Michael Paul Goldenberg decries the critics who think I am impolite, shrill, shrieking, noisy–and he notes, I am none of those things. The problem, he says, is that I disagree with the critics, and they are not used to that. If I were a man, they might use other adjectives. How familiar it is to hear powerful men complaining about a woman, a grey-haired woman at that, who doesn’t know her place. Why, Goldenberg says, I am just plain “uppity.” He detects sexism. So do I, though I am usually the last to raise that banner.
He concludes:
I realize that it would be much nicer for these wealthy, powerful, dishonest people if everyone would treat them with complete politeness, respect, and diffidence. They would prefer that we trust them completely and let them do their “good works” unmolested by critics and criticism. Or to put it bluntly, they’d like those of us who aren’t dead from the neck up to shut our mouths and go away. Their motto may well be, “Quiet! Capitalist at work!”
Diane said several years ago at the premiere of THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT “WAITING FOR SUPERMAN” that there are no billionaires coming to save us – teachers, parents, students, and citizens of good will. We have to rely on us. And she’s been sounding that battle cry in many forms and forums ever since. And I’m confident she will keep speaking out, keep writing, keep analyzing, keep inspiring and igniting more people to think, look, and act to preserve the crucial democratic institution of free public education, devoid of commercial interests and corporate control. And thus, she will continue to aggravate the piss out of both the billionaire education deformers and their various lackeys, frontmen, and minions.
What she won’t do is be quiet, be overly polite (though she is, in fact, unusually polite), be a docile woman or a schtummer Yid*, no matter what insults and invective is sent her way. But she cannot be expected to do it alone. So neither can we stand by and let her do all the lifting or face the Ravitch Hawks alone.
*silent Jew
Diane Ravitch's blog 
End the silence. Diane’s book will provide everyone with plenty of opportunity to speak out. Not in her defense but in defense of the children and the democracy that she describes in detail as at risk. Diane’s work is built upon the work of good teachers who now can be heard via human voices, letters to editors/politicians/CEO’s, more blogs, bumper stickers, picket signs at legislative rallies, PTA anti-common core gatherings. Whatever it takes, the moment is now.
LikeLike
The original title of this blog (highlighted yesterday here at Diane Ravitch’s blog)—
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2013/09/truth_anger_and_the_national_conversation_about_ed_reform.html
was “Truth, Anger, Gender and the National Conversation on Ed Reform.”
Every now and then, I write a blog about the predominance of male voices in Ed Policy World, and the corresponding high proportion of women doing the actual work of education, the practitioners. The generals and military strategists vs the boots on the ground, so to speak. Invariably, when I post such a blog, men will respond saying “What about Diane Ravitch? She’s one of the loudest voices in the policy debate.”
My response to that is usually that Diane Ravitch is so well-known, and so iconic, that she transcends gender. I spent some time yesterday, in the “Truth, Anger…” piece eating those words. When I saw what DFER’s Joe Williams wrote, what was printed in the New York Post, and the raft of yes-but reviews, I realized that they were all written by men, who couldn’t, in their wildest dreams–even if they liked and respected Diane, or considered a mentor–write a full-throated endorsement of the book. There are lingering, even subliminal control and dominance issues. Why does she get to call the shots? What about my ideas?
After I wrote it, I took all the gender-war stuff out, and changed the title. Why? For the same reasons Ravitch expresses–no woman wants to be seen as whining about her reduced influence due to latent sexism, even if she recognizes it for what it is. It’s a first-world problem, and we have bigger fish to fry–preserving America’s best idea, public education, for example.
But–trust me–it exists. There’s an old-boys policy network, where men agree to disagree and women…well, they’re in the classroom teaching first graders to read.
LikeLike
well, well said
LikeLike
I think we are going to have huge turnouts for every book event Diane can do, and only hope she gets enough rest…
For some reason, covering these (predictable and foreshadowed) attacks on Diane (my early favorite was the DFER attack where they compared Diane to Richard Nixon with that silly “Enemies List” graphic) and her Reign of Error has me going back to the latest revelations about previous hypocrites and mendacities. Think about how Hollywood allowed itself to be censored by Hitler during the 1930s. Or the fact that it was American “social scientists” who devoted a century from their professorial perches preaching eugenics.
The historical scholarship that’s slowly coming out about a lot of U.S. history (and the manipulations of the plutocrats at various points in history) has been welcome. Diane just adds a lot of punch to the facts.
Diane’s concise precision (and way with words; they are still not recovered from “The Billionaire Boys Club”) has them going crazy. They may not realize it, but they are only going to increase sales of Reign of Error.
I have to admit, this came as a surprise to me.
When “The Death and Life…” came out in Chicago, we were barely organized as CORE and not yet helping to lead the Chicago Teachers Union. It wasn’t until a year later that the Chicago Teachers Union leadership could host a standing room only event at the University of Illinois Forum (on St. Patrick’s Day no less, in Chicago!) for Diane to speak. Her energy before the event began, signing maybe a hundred books (I have pictures of the line; I reported it all) convinced me that she still had the energy to do the job the book was demanding of her. Since we’ve seen that’s the case again with “Reign of Error.”
As soon as I got the “The Death and Life”, I read it. I read it in the early hours of the morning during a campus visit with our eldest son at Berkeley, while Sharon, Sam and Josh slept, then tried to write a quickie review which basically said READ THIS BOOK NOW. I was very happy, and in some ways stunned.
We had been part of that history.
Jerry Bracey had been one of the expert witnesses at my administrative “trial” when Paul Vallas was firing me from my 28 year teaching job. For years, we had talked about how Bracey had to fend off many of those on the other side, some of whom used the same lies and slanders against him. Even as he was being honored by the AERA, the Broad Foundation was buying Phi Delta Kappan and slowly strangling Bracey’s publication. First they refused to continue publishing the “Rotten Apples” (which we picked up proudly) and then they basically told Jerry he’d be happier on line and no longer in print. A little research and we could see that the PDK had been bought. I haven’t read much of it since, and then only when someone insists…
Jerry continued to debate those who were pushing corporate “school reform.” Among the best informed was Diane Ravitch, he mentioned more than once. (I don’t remember if she ever got a rotten apple, because she was rarely as corrupt as some of those touting the “reform” talking points — and this was in the early days of Michelle Rhee, Arlene Ackerman and dozens of others who made a lot of money…
When “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” came out, I read it, then re-read it, then re-read Bracey’s “The War Against America’s Public Schools” and Susan Ohanian’s “Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?” As we all know, “The Death and Life…” had some ancestors. But “The Death and Life…” blew the walls down, and the ruling class has never been the same in its smugness. Despite “Waiting for Superman,” “Won’t Back Down” and a thousand points of darkness in that sludge of corporate propaganda, our side had a succinct textbook from which to draw not only information, but strength.
And as Diane’s blog grew and became even more fun, it was easy to send new people to a place where they could get the information — and more — every morning. Then, after more than a year’s careful planning, Karen Lewis and the new leadership of the CTU (elected a few months after the publication of “The Death and Life..”) led the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 against Rahm Emanuel and the Broad Foundation’s “A List” (Jean-Claude Brizard, then Barbara Byrd Bennett). Suddenly here in Chicago alone we had tens of thousands of teachers, parents and students wanting to get all the information quickly, and in that one book they could get started merging their experiences with the history and facts.
It’s no wonder the creeps are panicking. And no wonder they are trying every sleazy attack and snide cheap shot they can ooze out of their very expensive ranks.
One of those propagandists, Peter Cunningham, when he was here in Chicago, was paid $10,000 a month to be Arne Duncan’s “strategic planner” and only did that work as a “consultant” here because he wanted to gather other jobs as well… But that’s why I can’t not think about the guys (and gals, like Leni) back in the 1930s who were doing the same sludgework of the eugenicists, racists, and world class anti-Semites. These men and women are in a long and ignoble tradition, and its going to be fun as they emerge watching us play “whack a mole” with each of them. The creativity we’ll see as our side reads and shares “Reign of Error” will go far beyond “Billionaire Boys Club” and “Toxic Troll” (that wonderful recent hit against Michelle Rhee).
But it will emerge over time, not all at once. The burdens carried by the “99 percent” today are enough to weary the strongest. In Chicago, many teachers, facing all the lies and programs of the Broad Foundation bureaucrats now lined up across the “top ranks” of CPS, will first say, “Do I have the time?” But I suspect that many will be energized by the book, and get a boost that couldn’t come from a case of Red Bull. We’ll see.
Sadly, many of our poor and working class brothers and sisters do not have the time to read everything
— or even the money to afford the books.
And we have to remember that the attack is not just against the public schools that serve the poor and working people. As I write this (ten in the morning Chicago time) half Chicago’s public libraries are still closed.
That’s one of the other “reforms” by the man another forthcoming book is calling “Mayor One Percent,” Chicago’s own Rahm Emanuel. When he claimed that “austerity” was forcing him to cut back hours in the city’s once proud public libraries, he managed to force the resignation of one of the top women in that field (Mary Dempsey, who had been Chicago library chief for more than a decade). She was not the first woman who couldn’t take Rahm’s odious male chauvinism and macho posturing, nor did she receive the most dramatic. (The prize for that still goes to Rahm’s “Fuck You Lewis” to CTU president Karen Lewis…). We can be sure that the same plutocratic propagandists who have been touting Rahm (Time, The Atlantic, The New York Times, etc., etc., etc.,..) will all be weighing in against Diane Ravitch and “Reign of Error”.
So with tomorrow as the publication date, let’s have even more fun with this one.
LikeLike
I remember your review of “Death and Life” — by far the best review of it I read.
LikeLike
lol!
LikeLike
I was referring to the last couple paragraphs of the post. The sexism is nothing to laugh about. I, too, have detected far more than a whiff of that in the response so far.
That said, I expect the response to this book to be particularly nasty. The deformers know that it could well be a game changer.
LikeLike
Diane Ravitch will be the deformers’ Emmanuel Goldstein–the focus of their 2-minute hates. They have reason to tremble before her intellect and her mighty pen.
LikeLike
Attacks on teachers calling us “unprofessional” and “lazy” and suggesting that we need to be babied with prescribed curriculums and TPA could never happen if the field were not predominantly made up of women and were the act of teaching not categorized as a “care profession.” It is not surprising that similar sexism is at work in the silencing of critics of the privatization of education for the profit of billionaire boys clubs.
LikeLike
What is TPA?
LikeLike
The Teacher Performance Assessment, a way for Pearson to make money off teacher candidates by having them answer questions and film their teaching practices to then be scored by some guy in his basement based on rubrics.
LikeLike
Thanks, I don’t always know the acronyms.
And rubrics, truly the devil’s tool.
LikeLike
Maybe the reason I’m still missing a ton of the materials that I’m supposed to be using with the new edition of Pearson/Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street series is that Pearson is too busy meddling with student teaching assessments and Common Core assessments to be able to get their reading series materials that are supposed to make my 1st graders college and career ready” out. Not that I really care if it ever comes…my first graders have begun to read quite nicely without it!
LikeLike
Remember the Associate Professor(?) at UMass who refused to have her teacher candidates used as guinea pigs for Pearson’s TPA. They had a much richer hands on mentoring program. She was “let go” and I lost track of what happened to her, I’m ashamed to say.
LikeLike
She contributed here in the last day or so with a post. Barbara Madeloni-I wish her luck and admire her courage to do what is right by her students..
LikeLike