EduShyster has a dream, but it is not the one that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about in 1963 at the March on Washington.
She has a dream of Dr. King returning today to see the new “reform” movement which so often claims that it is the “civil rights movement” of our time.
He tours the “no excuses” school and sees that it is segregated. He discovers that the new “civil rights movement” is funded by many billionaires.
He might be shocked to discover that poverty is now considered “an excuse,” not something to be opposed and banished.
He might be even more amazed to discover that in today’s world, the labor unions are an obstacle to closing the achievement gap, and not–as he thought–a valued ally in his efforts to advance social justice.
As he completes his tour of “excellent” charter schools, more surprises in store for him:
Separate but innovative
Tough news on this issue, reformers. Even Dr. King 2.0, now with more excellence, might have a problem with our apparent abandonment of the ideal of universal public education. In Detroit, for example, where he delivered his speech at the Great March in 1963, there are now dual school systems: one of charter schools and the other a public system that must accept all children and is rapidly becoming the last resort for the toughest-to-serve kids. And in Washington DC, where King dreamed of an equal future for children of all races, two separate systems, one for strivers, one for discards, compete for public resources. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that even Dr. King 2.0 would not be a fan of “separate but innovative.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
MLK would be horrified at what is happening today in education reform.
I wish his descendants would be speaking out against the closings in Chicago and now New Jersey.
Maybe they have to some extent, and I have missed it.
Jessie Jackson has been supportive, it would seem, of teachers, unions, and administrators. He attended a major rally and the seat next to him was reserved for Weingarten, who was absent. I think Matt Farmer spoke at the rally.
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We all should be his descendants.
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The good news is that African-American communities (e.g. Los Angeles) are catching on to the fact that education “reform” is a fraud and the main victims are poor children of color.
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Ditto
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In his wisdom, Dr. King wrote some prophetic words about “philanthropy”.
“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Strength to Love)
He would have instantly seen through the false message of today’s “edu-reformers” and not aligned his efforts with them.
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Is anyone surprised that the “other” “Dr. King” wrote this? Tone deaf. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/dr-king-common-core-article-1.1583498
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Against my better judgment, I am compelled to offer up my latest token, which was not written with MLK in mind, but which honors him in my own unique manner. It may cause someone to see this conflict in a different light.
It has long been recognized that many schools serving minority and poor children are in disrepair or otherwise not given the same resources and support that schools in more affluent or even predominantly working class white neighborhoods are given in the same communities and within short distances from each other. The gains after Brown V. Board of Education were significant in many places, but by no means adequate to eliminate gross disparities and inequalities, and they were by no means permanent. The discrimination takes many forms and is sometimes quite subtle or well-concealed, but the results are always fairly dramatic and noticeable. This kind of discrimination is unacceptable and unconstitutional, just as the high court decided in 1954. Writer and educator Jonathan Kozal has written many books and made innumerable public appearances with eloquent and passionate arguments against this shocking state of affairs that persists nearly sixty years after the Brown decree.
Schooling is understood by most as the primary means to becoming educated. If opinions could be sampled nationwide and across all demographics, it is a safe bet that nearly everyone considers education to be THE purpose of schooling and the main actual function of school attendance. The average person does not think of indoctrination as a valid function of schooling and few probably could be convinced that much indoctrination takes place currently in schools. Education is generally seen as an essential good, while indoctrination is seen as bad or an illegitimate by-product of schooling, which should be eliminated somehow.
Yet, it will be argued here that schools are perceived as the vehicles for promoting and reinforcing the predominant culture in myriad ways and for perpetuating the values, mores, and characteristics of the predominant culture. They thereby powerfully depreciate and devalue the most defining and worthwhile facets of the minority subcultures to their great detriment. Indoctrination is a real and necessary part of education and of mass schooling and is bad only when forced upon unwilling youths or other vulnerable subjects or when part of a hidden agenda that is in opposition to the stated objectives and recognized purposes of an institution or organization.
If one dares to suggest that minorities would be better off by rejecting the schooling being offered, one risks outrage from all sides. The most vociferous objections come from the white teachers and proponents of schooling, which is telling. The pale and fervent advocates of schooling are zealous if not messianic in loudly proclaiming that minorities need “education” to overcome the many disadvantages from which they suffer, which are primarily economic or related to job and career opportunities. They are entirely correct about that. The problem is that those particular children receive more programming, cultural and social indoctrination, and behavioral conditioning in schools than bona fide education.
Definitions for education are diverse and highly subjective. Dictionary definitions are of no practical utility. However, one description from English literature published in 1947 is terribly sanguine. A character from a novel by John Horn Burns, entitled, Lucifer with a Book, a dowager who when establishing a legal trust to fund a new school says, “Education boy is not something to prepare you for life. That is a vulgar American error. It is something to take you out of life. Don’t you want to have some small kingdom of your own that no one can take away from you?” Viewed in this light, whatever it is that children get from schools is pedestrian and mediocre, to be very generous.
It is fair to ask in the first instance how much whites and those who are steeped in the predominant culture during their formative years know about minority cultures. Most of us know a lot of mostly negative stereotypes without any real knowledge of the actual culture or subculture of others. We generally learned what we know or what we think we know from our school experience and from various depictions in the media or within the context of our own narrow culture and personal experience.
And, then we come to the problem of how deeply our culture is truly embedded and whether or not we still even want our own (non-minority or white) children to be indoctrinated into a perverse predominant culture, which may in fact be the most crucial question. There are serious challenges and criticisms about our popular obsessions with acquisitiveness, wealth and consumerism; with frivolous media and entertainment influences; with the frenetic pace of the rat race; with preoccupations with convenience, technology, and mechanical devices and mobility; with far too much emphasis on testing, measurement, competition and academic status and performance; with abhorrent levels of violence, apathy, poverty and incarceration, and with western style hyper-rationality or neurotic or pathological analytical logical processes as opposed to a view of life and philosophy that is more rooted in a connection to the earth, to feeling and sensibility, and to an appreciation for elemental experiences, social connection, and possible mystical forces.
The negative aspects of the foregoing list, which could be easily expanded, outweigh the positive aspects for most citizens. Despite the overwhelming negatives however, we generally have an elevated opinion of our culture. Teachers seem even more prone to believe in the glories and superiority of our lifestyles, attitudes, and beliefs, which they do not distinguish often from academics and performance within the school milieu.
Religious instruction and institutions have been very closely aligned with schooling. The dissemination of religious beliefs and training in morals and values were among the primary purposes of the Prussian schools on which early American schools were modeled. It isn’t a mere coincidence that we associate schooling with saving souls or redeeming a society falling into perilous patterns or secularism.
Lately, some reports indicate that the “achievement gap” between blacks and whites or other minorities and whites has been narrowing. Does this measure education, or does it measure metrics that have more to do with grades and other behavioral indicators? Grades commonly reflect attitudes, behavior, attendance, effort, and attention, which produce concentration and improved memory, but education is not so easily measured and is equally subjective until after one has moved on to a different level and a different set of challenges.
The question really needs to be asked when people insist with great concern for the welfare and future of poor and minority children that those children need to be in our classrooms ostensibly soaking up our wonderful knowledge whether or not first of all they are truly receiving and retaining useful and personally relevant knowledge, and secondly, how much respect and regard educators truly have for the students, their families, and their cultures.
This is not about spending more time and money developing multicultural programs and training personnel to be sensitive to cultural issues. This is about raising awareness of the inherent degradation of one culture when another culture is imposed (by law) and recognizing that school is the means of choice by which cultures are subsumed under the guise of amelioration. The crucial issue is the legal requirement complete with legal enforcement power for forcing parents to submit their children to this re-education and enculturation, whether or not they are showing any evidence of a benefit and an education that they can call their own.
Part of the problem is that the poor and minorities distrust authority and resist attempts to obliterate their unique or valued traditions, whether or not those attempts are malicious. Part of the problem is that poor and minorities need extra help and reinforcement to compensate for their deficiencies caused by deprivation, discrimination, depredation, and ignorance. However, the biggest factor by far is the fact that mass schooling and schooling that exists to satisfy legal requirements is the least effective means of indoctrinating children and the most pernicious way of mis-educating them. A curriculum that is coerced or imposed from some group of “experts” cannot be education. By definition it is something other than education. Education MUST always be possessed by students as their own process and product and MUST always involve initiative and intrinsic value for them.
Demanding “parity” in a system that is damaging mainstream students almost as much as minority students is hardly a worthwhile effort. Why would disadvantaged parents want their kids to be pumped up with more of the artificial intellectual ‘steroids” that rich white parents are buying for their poorly educated kids? Winning trivia contests won’t make kids better people or provide better economic opportunities in most cases. Those who stand to lose the most should be fighting to eliminate the attendance laws that create the conditions that are preparing their kids to do well in prison and no where else.
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Deep Thinking…I am going to have to read this about 4 more times to completely understand…You see….reading comprehension results in my own interpretation of the writing……
Will reply later…starting the day now…but enjoyed the post..
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