Wendy Lecker extends her analysis of reformer actions and policies and how they purposely do the opposite of what they say.
In part 1, she quoted Orwell’s definition of doublethink:
“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality.”
— George Orwell, 1984
Orwell’s definition of “doublethink” explains Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s education reform strategy. His playbook consists of starving our neediest children of educational basics, while claiming he is “helping” them prepare for the 21st century.
In part 2, she quotes Orwell: “”War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.”
What reformers say and do are opposites:
Reformers say they want creativity and critical thinking as they impose more standardization and punish nonconformity. They say they don’t want teachers to teach to the test, but make the tests more consequential than ever.
Lecker writes:
“The Common Core’s roll-out intensifies the homogenized, test-focused approach to instruction. In one needy Connecticut district, children were handed identical “contracts” with the following expectations: “all children will grow by at least one level on the Common-Core aligned rubric each trimester;” and “all students will improve their reading levels by at least two years by the end of the school year.” The Common Core rubric and tests define learning.
“Regimentation is the reformers’ ideal of a teacher-student relationship. In his campaign to expand the charter school empire in Connecticut, Commissioner Pryor handed two public schools over to Jumoke/FUSE charter chain. The teacher attitude there is exemplified by this fifth grade teacher at Bridgeport’s Jumoke-controlled Dunbar school. Her opening line to her 10-year-old students was: “While I am teaching, I want to see you in ready position … feet flat on the floor, hands folded on the desk and eyes on me.” In the normal world, rapt attention is the result of engaging teaching. This teacher foists that responsibility on the child. The lesson here is: compliance above all. You need not be actually engaged — just act the part.
“Even superintendents are being whipped into compliance. Pryor handed down a ready-made Powerpoint with Common Core “talking points” that principals and teachers are to present at all school open houses.
“In a recent Orwellian twist, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has issued “guidance” mandating that states cease the use of modified assessments. Thus, students with disabilities must now take the exact same tests as everyone else.
“Identical tests, identical goals, identical results and identical behavior may work with automatons. However, as Steve Nelson, director of New York’s Calhoun School, recently observed, real children are not standard. They develop at different rates and learn in different ways. If we seek to develop creative innovative thinkers who can thrive in the real world, we cannot park them in front of a computer to learn and practice disembodied skills, nor have them taught by automatons parroting scripted lessons.
“To suggest that these reforms are “good for our children” is the most Orwellian claim of all.”
The first part of her two-part series is here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More Orwellian activity reported: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-lynch-edd/highly-qualified-teachers_b_3886585.html The Student Success Act, drafted by Minnesota Republican John Kline, calls for removal of teacher hiring requirements at the federal level. In a nutshell, removing the highly qualified piece will result in more highly qualified teachers available for hire.
The 3 “D”.s of the Educational Downgrading Movement —
Deception, Dishonesty, Disinformation
Dishonesty has been the constant hallmark of this movement. Its pushers know they can’t lay their real agenda open to public debate — the public has already rejected it time and time again — so they choose to lie about every step of the program while they impose it by every underhanded trick in the book.
How often I have thought of Orwell’s masterpiece in connection with the current “reforms.” So often it seems that no one could possibly want to undertake these measures unless the desired result were a parallel track for training of the children of the proles to turn them into obedient do-bees, ones who will respond with grit, tenacity, and perseverance to whatever random, meaningless work is required of them by their overlords, work that would create profound alienation in any normal human being. Certainly, what we are seeing are top-down, totalitarian mandates, and what we’re hearing is a great deal of Doublespeak, starting with the characterization of the new standards in ELA as “common,” “core,” “state,” and “standards.”
There was much dissent in the United States, but that was eliminated.
By 2023, the national database of student responses and test scores was up and running and linked to the central server of standards-based lesson plans from the Approved Curriculum Consortium and Ministry of Truth, and the kids were all hooked up devices to measure, in real time, their affective responses–their grit, tenacity, and perseverance–as they bubbled their bubbles and did their Sit Up, Roll Over Great Grates during the daily 2-minute hates. The system of prole training worked beautifully, and the drones almost never had to be used. Well, not almost never, but that unpleasantness was subject, of course, to erasure.
Why, indeed?!! To do what works and what makes sense for the child’s needs cannot be quantified and placed on some manufactured “metric” that can be fed into a data base.
I think this resembles the polls given by local news channels, asking viewers to make a choice between A and B when the answer is really C, D, E,… Or “yes-no” questions… That might have gray areas. Sometimes might be more accurate.
I simply think these reformers are trying to avoid looking at students and teachers as individuals … Humans.
The Orwellian references are telling. They really are. We have to wake up!!!
(#1)
Here’s a good example:
http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/former-defense-ceo-stem-focus-needed-in-schools/article_3c8f8984-19c3-11e3-a74f-001a4bcf6878.html
It seems that former Lockeed CEO Norm Augustine was invited to tour Charlottesville-area public schools, where he touted his brand of corporate “reform” and lauded schools for their STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) focus, which goes under the rubric of “21st-century education.”
As CEO at Martin Marietta, Augustine brokered the merger of that company with Lockheed to produce Lockheed Martin and got taxpayers to subsidize nearly a billion dollars of the merger cost, including tens of millions in bonuses for executives (Augustine netted over $8 million). And then the merged company laid off thousands of workers. The promised efficiencies and cost savings to the government (and taxpayers) have yet to materialize.
Lockheed Martin is is now the largest of the big defense contractors, yet its government contracts are hardly limited to weapons systems. While Lockheed has broadened its services, it is dependent on the government and the taxpayers for its profits. It’s also #1 on the ” ‘contractor misconduct’ database” which tracks contract abuse and misconduct. Meanwhile, while Norm Augustine touts the need for more STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and STEM teachers for public schools, Lockheed is laying off thousands of engineers. Research studies show there is no STEM shortage, but Augustine says (absurdly) that it’s critical to American economic “competitiveness.”
A 2004 RAND study “found no consistent and convincing evidence that the federal government faces current or impending shortages of STEM workers…there is little evidence of such shortages in the past decade or on the horizon.” The RAND study concluded “if the number of STEM positions or their attractiveness is not also increasing” –– and both are not –– then “measures to increase the number of STEM workers may create surpluses, manifested in unemployment and underemployment.”
A 2007 study by Lowell and Salzman found no STEM shortage (see: http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html ). Indeed, Lowell and Salzman found that “the supply of S&E-qualified graduates is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown, and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical standards.” The “education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand.”
Lowell and Salzman concluded that “purported labor market shortages for scientists and engineers are anecdotal and also not supported by the available evidence…The assumption that difficulties in hiring is just due to supply can have counterproductive consequences: an increase in supply that leads to high unemployment, lowered wages, and decline in working conditions will have the long-term effect of weakening future supply.” Lowell and Salzman noted that “available evidence indicates an ample supply of students whose preparation and performance has been increasing over the past decades.”
A fascinating study, democracy!
(#2)
Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote this stunning statement recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see: http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
So why the STEM emphasis by the likes of Bill Gates and Norm Augustine? Benderly continues:
“Simply put, a desire for cheap, skilled labor, within the business world and academia, has fueled assertions—based on flimsy and distorted evidence—that American students lack the interest and ability to pursue careers in science and engineering, and has spurred policies that have flooded the market with foreign STEM workers. This has created a grim reality for the scientific and technical labor force: glutted job markets; few career jobs; low pay, long hours, and dismal job prospects for postdoctoral researchers in university labs; near indentured servitude for holders of temporary work visas.”
Benderly reports that an engineering professor at Rochester Institute of Technology told a Congressional committee last summer this:
“Contrary to some of the discussion here this morning, the STEM job market is mired in a jobs recession…with unemployment rates…two to three times what we would expect at full employment….Loopholes have made it too easy to bring in cheaper foreign workers with ordinary skills…to directly substitute for, rather than complement, American workers. The programs are clearly displacing and denying opportunities to American workers.”
Norm Augustine is a charlatan of the first order, But the local school superintendent thanked him for visiting and sharing his “vision.” And then she reaffirmed “her dedication” to focusing on STEM, which goes under the moniker of “21st-century education.”
As I’ve noted any number of times, the World Economic Forum evaluates and ranks countries on economic competitiveness each year. The U.S. was typically ranked 1st or 2nd each year, but recently has started to slide down; it dropped to 4th last year (2010-11) and to 5th this year (2011-12).
When the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) weak (poor) corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
More recently, major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits, especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.”
It’s interesting that the WEF cites the top economic competitors –– those ranking higher than the U.S. –– for efficiency, trust, transparency, ethical behavior, and honesty. Corporate “reformers” like Norm Augustine seem to take absolutely no notice.
Apparently, neither do many of those who “lead” public school divisions.
The piece in the Columbia Journalism Review really is stunning. Thanks for these links.
Do you see the problem? We are engaged in the wrong kind(s) of “reform” for mythical reasons.
Worse, many (if not most) public school “leaders” – like the ones cited in the Daily Progress article – are, to put it bluntly, real tools.
They are not leading at all, they’re just recycling the pap. There are few who will come out and admit that we’re doing some really stupid some, much less challenge any of it.
And even worse, some of those “leaders” get appointed to important positions. For example, the superintendent mention in the Progress article was recently appointed to the Virginia State Council for Higher Education by disgraced conservative Republican governor Bob McDonnell. Think about (1) why she got that appointment, and (2) the damage she can do in that position.
It sure seems to me that this interconnected goofiness ––– market-based corporate “reform,” Common Core, the College Board and its faulty products, STEM, economic competitiveness –– is something that Diane ought to be emphasizing. But it seems to me that I only see it presented piecemeal….the bigger picture is missing.
And that is seriously problematic.