A reader sent these comments:
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” ― Voltaire.
Schools can not end poverty by simply making sure all students are “career and college ready”. As long as the rich and powerful continue take most of the wealth for themselves, we will have poverty. Wealth is finite.
Instead of looking to schools to solve the problem, “we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” –MLK
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The super rich do not hold the votes. The problem with the U.S. is that the public in general has a serious mental disease of self destruction and stupidity. There is no other way this happens. This is just the opposite of the 60’s and 70’s civil rights and the end of the Vietnam War. Then people had values and fought for them. Now, with the stupidifying of the public and things like Dancing with the Stars being important they are playing the violin while the country burns to the ground with Fascism and the elimination of our privacy and civil and human rights so they can have the SUV and kool tennis shoes. Bad trade.
Only education and proper preparation for the rest of your life will do this. This is a process, it does not happen overnight as this mess we are in did not happen overnight. First, we have to stop it from getting worse. Then we can begin to repair. First, I wonder , how much pain does it take before they wake up and really will they wake up before it is too late? Read the latest on the climate change if you really want to scare yourself. We are beginning the next Great Die Off.
Regarding the Great Die Off, the 2010 report of the UN Convention on Biodiversity says that 30 percent of all wild vertebrate life on the planet has disappeared since 1975, mostly through loss of habitat and pollution of the environment.
A third.
Stop for a moment and let that number sink in. It’s breathtaking.
The 2011 Fish Count study says that humans are taking between 1 trillion and 1 1/2 trillion fish from the oceans annually. To put that into perspective, a million seconds is about 11.5 days. A trillion seconds is 31,688.8 years! So, we are taking as many fish from the oceans each year as there are seconds in over 31,000 years. At this rate, according to Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre, ALL commercially fished stocks will be in collapse by mid century.
What is to be done about this? Well, here’s a clue:
BTW, about 70 % of all human land use is for growing crops. About 70 % of that crop land is used for growing food for animals. When people consume animals as opposed to plant foods, an average of about 90 % of the calories are thrown away (they are largely consumed by the metabolic processes of the animals).
It’s facts like these that led Bill Gates to post on his website, recently, a full page notice headed by the phrase, “The future of meat is vegan.” Current practices are NOT sustainable. We are headed for a cliff, and our politicians and bureaucrats are oblivious to this.
My own view is it’s just too late. Climate systems and ecosystems are unfathomably complex. Huge processes are in motion with huge momentum. We’ve known this for a while but we plow ahead anyway and add to the momentum. It might be possible to slow the macro trends if the will existed — which it does not — but they probably couldn’t be slowed on a timeline that’s very helpful. And this is all leaving aside the question of energy. Fossil fuels are responsible for essentially every aspect of our civilization — our electricity, our transportation systems, our food production. Does anyone really expect governments and corporations to begin to act *more* rationally and *more* orderly when global oil production starts to decline forever?
Here’s an exercise that bothers me. Forget for a moment that it took 13 billion years or so to create all of the world’s energy, and that we’ve burned through as much as half of that in the last century. Draw a graph of global fossil fuel production on a timeline that starts 10,000 years ago and ends today. Use legal paper if you like. The graph is essentially a flat line that suddenly goes vertical. Then draw a graph of human population and notice the similarity. And yes, they are certainly connected. Everything about the way we live is unusual and extraordinary. And yet it seems to be in most people’s nature to think it’s all more or less supposed to be this way and will continue to be this way (with of course some tweaks to the tax code and to education policy). I wish it were in my nature, too, but it’s not.
I’m going to try to stay away from this blog for a while. I’m deeply depressed and the relentless negativity here just makes it worse. Wish me luck, most of my resolutions fail.
FLERP, the Cost of War Project estimates our committed costs for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at 6 trillion dollars. According to my calculations, less than half of that amount would have put solar panels ON EVERY ROOF of EVERY BUILDING in the United States.
FLERP, VERY well said!!! Have you seen this? It’s called “The Most Important Video You’ll Ever See.” I don’t think that that’s an overstatement.
FLERP!
¡Buena Suerte! Te echaré de menos. Y ¡ojalá que te olvides de tu resolución!
I agree, Duane. I hope that FLERP does NOT hold to this resolution! : )
FLERP—don’t go. I like your posts.
I say that all the time. That I’m going to quit the blog. But I only succeeded when I gave it up for Lent and that was because I was driving my family crazy talking about it all the time.
I like this blog because it is like reading a brief. I don’t have time to sit all day and find out what is happening around the country in terms of ed reform. Diane does that for us. That’s why I keep reading.
You know George this week my elementary students are learning some things on glockenspiels. The first thing I explain to them is that while it is fun to run the mallet back and forth over the keys and make it sound neat, that this is a discovery they have already made. And now that they know it sounds neat, we need to turn our attention to playing patterns, which is what music is. They have to really fight that urge to just run the mallet over the keys to make it sound neat and avoid the mental challenge of trying to master the ostinato pattern we are learning. And I think it is just this lack of habit of mind that leads to what you have described. Instead of being thrilled by accomplishment, it is easier to just be wowed by some basic thrills we discover as early as infancy. I have to stay right there and remind them over and over to stay with me and work on the pattern. I like to think this is planting a seed for self-discipline in going beyond a simple wow, or being mesmerized by sparkly and shiny and lights etc.
All the more reason for music in schools!!! And of course, at some point we put the mallets away and sing a few camp type fun songs and dance a little. But that intense work of focusing on something besides an easy thrill takes practice and modeling. It is fun to watch that development (even though I do grow weary of going over the pattern for “Miss Mary Mac” 115 times, but ya know. . . It’s for them. For the future of our populace).
what a delightful post!
Good schools are a necessary but not sufficient condition of reducing poverty.
Testing kids to death based on junk tests of amateurishly prepared standards is NOT going to produce better schools. That’s purest fantasy.
It will produce narrowed, incoherent, teach-to-the-test curricula and pedagogy. That this is precisely what is happening is empirically demonstrable.
Therefore, the standards-and-testing movement will acerbate the problem of poverty, not ameliorate it.
The standards-and-testing movement will also acerbate the problem of poverty because of its ENORMOUS opportunity costs. BILLIONS of dollars that could have been spent on improving local conditions affecting schooling are being spent, instead, on junk testing and propagation of curricula and pedagogy based upon and driven by amateurish, backward “standards.”
Sorry to be a grammar checker, but I think you mean ‘exacerbate’ rather than ‘acerbate’. Using the latter changes the meaning of what I think you were trying to say. 🙂
I DID, Lou!!! Thank you. Writing too hurriedly. Thank you for catching this.
Like the proof of string theory so goes the theory of politicians dabbling with education. Who are these people anyway?
There is a big difference. String theory at least is, or so those in a position to know say, coherent and consistent with what we know. The standards-and-testing theory isn’t.
Yes but that came with testing and verification.
Indeed, stiluna7! The current standards [sic] and the tests being developed haven’t been vetting. The vetting of the standards-and-testing theory that has been done is via our experience with NCLB, and we know what that has shown us–NO improvements AND, in fact, narrowed, distorted curricula and pedagogy–teaching to the test.
Now our politicians have decided to take this failed set of practices and to do A LOT MORE OF THAT!
Really, really dumb.
cx: haven’t been vetted
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” ― Voltaire.
I think that quote says it all. It may be in a poor person’s self-interest to get out of poverty, but is it in a 1%er’s self-interest to reduce poverty?
How come the schools of the 1% are never blamed for poverty?
Was it in the interests of the nobility of France before the revolution? I think so.
Our public schools cannot end poverty and have never done so. The noble goals of Horace Mann in the 1840s remained just that, noble unfulfilled goals. In last few decades, public schools enrolled nearly all kids not going to pvt or religious schools, un like in 19thC until WWI, when up to 90% of kids did not go to schl or dropped out of school. High drop-out rates persisted until WWII. My father and all his siblings and cousins did not graduate high school, yet all made a living because they were white, male, learned a trade, and the postwar econ was expanding. In addition, the largest strike wave in US history took place ’46-’47, scared the bejeesus out of industrial scions, led to massive wave of purges of radical leaders from unions(Red Scares) on one hand and to large wage concessions to rank and file on the other. That massive strike wave installed “the family wage” for working-class labor which persisted as an income bump-up until early 70s. Also, a million white working-class vets got coll degrees thanks to VA bill(Serviceman’s Readjustment Act f 1944)while another million white families got cheap VA/FHA mortgages in late 40s-early 50s which enfranchised them as home-owners in Levittown and other middle-income, racist enclaves(Black families not allowed). Anyhow, schooling did not elevate the incomes of the mass of folks here, rather giant strikes led by labor unions which were in turn led by the last of the labor radicals did the job. All our kids deserve the good public schools Diane has advocated strenuously b/c that’s a just, democratic society provides for its children. We do not have buy into the bogus claims of the corporate crowd who demand college and career ready kids or else they don’t deserve a family wage when they reach adulthood–pure rhetoric without evidence.
Well argued, Ira.
I agree, a strong union movement will level the playing field between management and employees and will thereby lower poverty. There is an ongoing war against unions in this country, especially against public sector unions and teacher unions. The billionaires are not only trying to destroy and obliterate teacher pensions but oligarchs like Pete Peterson have had a decades long jihad against Social Security (and Medicare). The corporate media are generally hostile to unions and 99% of talk radio is rabidly anti-union.
We desperately need a strong union movement in this country, but we are headed in the other direction. Look at what is happening with our teachers’ unions. They are cheerleaders for the new standards [sic], which are the engine driving the testing juggernaut. They are taking an active role in promoting these even though they haven’t been vetted and are, clearly, backward and amateurish. One doesn’t have to look far too figure out what this has happened. The unions have received a great deal of money from the Gates Foundation to promote these awful “standards,” which are, predictably, dramatically distorting pedagogy and curricula around the country.
Reposting that with corrections. Sorry, many typos in my posts today. I am trying to work and post simultaneously.
We desperately need a strong union movement in this country, but we are headed in the other direction. Crony capitalism (which is what we in fact have) has to be checked by powerful, countervailing forces.
Look at what is happening with our teachers’ unions. They are cheerleaders for the new standards [sic], which are the engine driving the testing juggernaut. The teachers’ unions are very actively promoting these standards [sic], even though the standards [sic] haven’t been vetted and are, clearly, backward and amateurish. The ELA standards are particularly badly conceived. One doesn’t have to look far too figure out why the unions are working so hard to promote the standards [sic]. The unions have received a great deal of money from the Gates Foundation to promote these. In ELA especially, the new standards [sic] are, predictably, dramatically distorting pedagogy and curricula around the country.
BTW, the reformers never tire of claiming that standards are not a curriculum and do not mandate pedagogical approaches. However, as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., pointed out on this blog recently, the new math standards [sic] are, pretty much, a curriculum outline. The ELA standards are not. They are NOT a curriculum. But, entirely predictably, the ELA standards are being treated by the big-box publishers and by many school districts as a curriculum outline. Lessons are being created to “teach the standards,” with little or no attention to curricular coherence. High-stakes summative testing is a TERRIBLE idea to begin with, but when one compounds the problem by having that testing NOT cover the curriculum but, rather, a poorly conceived list of abstract skills, well, the result is the disaster that is now unfolding. And, of course, the new ELA standards DO promote certain pedagogical approaches, such as “close reading,” which should be one tool in the toolkit, but this one technique is being touted as some sort of cure-all in teacher “trainings” all over the country because of the Common Core. Again, this was entirely predictable.
Well said, Robert. I couldn’t reply to your post below, but you articulate well the problem with the ELA CC standards. I feel like with these abstract standards that I’m teaching mush. It would be easier if I was told students need to learn X in sixth grade, Y in seventh, etc. Those would be more intrusive, but at least I could get a grip on them. Plus these close reading techniques seem to be taking the place of more traditional and, in my opinion, better skills like grammar mastery, vocabulary and punctuation.
Poverty is the elephant in the room that the Education Nation people are going out of their way to ignore. Addressing poverty is inconvenient and not profitable. Referring back to the quote about the rich needing the poor to exist, it’s important to have the poor beholden to the rich through “charity” that controls aspects of the lives of the poor, including education. The only outcome of “reform” is to have an obedient workforce, not to have an educated citizenry.
Meanwhile, in Philly:
GOVERNMENT CUTS WON’T HURT ANYONE, EXCEPT MAYBE WHEN A 12-YEAR-OLD DIES BECAUSE HER SCHOOL HAD NO NURSE
http://goo.gl/Ye7eRZ
Sixth-grader Laporshia Massey died from asthma complications, according to her father, who says he rushed her to the emergency room soon after she got home from school on the afternoon of Sept. 25. He says Laporshia had begun to feel ill earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, where a nurse is on staff only two days a week. This day was not one of those days.
Daniel Burch, Laporshia’s father, is angry and wants to know whether Philadelphia’s resource-starved school district failed to save his daughter’s life.
Thoughts and prayers to this family. Let us all think about what is really important in our lives and act accordingly.
Three suggestions to all intelligent beings who ponder Diane’s question….
1. Vote Green Party to take money out of politics and education
2. Watch The Economics of Happiness
http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org
Stop believing in the hype. Poverty has been purposefully organized by the one percent. It is perpetuated by believing in our current systems
3. Watch Schooling The World. We all have been robbed from the ability to live a truly free and happy life with family and loved ones by falling for a system of living that is unsustainable, unjust and making us all unhappy.
http://schoolingtheworld.org
Lastly, why does the CCSS feel the need to focus on “arguing” so much. Can’t we all get along and just discuss life’s problems with kindness, caring and compassion?
Excellent Post..I love your post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They go for the Green…but unfortunately it is the Paper Green and not the Planet Green….
Reminds me of a Robert Frost Poem….
The Road not taken
Two road Diverged….in a Yellow Wood………
etc
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
One of Voltaire’s very cognizant statements.
I have helped many students get out of poverty using education. I am one of the people who believed education could be a solution. And it is for some. I also know it takes a lot of hard work, extreme perseverance, and luck to turn the tide. But despite my multiple successes there were many students that I did not “save”. The obstacles were too plentiful. Some of them went on to improve their lives at a later time. Some are in jail or dead. Education alone cannot solve all of society’s problems, but it is still one of the strongest tools we have to make a difference.
Every teacher has stories of situations in which a student’s schooling did make a difference. I think of one student I had in an eleventh-grade class–a really bright kid who lived in the Chicago projects. She told me, back then, that she thought she might become a dental hygienist. I convinced her that someone as bright as she could go to medical school. I helped her with college applications and application essay. And when she finished college, she went on to medical school. Years later, on graduating from medical school, she remembered our conversations and remembered me. She sent a note thanking me for believing in her and pushing her to do more. Receiving that note was one of the highlights of my teaching career. A success. But for that one success, there were many other poverty-related failures. Education can’t fix every problem. It made all the difference in this one girls’ life and definitely lifted her out of poverty. That said, I believe that Ira Shore is right. Lack of access to education is not the primary problem leading to poverty. Poverty is the primary problem leading to kids neither having the inclination nor the ability to take advantage of educational opportunities. The “reformers” have it the wrong way wrong. But that’s typical of that crowd.
cx: the reformers have it the wrong way around
And that made all the difference..
The only way out of poverty is through education!!!
Robert..Can not wait to read your book
The game is rigged today: “millions of college graduates over all—not just recent ones—suffer a mismatch between education and employment, holding jobs that don’t require a costly college degree”
http://chronicle.com/article/Millions-of-Graduates-Hold/136879/
A college education is no longer a ticket to the middle class, because there are just not enough decent paying jobs.
I used to teach World history and Western Civ. to college freshmen my favorite task was to have them read excerpts of ideologues then compare and contrast. My favorite was to take excerpts of Samuel Smiles from his famous book “Self-Help” and excerpts of Karl Marx’s communist manifesto. Then I suggested that the basic difference between conservative and progressive since then is this:
conservatives see poverty as an individual moral failing and progressives see it as a result of the social structure.
These are fundamental beliefs about how the world works so I am not suggesting one is right and the other is wrong. Unfortunately, I think these beliefs are largely established by the time of college. I would also argue that America has tended toward the “moral failing” view that was enshrined culturally by Horatio Alger in his rags to riches tales.
It is difficult or near impossible to debate solutions to poverty if you feel it is caused by fundamentally different things. Now you have even neo-mammonite theology preaching wealth is the result of prayer. I guess I am lamenting here on the difficulty on how to find common ground to which to begin the discussion. Especially since I think people’s beliefs about poverty determine what is acceptable evidence in a debate.(thinking of the Dunning-Kruger effect here)
You pose an excellent question, historyrunner. Given these entrenched notions, how do we push past the left-right divide to a place of dialogue? And here’s another: how do people even begin to envision alternatives to both visions if they are so locked in? Here, for example, is a genuine alternative to both views: Georgism, but not a Georgism based solely upon taxation on land but on all resources held to exist in the Commons and only borrowed for private ends. A thorough-going Georgism would be a third way, neither left nor right. It would be more equitable, and it would place taxes where they belong, on consumption of natural resources, which must be done if we are to avoid catastrophe.
I am curious about what you mean by resources “held to exist in the Commons”. What tax base do you have in mind?
TE, when I speak of the Commons, I refer to the resources held in common by the public, like public parks, public beaches, public schools, fire protection, police protection, public roads. We used to have public hospitals but must have been privatized.
It seems that Robert wants to tax “..all resources held to exist in the Commons”, so I do not think that is the way he is using the word.
Thanks Robert, Never heard of that ideology before I used to study 19th fin die siècle French thinkers…I will have to read some more about it. However, I do agree with what Dr. Ravitch has been suggesting that to even have this kind of discussion we are going to have to start trying to compete in the effort to retake the narrative on education. At the moment it seems wealth=worth, that privatization=”choice”, Labaree paints a pretty clear picture in “Someone has to Fail”. Also, Dr. Ravitch did a good job of pointing this out on “On Point” a week or so ago ( Reign of Error is on the reading list). What strikes me as bizarre is the conservative view is now bolstered by a postmodern approach, in other words if the results of education contradict your desired outcome commandeer the institutions to produce the results you want (the sanctioning of privilege). Two things to conclude my rambling thoughts I think that everyone should use both data and anecdote to continually challenge the idea of meritocracy as guiding our current system( I personally am not opposed to merit playing a role). It reminds me of Whitehead and Russell’s attempt to create an axiomatic mathematics(analogous to testing) that was brought crumbling down by Godels’ incompleteness proof. Of course the pessimist in me worries that knowledge is already widely accepted as a product, many organizations already behave this way “manufacturing” studies and data or funding researchers to say whatever it is they want them to say. But Dr. Ravitch and many others give me hope.
She should be!
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