from Chile to Bridgeport to Chicago, then, now, and probably for some time to come. One of the things I like about reporting and the study of history is that you couldn’t make this stuff up. And it’s right here, staring us in the face, from Alan Greenspan’s bath tub to the Common Core and Arne Duncan’s moist fantasies about charter schools and that version of “choice.”
It would be very nice to be retired and able to use our real names, like Harlan. However, for those of us who are employed, many of whom will never be able to retire because we have no pensions –and Social Security won’t pay even half our rent– and so we must work until we die, we cannot afford to loose our jobs for speaking our minds. Homeowners might have some equity to fall back on, but renters like me face the immediate risk of becoming homeless.
Cosmic Tinker,
While everyone has to make their own choices, and I wouldn’t presume to know the conditions in the district in which you work, I’d like to suggest that sometimes being open about one’s opinions can provide as much or more protection as anonymity.
At least, when open in your opposition, you can claim harassment when they come after you. When anonymous, you lose that choice; you can’t retroactively claim that five Principal observations in five days is administrative harassment and vindictiveness unless you’ve a documented record of public opposition to the Principal’s antics.
Not to lay a trip on you or anyone else who feels that need to comment anonymously, but at some point we all have to come out publicly, raising our voices openly and together.
Otherwise, it’s a future filled with debt and cat food for us and our students.
No, Micheal, I don’t have that luxury, I do not work at a public K12 school, I have two part time jobs teaching at private for-profit colleges, where I’m hired one semester at a time, have absolutely no job security (or benefits) and they have been letting people go left and right at both schools. (Very easy to do when they don’t have to pay unemployment compensation.) I live one paycheck to the next and will literally be homeless if I’m fired, because I’ve been trying very hard for a long time but have been unable to locate more work.
Truly one cannot make this stuff up, as ghastly as it is.
I have to admire George Schmidt’s creative artistry, though: “Arne Duncan’s moist fantasies about charter schools” is pure poetic genius.
I asked a very simple question. Instead of an answer, I get this long blustering speech, but no denial.
Therefore I shall assume that your philosophy of government and economics is indeed either literally or in the spirit of the Communist Manifesto and I shall therefore be able to read your posts with an understanding of what they are really advocating.
There are plenty of openly self-declared, respectable communists. One of the regular posters here calls himself “Communist Teacher.” That’s honest. You sir, do not SEEM to be.
You SEEM to want to ‘shift’ the argument to the validity of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of government, and to saying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. supported worker rights, and you support worker rights, and surely no one ever accused of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist, and thus I shouldn’t even ask the question of you because your civil rights credentials are impeccable. I’m sure you understand Venn diagrams enough to know that you might be a communist and support worker rights while Dr. Martin Luther King also supported worker rights, but was not communist. That’s just logic.
My only point is that people who read your additions to Professor Weissbluth’s history of education in Chile ought to understand that it is written by a communist and from a communist perspective, and are thus able to assess the validity of your comments in the light of your pre-existing political bias.
Methinks, George Schmidt, that you protest too much.
I don’t think so Harlan…he has much credibility here. I think you are grasping, but I don’t think you can see it. 😦
Did he SAY he wasn’t a Marxist? More important, does it really matter?
Let’s see, you post by your name, and George Schmidt posts by his name, but that is not enough for you Harlan Underhill. There’s more to George Schmidt and you are just sharp enough to ferret it out.
And you think all the rest of us need to know of your discovery, because it all comes down to whether you’re a red or a True American. Are you worried that some readers might be misled by George Schmidt? That our faith in capitalism and the free market will be shaken by a big, bad heretic?
Oh, my, time to bring on the loyalty oaths.
Your “very simple question” really demands a profession of faith, followed by an auto-da-fe. The bogey man of Communism, Karl Marx himself, lives on in George Schmidt’s comments, and Harlan Underhill has lifted the veil. Now, Harlan Underhill, you can move on to one of those Communist gatherings closer to home, like a feminist reading group or a union election.
What is George Schmidt protesting too much about, by the way? That he has an open mind and has suffered and watched others suffer for their beliefs in this “free” society?
He wrote back a long off the point speech. Too much of a response if my insight is untrue. The paradox of the public school educator is that his wage is paid by capitalism but he likes to talk collectivist, cloudy abstractions about democracy and community and citizenship. I’m just a bemused observer of posters who owe everything to capitalism attacking it. Sort of biting the hand that feeds them. Almost ungrateful. Even perhaps verging on hypocrisy. Do you know my friend, Linda? She is VERY tough on me.
Leave it to Harlan to blame people condemned to living under “capitalism run wild” for dissenting against it and then tagging them commies and ungrateful for wanting something more equitable. Given public education in this country follows the capitalist model, public school teachers have had no choice –other than to go to work for private schools that are based on the same capitalist model.
With the possible exception of Communist Teacher, I don’t think anyone here wants to see communist collectivism instituted, since history has demonstrated that is most likely to be run by dictatorship, is very vulnerable to corruption and workers, in fact, have very little say about anything.
Cooperatives differ. They are run by the groups of people who work there and who are invested in the organization. The point is for workers with expertise in any given field to be able to determine how things should be done, not outsiders, politicians or totalitarian rulers who have no clue about the field dictating policies and raking in the big bucks.
I knew you would never get this, Harlan. Take off your tin hat!
I’m glad YOU understand the difference between state run schools, and collaboratives. You missed my long post on having the schools be collectives or cooperatives, run and owned by the teachers. I am totally for that. I totally get the difference, but what we have now in the public schools is a tyrannical, socialist system. Granted, teachers MAY eventually have to all go work in the private sector schools. But the tax supported public school system is is fundamentally statist (communist, socialist) in spirit.
I also argue that technically speaking there is NO “public” sector. ALL of the public sector is supported by business, by capitalism. People forget that.
I think that economist Richard Wolff, who I don’t happen to agree with on everything, made a very important point when he said that one of the major issues for people living in this democracy is that the one place where we spend the majority of our time, at our jobs, is not a democracy. I would have to add that the laws which protect workers in these non-democratic work places are very minimal and sometimes arbitrary.
This presents a number of issues, but I’ll provide just one important example. When I worked at state licensed, private, for-profit child care centers, which are schools for Infants, Toddlers, PreK and Kindergarten, I asked my state labor department for help in requiring that labor laws be enforced. The law says that those working at least 7 1/2 hours are to be given a 20 minute meal break no later than 5 hours after starting work. However, the (non-union) teachers there, who are usually scheduled for 9 hour days, often worked up to 7 hours before being given a non-paid hour off for lunch during the children’s nap time. (This practice is typical in for-profit preschools, where coffee breaks and teacher prep time are usually non-existent and expected to occur during naptime –even though state regulations require that quiet activities be provided then for kids who don’t sleep.)
As it happens, state licensing regulations here also require that teachers in licensed child care centers sit down and eat lunch with the children “family style,” so that meal time is a meaningful learning experience for kids. The labor department decided that this qualified as the required 20 minute lunch break. Teachers are actively working during that time, so in no way is that a break for them.
This may sound trivial to some, but being able to circumvent that break law means that those schools don’t schedule enough staff to be able to cover classes for teachers who have to take emergency bathroom breaks. Had the school been required to meet the labor law requirement on breaks, they would have had to employ floaters to cover classes. As someone who taught alone, without an assistant, in my classroom with 20+ students, for 12 years, it meant that taking a needed bathroom break was extremely challenging for me –and truly something that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
Exactly which highly profitable businesses that pay NO taxes are you talking about, Harlan? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/facebook-taxes_n_2694368.html
Most of education is paid by property taxes. It’s not just homeowners and businesses who pay that either. My rent was raised recently by 40%, due to taxes, which is an increase of $5000 per year, which is a HUGE proportion of my low-income wages.
Tough to tinkle with the bathroom door open so that the toddlers aren’t “unsupervised.” I feel your (bladder) pain. It was tough even in high school to get to the bathroom. We were expected to lunch with the kids in a 25 minute time. That’s when they took their bathroom breaks and we took ours. But, lunch was either after 4 periods in the middle school and five in the high school, so it wasn’t as bad as your situation. Elementary is toughest because you are with the kids ALL day except for a recess if you are lucky enough to have one when you can rotate playground coverage.
I taught all day Kindergarten, scheduled 9 hours per day, 12 months per year, which included teaching all specials myself, like PE, Art and Music, as well as playground duty, so I had no one with whom I was scheduled to rotate for any part of the day. I had no bathroom nor phone in my classroom and the office and teacher’s bathroom were not nearby. I loved my work, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of the hellish working conditions I endured.
Did I mention the unlivable wages? Many other teachers in private for-profit programs experience this, too, including those who work for large, highly profitable chains –which are billion dollar industries. (I know this continues because literally thousands of those teachers have been my students over the past couple decades.)
When companies like Facebook avoid taxes, it’s a scandal, even if they do it legally. I’d prefer to see a top 25% corporate tax rate. It would spur business. Or do you think the loopholes Facebook used should be closed?
Even the taxes businesses do pay come out of the profits of its shareholders, or are simply passed on to the consumer, in the case of facebook, indirectly from its advertisers to their customers.
I doubt any teacher is ever paid properly. Unfortunately, wages are set by the market. Teachers are a dime a dozen. If you didn’t want the job someone else would. Granted I haven’t heard of such difficult elementary school teaching conditions before, and the state laws should have been observed. Private schools should do better.
Why do you think yours did not? Even in the paper cup factory where I worked the girls got 10 min off every two hours for a bathroom break. One of my jobs as a member of the shipping department was to run their cup waxing machines on their breaks, since I wasn’t always making cartons or pushing hand trucks of cartons down to the warehouse.
The real problem is not with capitalism per se, but with too much government interference with the market, which distorts prices, and thus depresses economic activity. BUT how that prevents humane treatment at the school you worked at, puzzles me. Was it a non-profit school, or a for-profit school? You as an individual did not bear the risk of operating the school, and as long as someone must put up the capital and bear the risk, the owner expects a reasonable return.
If you yourself were bearing part of the risk as a part owner of a collaborative, I would think things might be marginally better.
I was teaching at a for-profit school then and I had similar experiences at other for-profit schools.
I’ve worked in other kinds of industries, too, where employees were given both morning and afternoon coffee breaks. Since that is not required by law, it seems to be a company policy recognizing that workers are more productive when they are given periodic breaks. However, those employers paid workers in the trenches poorly, too. The only time I ever made a livable wage was when I worked at non-profit schools.
The notion of the harmonious workings of a perfect market that rights itself by an “invisible hand” is a myth. Businesses do all they can to manipulate markets. I eventually became a school administrator and learned how this is done at such for-profits.
Typically, they employ the least amount of teachers permitted by law, hire teachers with minimum qualifications, and pay them minimum wage, with no benefits. They also don’t give regular cost of living increases.
I was promoted a few times and my employers expected me to take those positions, with increased responsibilities and work loads, for no additional pay. The first time, I refused, so they hired someone else. That didn’t work out though so they asked me again and I was able to successfully negotiate a 50¢ increase. Consequently, after 14 years and two promotions, I was making only $4 more per hour than the minimum wage I was paid when originally hired –and I was the principal in charge of the school by then.
That school always had a waiting list, was very profitable and my employers could afford to take annual trips around the world. (This was the case at other for-profit schools where I worked, too.) The owners regularly checked the rates charged at competing schools. Then they lowballed their own rates, so their school was always the cheapest option around.
Don’t assume that employers will automatically treat their workers humanely. If that had been the case in the Industrial Age, unions and labor laws would not have been necessary. As it stands, today, one of the Koch brothers is not content to be a billionaire and wants the minimum wage eliminated altogether. My former for-profit school owners are sure to have a field day with that…
Hey Harlan. Anyone who thinks—as you do—that “only private, for-profit work produces social and economic value” is either a moron or a sociopath.
Which are you, Harlan?
Can you give a simple, direct answer to this question?