As we know, the “reformers” love disruption, especially for other people’s children, not their own. On the first day of Cami Anderson’s “One Newark,” they got plenty of disruption.
He writes:
“The implementation of the deeply flawed “One Newark” student-dispersal program all but collapsed Thursday as the state administration’s highly paid bureaucrats kept hundreds of angry and frustrated parents and children waiting in un-airconditioned school rooms or outside in 90+ heat to register their children for the few remaining public school seats. Just hours into the chaos, Newark school officials locked the doors to Newark Vocational and told the men, women, and children waiting outside to come back at 5 a.m. the next morning.” They didn’t understand that many parents work two or three hours a day, in addition to their teacher-helper days….”
“The “One Newark” plan was devised by Cami Anderson, the $300,000-a-year state-imposed superintendent who is consistently praised, despite her incompetence, by the man who appointed (and just reappointed) her, Gov. Chris Christie. It was developed in secret with the help of charter school operators and former Mayor Cory Booker using consltants who were paid millions in fees to devise the scheme. It empties and closes public schools and enhances the fortunes of private, charter school operators….”
“Anderson is closing the neighborhood schools. The charters are picking up students with the least problems while those with the greatest need–like special education students–are assigned to what is left of the public school stock.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Constant disruption, yes, to make the population confused, insecure, vulnerable to rumors, feeling isolated and without community support, so people turn against each other instead of against the authorities forcing disruption on them. This is what billionaire Bloomberg did NYC schools when he took office in 2001–one reorg after another, constant churn with the teachers’ union unwilling to stand in the bully mayor’s way to protect teachers and students.
Constant churn is a technology of oppressive domination—it was one method used by Nazis over captive Jewish populations in various ghettoes–changing the rules on what kind of papers meant you were safe from deportation or arrest, finding Jewish collaborators to help enforce oppression against their own people.
The black and hispanic families of NJ’s poorest cities have been under direct state rule and brutalized for almost 20 years, betrayed by their own collaborating politicians like Cory Booker, Menendez, and Mayor Sharpe James before them. The chances are better in Chicago for resistance b/c there are teacher and parent activist organizations afoot there with charismatic leadership from Karen Lewis. The lesson here is that communities must organize opposition ASAP and not wait for the authorities to get so far ahead of the curve.
ira,
You come to Newark and try to organize something.
Organize? You would have about the same amount of success as Jews organizing in Nazi Germany in 1935 or 1936. That ship has sailed!
Not defending her, because SCami Anderson is complicit in this, but her orders come from higher up, and she has to earn that salary of hers, which is more than other Supes in NJ earn, even excluding her bonuses. She is not qualified for this job, she did not go up through the proper ranks and get the appropriate education, certification, and experience that Supes are supposed to have – but then again when the Governor anoints you as a special force to come to the rain forest and cut down the trees, it takes a unique kind of turd to do it with relish and enjoyment. She loves every minute of devastation “her” One Newark plan is causing.
Keep exposing what is happening in Newark because people need to know. We all need to wake up from our matrix-dreams and see what is happening around us and to us, and put a stop to it.
Newark needs fewer outside consultants and more teacher and parent based planning groups. I consulted there years ago and was amazed how many expert hands were being filled with cash, while most of the teachers were quite capable. They were overwhelmed to the extent that they just would close their classroom doors and wait for the latest fad to blow over. A lot of site-based planning using teacher expertise and knowledge may be more productive. Forget the experts!
I wish Cami would collapse in Newark, nevermind her plans.
Donna, Chris Christie was not there in New York City when Cami did her thing in NYC’s District 79 Alternative High Schools and Programs. We could, of course, lay her behavior at Bloomberg’s feet, but both Bloomberg and Christie hired her because she was clearly willing, able, and ready to implement her special brand of leadership; she was chosen and placed with the foreknowledge that she would not have to be “instructed” or “coerced” or “convinced”. Cami believes steadfastly in what she did in New York, and she still believes in it in Newark. She needs no political or financial backing. She is aided by both, no doubt about it, but she is fueled foremost by her own inner pathological convictions, and she believes fervently that one day, she will be vindicated and celebrated.
Good analysis, Blind Noise. Let’s get beyond the usual educational-political discourse (that remains of critical importance): it always leads us back to the usual villains. Oh, yes, they are villains, oppressors, rip-offs, ripe with pathology; give them a name and it will apply. The resistance movement must also get a grip on the the personal pathology that drives Cami Anderson and those like her. We must understand our enemies; they are not card board one dimensional figures. This knowledge also yields power.
The second paragraph of the article accessed by the link in the posting:
[start quote]
The people in line outside shouted angrily at the bureaucrats and demanded a “number”–as shoppers do at meat markets–and the chance to get inside so they could plan for their children’s education. Many said they could not return the next day because they had taken the day off from working and couldn’t take another day.
[end quote]
And read the story of the Mendez family. A perfect example of “choice but no voice” [thank you, Chiara!].
This is what you get when you implement a business plan with worst practices that masquerades as an educational model.
Cruelty and abuse. Dispensed on a mass scale to those least able to protect themselves.
But don’t bother Governor Chris Christie. His children go to Delbarton School. A veritable “House of Horrors”—and if you don’t believe me, go to the website:
Link: http://www.delbarton.org
“You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.”
From no less than Dwight D. Eisenhower.
😎
Teaching Tolerance has a great video called The Children’s March that documents the students who left school to march for desegregation in Birmingham. I suggest that someone in NJ should start showing this and see if it inspires a movement. Of course, it won’t be possible to walk out of school if the students haven’t been assigned to a school…i
ETC,
Newark high school kids have already walked out several times.
I think it’s safe to say that public schools will only get worse from this point. If the wealthy control the government, and the wealthy send their kids to private schools (mostly, unless they live in a super rich, leafy suburb)… What do they care what happens to the public schools? They go to fundraisers for their own private schools, but that’s about it. The country is splitting between the top 10% and the bottom 90%. They will just keep destroying and defunding public schools until they are so bad that those who can afford it will go private/homeschool/virtual schools. When the population drops, they keep on closing schools. This is the situation. There is no political interest because the wealthy donors don’t have kids in the public system. Both political parties no longer care. It’s not how they get money or get elected. It is shocking, but it’s the reality.
The question that I am forced to ask today is; Should I and my friends be following someone who is a strong supporter of longstanding crimes against children and crimes against nature because they are opposed to other people whose intentions are to exacerbate those original crimes and whose crimes are significantly greater or more insidious?
If it is a crime, at least in a very moral sense, to cage or confine a child, even if that cage or confinement is ostensibly for their “own good” twenty or thirty years hence, and even if their confinement or conscription has been made to appear quite innocuous and benign, then what is the justification for standing by as that crime is being perpetrated on ever-increasing scales, without directing our efforts toward preventing the original crimes, instead of expending energy and resources fighting the supposed innovators and reformers with modified versions of the maltreatment and abuse? Is it necessary or wise to bolster the lesser of two evils, or is it our duty and obligation to do our utmost to protect children from any and all evil to the best of our ability?
There are legions of extremely intelligent, well-informed, and highly respected people, including recognized scholars and scientists who have expressed a profound disappointment and disillusionment with our schools and our systems of “education”. For generations, the harsh criticisms and condemnations have been articulated in innumerable books, journal and magazine articles, media, public forums, and elsewhere, often with great eloquence, indisputable facts, and impeccable logic. Terms such as, “stifling”, “soul-crushing”, “spirit-destroying”, “creativity-killing”, curiosity-suffocating”, and the like describing a conditioning process that is inherently misanthropic and unhealthy for children have peppered their writing and speaking.
Schools and schooling have some extremely dedicated and staunch defenders. They can claim quite effectively that societies have “progressed” in certain significant ways since schooling became more common and nearly universally compulsory. However, what is one child’s passion is another child’s poison. What may appear to be an unmitigated benefit may turn out to be less beneficial on closer examination. What may lead to advancement in one area may lead ultimately to one’s demise.
The reality is that children learn best when free and unburdened by adult expectations, pressures, and constant monitoring and evaluation. Their youthful bodies and minds require continual stimulation, activity, exercise, movement, deep-breathing, and autonomous initiative that is absolutely impossible in a stationary location with large numbers of other children. They thrive when they are allowed to discover the wonders of the world through their own unscheduled explorations and without guidance that feels more like direction and coercion. Their natural curiosity and talents are squelched quite automatically when authority figures or over-concerned “teachers” are bent on dominating their time and attention and deciding for them what they should learn, how they should learn it, and when.
As Dr. Peter Gray has stated emphatically and without reservation, (and as many children and hundreds of brilliant commentators have also observed), “school is a prison”. Just because many children can be conned into believing that school really isn’t so bad if you are compliant, obedient, or obsequious, and if there are certain rewards, perks, and promises, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a crime to capture them and arrogantly drill them with your ideas about what is important, meaningful, or real.
In an article entitled, “We Don’t Need no Education”, by Ben Hewitt, published in a magazine named “Outsiders” and who writes a blog (at benhewitt.net), he speaks about his older son’s experience. He said, “In other words, the moment we quit trying to teach our son anything was the moment he started really learning.”
Adults are absolutely indispensable to children and teachers have the most essential job in our society, without a doubt. But, when we take ourselves and our roles as teachers too seriously, and when we deprive children of the experience of choosing when and where to answer the questions that can only arise individually in their active minds without a blueprint or engineered plan and only with a large degree of playful or inadvertent and fortuitous discovery, we injure and insult the very children we presume to teach.
Babysitting services are necessary in today’s world. Training and socializing children are part of education in many cases. Some parents have a preference for indoctrination into some flavor of belief, political persuasion, or religion. School may be the only option for many families. However, the second it became mandatory by law and the second that we imagined that it could substitute for education owned exclusively by the individual and pursued without undue interference, assistance, or coercion, we were guilty of an unforgivable sin against our own offspring.
Stop spinning your wheels with this escalating war against the privatization and reform crowd that can only end in frustration and futility, and stop trying to pretend that the good that comes from schooling justifies the phenomenal harm. There is no science and no sane approach to a practical application of logic that can deny that the myriad negatives of compulsory school attendance and the consequent authoritarian and bureaucratic framework are chronic, substantial, extreme in millions of instances, and apparent to the youngest and most innocent child. The evidence is so overwhelming that denial is conspicuously neurotic and pathological. Ego has no place in science or education.
I have yet to see a scintilla of evidence that I am wrong and that anyone anywhere can back up the claims made by school supporters that they edify and educate more children than they humiliate and drive toward ignorance and anti-intellectual cynicism. Children learn only in spite of schooling and only because sacrificing and rule-breaking teachers treat some of them with exceptional respect and dignity.
Barry Elliot,
Are you a hunter gatherer living in a tent?
Are you employed?
Are you able to express your creativity to your heart’s content?
Which Shangrila are you inhabiting?
Ditto.
Stale, stale, and inane arguments to support what cannot be denied is abuse and failure to educate even minimally. Modern society is what it is because of what has been done to generations of children. Technology and science are not the result of, or much improved by, school attendance forced on children. Children who are allowed to grow and think and explore as much as circumstances allow, depending on their parents’ status and resources have no problem whatsoever keeping up with those who have been dumbed down and homogenized by years of mind-numbing drudgery, submission, and conformity. And, if the workplace requires discipline and tenacity the best people for the job are those who have had the opportunity to develop self-discipline, rather than having felt as if they are victims or non-persons without dignity and respect. Please try to at least join the 20th century if the 21st is too advanced for you. This is Merica, land of the free; remember? Freedom that starts at graduation is no freedom at all. But then, some people don’t want freedom because they are afraid. Some want it for themselves, but not for others. For some, there is no help; only pity.
“I and my friends.” Who taught you English?
You make my stomach hurt and you make me want to cry.
I didn’t learn English. I went to a highly regarded school in NY State and graduated with a regent’s diploma. However, I spent most of my time in a dreamworld or daydreaming and I was bored and disengaged, as so many students have been and so many will be as long as we continue conflating school and education. You have made my point for me quite well. Thank you. My stomach hurts a lot too, but it is because of the travesties that are perpetrated in the name of educating children through some sick combination of phony enticements, threats, false promises, and outright lies. My language skills are lacking, but I never lost my ability to think as so many others have.
While we’re accustomed to hearing “my friends and I” and it seems polite to list others first, “I and my friends” is acceptable grammar. The case is used correctly.
Barry,
I’ve read and heard the arguments you outline here l, many times and they leave me wanting. I find it to be a very self-centered approach, very Rousseauian with Randian flavors. Is schooling appropriate for all children, perhaps not. But how is one to learn something like a foreign language without the help and guidance along the way, other than to go live in a country where it is spoken. And no, computer programs aren’t the same as they are pseudo-teachers in and of themselves.
Duane,
The reason I believe John Holt said that school is bad for kids and the reason it is indeed bad for them and for all of us is not because there are no good ways to do schooling or no purposes for which school can be useful or even necessary. The reason is because of a mythology that tells us all that school is our only salvation and that it equates with education. By definition, using a definition that fits best with current science and contemporary knowledge, school is inimical to education. Education must be driven by individual initiative and must be integrated with purpose and engagement by the individual with what that person knows and feels and has experienced during their life, regardless of how short. If that sounds like some earlier theorist or philosopher, then I suspect I might agree with them.
Education cannot be forced. School should not be mandatory. Children are capable of learning much more with an absolute minimum of assistance than most of us give them credit for, but I’ve never said that there are not many occasions when they need a teacher to provide instruction and guidance in some particular desired field or subject matter. However, the line between providing help and shoving a lot of BS down their throats arbitrarily is a fine one. The only way to avoid the trap is to ensure that school attendance is never compulsory by law.
Knowledge is embodied. The body is the mind, the mind is the body, and there is no learning without a brain that is functioning in concert with the rest of the body/mind. Coercion is the enemy and the antithesis of autonomy and autonomy is essential to education. School is for fish. If parents wish to have their children trained, indoctrinated, socialized, or babysat, then let them have all the school they can stand and for free. If they want education, however, then it’s time to look for a social structure that encourages other alternatives and opportunities that allow children to explore without all that damned help and intrusive teaching. Too much adult is not good for kids.
Barry –
You refuse to consider any argument against your thesis. However, I’ll give it one more try.
The current problem we have with terrorists is due to the lack of formal public education. Instead children are gathered together for the purpose of brainwashing so that they grow up to be “good little soldiers” who are willing to fight and die for their cause. That is their sole purpose in life – to destroy western civilization.
I’ve already discussed the fact that it is only through education that women and other minorities have access to a semblance of rights. In countries which only provide education to the privileged male, the rest of society is left subservient.
If children learned automatically without formal training, then I would say that your premise was valid. But ignorance yields ignorance, not knowledge. That is why there are under developed nations, their people cannot move beyond their traditions due to a lack of education. Yes, some of the old ways have value, but the infant mortality rate remains high while the average age of longevity remains low in ignorant cultures.
This is not acceptable when we can share the knowledge to enable others to improve their quality of life. At the very least we must teach those in need how to provide themselves with adequate food, water, and shelter (although this is embarrassingly limited in its scope).
We have the know how to make a difference throughout the world and education is the starting point.
How do you envision your plan benefiting the world population?
Ellen,
Oh boy, I can’t believe we are doing this all over again.
What I refuse are specious or poorly framed and badly structured arguments that repeat the same old canards that have never been valid and never will be valid. You speak about the brainwashing by terrorists as if they are the only ones taking small children and inculcating them with a belief system that is often hostile and even violent. Onward Christian Soldiers is about going “over there” and getting them before they come over here and get us. The phenomenal emphasis on obedience; paying attention to the teacher; staying in line and remaining quiet; developing self-discipline, doing the “work” and following rules, etc., etc., is nothing more than our way of conditioning and indoctrinating children to do their duty, to be “good citizens and patriots”, and to be prepared for whatever becomes necessary, which has frequently meant induction into the military or a police force to serve and protect (kill the “bad guys” and the enemies as designated by authorities”). Perpetual war is the outcome.
There is nothing inherently wrong with indoctrination or teaching values to children in the best way possible. What is wrong is involving the state with its incredible power and influence in forcing children to attend schools where there is an authority structure as a direct consequence of attendance laws, which inexorably leads to arbitrary impositions and requirements from sun-up to sun-down for twelve years. It is wrong to take initiative and autonomy away from parents, children, and teachers and place it in the hands of supposed officials, experts, and authorities who get to define what knowledge is and what will pass for minimal skill and ability in all areas.
You keep talking about education, but what you are actually referring to is schooling. For the one-millionth time, school and education are NOT the same. Is there any other way for me to emphasize that fact? If you don’t agree, then show me some convincing argument that they are synonymous or even approximately equivalent and I will show you where you are wrong. School incorporates dozens of features that are inimical to education, and when parents or teachers don’t provide experiences that counteract the negative influences of school through sacrifice and rule-breaking, kids typically suffer and often go down in flames.
You are piling assumptions upon assumptions until there is nothing there except those assumptions. Transmitting a culture is the function of adults via teaching whether formal or informal. However, just because you believe that our particular culture is superior or that technology based on our goals and objectives is “progress” and best for all mankind, doesn’t mean that it is so by any stretch of the imagination.
Rights for women and minorities, or for “the people”, have not ever resulted from schooling that is compulsory or that is mass produced. Precisely the opposite is true. Schools that are authoritarian rely on their opportunities to prepare graduates for unquestioning acceptance of what authorities dictate, whether through grades, the cumulative record, and gold stars, or through more subtle means, including economic, political, social, or other rewards.
I am arguing against compulsory attendance laws. I don’t think that school is good for kids or robots; however, I recognize that it currently serves a purpose and probably always will. Those children who can avoid it and who are provided with a rich environment will surely always be exemplary citizens with a more useful store of knowledge, but the others who attend should NEVER, EVER be made involuntary victims of laws that create inhospitable authoritarian bureaucracies. If we must have schools, then they must be free of state control at any level and attendance MUST be voluntary or they are prisons by default and alien to education by definition.
Barry, as I wrote about the indoctrination of terrorists from an early age, it did occur to me that the Western Cultures also indoctrinates their children. The difference in the US is that our indoctrination includes teaching tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, races, and religions. We teach human rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, there is a bias and we do emphasize a love for our country and our young men have often been involved in an overseas war, but our goal is not genocide or annihilation.Until we are one planet, instead of continents and nations, this is the reality.
As far as compulsory education – in this country there are options. If you are against the way our schools are set up, you can home school your child. Then the question of attendance is up to the parent and child to work out.
But, ultimately, without basic skills, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, third world countries will remain third world countries, where only the elite are educated. Thus we find that ignorance breeds intolerance. And intolerance leads to destruction.
First we need to provide the opportunity for education. There are children all over the world who want to learn but can’t afford the fees (or the time away from the activities necessary for survival, even in their formative years).
The issue is not compulsory attendance, the issue is providing a free and worthwhile education to all children, both male and female, in every corner of this earth. Then we can discuss the nuances of mandatory vs choice.
Ellen,
It’s hard for me to imagine a more futile exercise. We inhabit two entirely separate universes. You will obviously never get this, but only the elites are educated in THIS country, with the exception of a small minority of fortunate people who can escape from or circumvent the mis-education of schooling both public and private.
Please however, do not EVER use that obnoxious misnomer “compulsory education” again. Compulsory is antithetical to education. That is 100%. If you get nothing else from me, please try to understand that education cannot mean anything if it does not mean self-directed, voluntary, free of coercion, and autonomous. You are seeing the most fundamental aspect of education as a nuance! That is mind-boggling. You cannot provide free and worthwhile ANYTHING to children if it is mandated by law and shoved down their throats. It doesn’t get any more basic than that!
You may not have been brainwashed, but your inability to think in terms other than those that have been programmed into the vast majority of us regarding school in schol and almost everywhere else leaves me breathless. We are not having a dialogue or conversation and I cannot continue with this any longer. Best of luck.
Barry
It occurs to me that most charter schools–and all charter chains–are just the newest form of corporate welfare. I thought charters were a great idea when I first heard of them in the mid-90s. Now that idea has been co-opted by private corporatists. When will the public (the Democrats!) wise up?
This makes my stomach hurt and makes me want to cry.
It isn’t just corporate welfare…it is crony corporate welfare. Here in Texas, charter school owners and operators sit on public school boards and the charter owners and operators wine and dine our politicians by taking them on “fact-finding” trips. They scratch each other’s backs. The politicians get campaign donations and the charter operators get schools funded by the taxpayers. The politicians retire and become lobbyists for the charter companies. I have appealed to democrat and republican politicians and they all are a part of the game. What can a parent do?
“They told me I should home-school my children.”
This is the answer a parent, seeking to register her children for school, received from a school department employee in Newark.
It might be good advice, considering what is happening in Newark. It might be what I would do if I were a parent who lived in Newark.
But it is an egregious statement coming from a school official.
The vast majority of parents in Newark are in no position to home school anybody. They work multiple low wage jobs to put food on the table. Many do not have strong academic backgrounds. Others speak little to no English. The suggestion of home schooling is preposterous.