In a shocking decision, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the state has no legal responsibility to provide a quality education to every child. The case centered on the Highland Park school district, where achievement was lagging; the state turned the entire district over to a for-profit charter operator that had no track record of improving low-performng schools. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed the suit.
In a blow to schoolchildren statewide, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation to provide a quality public education to students in the struggling Highland Park School District.
A 2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a “broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality. Waving off decades of historic judicial impact on educational reform, the majority opinion also contends that “judges are not equipped to decide educational policy.”
“This ruling should outrage anyone who cares about our public education system,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Michigan. “The court washes its hands and absolves the state of any responsibility in a district that has failed and continues to fail its children.”
The decision dismisses an unprecedented “right-to-read” lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan in July 2012 on behalf of eight students of nearly 1,000 children attending K-12 public schools in Highland Park, Mich. The suit, which named as defendants the State of Michigan, its agencies charged with overseeing public education and the Highland Park School District, maintained that the state failed to take effective steps to ensure that students are reading at grade level.
“Let’s remember it was the state that turned the entire district over to a for-profit charter management company with no track record of success with low performing schools,” said Moss. “It is the state that has not enforced the law that requires literacy intervention to children not reading at grade level. It is the state’s responsibility to ensure and maintain a system of education that serves all children.”
In a dissenting opinion, appellate court judge Douglas Shapiro accused the court of “abandonment of our essential judicial roles, that of enforcement of the rule of law even where the defendants are governmental entities, and of protecting the rights of all who live within Michigan’s borders, particularly those, like children, who do not have a voice in the political process.”
MEAP test results from 2012 painted a bleak picture for Highland Park students and parents. In the 2013-14 year, no fewer than 78.9 percent of current fourth graders and 73 percent of current seventh graders will require the special intervention mandated by statute. By contrast, 65 percent of then-fourth graders and 75 percent of then-seventh graders required statutory intervention entering the 2012-13 school year.
At the time the state of Michigan decided to privatize the Highland Park schools and turn them over to the Leona Group, some saw it as a last-ditch effort to save the district from its debt.
The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2012:
Phoenix-based Leona will receive $7,110 per pupil in state funding, plus an as-yet-undetermined amount of federal funds for low-income and special education students. In addition, the Highland Park district will pay Leona a $780,000 annual management fee.
Unions have been sidelined after the district’s entire professional staff was laid off, as allowed by the state emergency law, but teachers can apply for jobs with Leona. Leona has budgeted about $36,000 a year for Highland Park teachers on average, the company said—compared with almost $65,000 a year the teachers received in the 2010-11 school year.
In a typical school it takes over, Leona has hired back about 70% of the teachers, the company said. Leona also will lease the Highland Park district’s buildings.
Under the five-year contract with Leona, the new city charter board will monitor the company’s progress in improving student performance.
Leona runs 54 schools in five states. Students in almost half of them fail state academic benchmarks. But of its 22 Michigan schools, 19 meet the mark, Leona officials said.
Leona Chief Executive William Coats said the company had no incentive to cut corners in Highland Park. “As we build equity, we give that back to the schools,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting when an audience member raised doubts about the for-profit approach. “We’re trying to manage this so you [the district] stay in business.”
Highland Park is where Henry Ford opened his first assembly line and Chrysler Corp. built its original headquarters. It has suffered the same ills as Detroit, its larger neighbor: an exodus of auto jobs, depressed housing stock and a surge in crime.
The city, which spreads across three square miles, lost nearly 30% of its population from 2000 to 2010, according to the latest U.S. Census. Nearly half of the 11,776 residents live below the poverty line.
Students and parents complain of dirty classrooms, exposed wiring in the schools, rationed textbook and swimming pools—once used by powerhouse swim teams—that now sit drained of water.
John Holloway, the school board president, said the problems became a “runaway train that we could not stop.”
As the situation worsened, the state gave the district a $4 million loan in July 2011 and advanced it $450,000 more earlier this year just to meet its payroll.
A union-backed initiative that could go to voters statewide in November seeks to repeal the emergency-manager law under which Ms. Parker was appointed to run the district. The law had been strengthened in 2011 by the governor.
Glenda McDonald, a Highland Park resident and laid-off teacher, said that the problem was not entirely the fault of the community. “The disinvestment in our communities led to the disinvestment in our schools, and that’s why people left,” she said. “We had nothing to offer them.”
After Leona took over, things did not go well. Enrollment dropped sharply. The company closed the district’s high school. It agreed to waive its fee for one year because of a lingering deficit.
Yikes
Looks like the snappy charterite/privatizer mantra of “we can and will do more with less” actually means—
“We can and will get more by doing less.”
This is deeply immoral.
😎
I think this ruling protects failing Charter schools so they can stay open and opens the door for more abuse in private sector corporate Charter education.
Back to the shoe factories young people.
There won’t be jobs in the shoe factories because they are being automated like almost every industry. For instance, the bank where I have my accounts just automated most of their human tellers out of a job. From a dozen teller windows, they now have three and the others were walled in and replaced with indoor teller machines that do the same job.
The tellers had been turned into tutors to show clients how to use the new teller machines that are taking their places. I asked if any tellers had lost their jobs yet. The former teller who is now a tutor said no one, but she couldn’t tell me if all the tellers would still have a job in a few months—and the young woman didn’t seem to care or didn’t want to deal with the fact that she could soon be out of a job right before Christmas.
In the early 1990s, I attended a workshop for teachers and we were told that a GM bumper factory that once employed 500 humans in the 1950s had been automated and today it only employed two humans who were responsible to keep the robots working properly.
What happens when the private sector comes up with robots that repair the robots?
Once the fools who count beans have convinced the CEOs to automate all the companies jobs out of existence to boost short term profits and the company eventually faces bankruptcy because there are no more working consumers earning the money they need to buy products, I wonder if the CEOs and stock holders will wake up one day and realize that they caused the end of civilization as we know it and made humans irrelevant.
Sadly I don’t think that the CEO’s and stockholder care at all about the enormous damage that they have done to our society. After all, they have the economic means to insulate themselves and their families from the misery.
Sad but true. Great wealth removes the few from reality, because that wealth pays for a fantasy world.
There are no more shoe factories…they sold those off long before they started raiding public education. But if any companies are left in Michigan, I’d suggest they high-tale it out of there as fast as they can.
There are only three judges in decision. One of them seems like a swinging-vote. I don’t think this is over. I believe ALCU will fight with it through the Supreme Court.
This sounds like ALEC, but the sentiment is not new. Here is the reasoning–Schools are functioning as nanny with too many services that relief parents from the responsibility for education their children. In addition to making parents more responsible, the choice to educate or not might save a bunch of money–but having public money is not clearly off the table
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583185/Utah-lawmaker-calls-for-end-of-compulsory-education.html?pg=all
Here is the extended reasoning–I am quoting myself references on request.
Key Propositions in The Economic Model of Democracy
In the new theory, democracy in its purest form is the same as a free-market economy. Consumers and producers compete for scarce resources that have alternative uses. In this economic matrix, government is seen as a monopoly that restricts competition, prevents innovation, limits the production of wealth and restricts freedom of choice. Further, under free market conditions, private enterprise can offer better public services at lower costs. Free-market thinking is the new orthodoxy of governments in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, and is being promoted in twenty-nine other countries by global agencies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Note 1).
The Undemocratic Character of Public Education
By extension, public education is a government-run monopoly serving the interests of teachers unions, politicians who want their votes, and all other education bureaucrats whose jobs depend on a monopolistic system. These self-interested activities, combined with laws for compulsory education and taxation for schools, limit parental choice in educating their children. They also represent an undemocratic intrusion of government into matters of culture through state-approved standards and curricula that may be at odds with the views of parents.
Public schools also require parents who want private schools to pay twice, once for “other people’s children,” and again for their own. In free-market schooling, customers have freedom of choice among educational services. By definition, the best education satisfies parental wishes for their children. Further, in a free market, only the best goods and services survive the test of competition (Lauder & Hughes, 1999).
Moral Extensions of the Free-market Model
In addition to these economic assumptions, moral values enter into the argument. For example, when parents pay the full cost of education, there is usually greater oversight of the value they receive. Some parents may need to rearrange their priorities in order to pay for education. This encourages responsible parenting, fiscal self-discipline, and with some likelihood that children will be diligent learners. Free-market thinking is thus construed as promoting moral virtue. For example, Myron Lieberman, who advocates total replacement of public schools with profit-centered schools, believes that “Private schools of the future may foster some of the moral values associated with a religious point of view. This would seem especially likely if government schools are replaced by schools for profit” (Lieberman, 1994, xix, italics mine).
Political Alliances in Free-market Education
Free-marking thinking makes for curious political alliances. For example, neo-liberals and post-modern intellectuals have made much of: a) elitism in the control of knowledge by experts, and b) the power of the “democratic” state to limit the voice and agency of the very people it is supposed to empower. These views match, in part, those of religious conservatives who oppose what they regard as liberal values promoted in public schools. They also comport with views of fiscal conservatives who want less government, lower taxes, and think schools are mismanaged. For different, but sometimes overlapping reasons, both ends of the political spectrum may endorse consumer choice and deregulation, a tendency known as “market populism,” and favoring private enterprise (Frank, 2000, 292-306).
Thanks for the explanation for the underpinnings of “market populism.” This type of thinking has made for some strange bedfellows. The commonality of both groups is that they promote the “hooray for me” mentality rather than what is in the best interests of the collective good. This type of thinking allows the government to abrogate its responsibility to its citizens. Clearing the way for vulture capitalists to feed off its citizens is undemocratic, and wasting tax dollars on failed experiments is fiscal irresponsibility. No other country is on this path to abolish public education!
Citizens need to force our representatives to stand up for services for the general good. I would include police and fire safety, public education and libraries, Medicare and Social Security. We should also support single payer options in healthcare. We must make the government work for the best interests of the people, not corporations. The failure of most charter schools confirms that public education works for the benefit of most Americans. We need to change how we fund education, not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Leona looks more like a hatchet job than a turn-around effort. The directive is really to dismantle Highland, which is likely the real reason they were hired.
Also, Leona’s claims were widely disproven in the Detroit Free Press series on charters last summer. Leona was demonstrated to be among the worst charter chains.
I’m not sure it matters. Diane. Michigan, like Ohio, has “relinquished” public schools to politically-connected contractors.
Running public schools is hard, plus one has to deal with all those mouthy teachers and community members who insist on archaic and discredited ideas like “voting” and “process”. Better to hire a manager from the private sector and walk away.
§ 1 Encouragement of education.
Sec. 1.
“Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
This would seem to preclude a going through the motions without regard to quality approach expressed by the appellate majority, but I guess that’s why I am not a lawyer.
What a terrible and depressing decision.
Michissippi Burning …
No, those are automated now…they will have to beg on the streets a la Dickens.
Eventually the oligarchs will make sure that laws are passed so begging will be illegal and result in long prison terms in a private sector corporate prisons where not brushing your teeth could result in another year being added to your sentence without the need of a judge or jury.
In about a century, 1% of the population will be free and the other 99% will either be an inmate in a prison or a prison guard unless all the guards are also automatized. If so, the world will become a giant torture chamber and gulag for 99% of the starving prison population as the ultimate genocide—that would probably even shock Hitler—-removes the 99% from life. The population will then fall below 100 million humans.
Lloyd, Florida is already working on that, making it illegal to feed the homeless in public, illegal for homeless people to sleep in public during the day, illegal for homeless people to ‘loiter’ for more than a few minutes in any public place, etc.
I hear revolution rumbling in the far distance, myself.
If there is a violent revolution, the people—even though heavily armed with firearms—will be at a great disadvantage with drones and smart bombs in the hands of the oligarchs.
“. . . the people—even though heavily armed with firearms—will be at a great disadvantage with drones and smart bombs in the hands of the oligarchs.”
Tell that to the Afghanis, eh!
I’m not sure that we Gringos have the “rigor” to do what the Afghanis have done for eons-defeat supposedly greater forces.
A few facts to think about when comparing America to Afghanistan
1. The distance from the United States to Afghanistan is 7,410 miles—to supply and support an army over that distance is very expensive and the logistics a challenge, and this is a factor that won’t exist in the U.S.
2. The U.S. currently has about 32,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan.
3. During the Afghan war with the USSR, in one battle with a column of Soviet tanks, the mujaheddin adults males attacked on horseback with mostly old carbines as weapons. Their horses made a lot of dust creating cover for the children following on foot behind their older brothers, fathers, uncles and cousins who all died so the children could get close enough to climb on the tanks and drop bottles full of gasoline or kerosine through the hatch. The entire tank column was destroyed, The children collected the weapons that their dead fathers, older brothers, uncles and cousins had carried and returned to their stone age village to fight another day. Do you think Americans will be willing to do that—die so their children can take out a column of tanks?
4. The U.S. has more than one-million active duty troops stationed in the Untied Sates.
5. In addition, the U.S. National Guard consists of 28 fully capable brigade combat teams and combat support and combat service support components.
6. The U.S. armed forces reserves are not under state control and are solely funded by the federal government. There are about 850k troops in the reserves.
7. Government police forces are federal state, country, city, rural, etc.and they number about 1 million.
8. Corporations have their own private sector armed police forces that number more than one million—more than the number of public sector police.
9. Then there is the history and culture of Afghanistan versus the United States. Afghanistan has a long history going back to Alexander the Great and even Genghis Khan and defeating everyone who invaded that country. I read that even Genghis Khan, who conquered more of the earth’s surface than anyone, avoided Afghanistan, and his huge army flowed around it like a river around a boulder in the middle of the stream.
10. The United States made the #10 spot for the Top Ten Most Brutal and Deadly public Police Forces in the World. Number 9 is China. Number one is Mexico.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/top-ten-most-brutal-and-deadly-police-force-in-the-world-number-1-is-shocking.453445405/
Before you think about launching a bloody rebellion or civil war, thing about what you will be up against and the ultimate cost.
“In about a century, 1% of the population will be free and the other 99% will either be an inmate in a prison or a prison guard unless all the guards are also automatized. If so, the world will become a giant torture chamber and gulag for 99% of the starving prison population as the ultimate genocide—that would probably even shock Hitler—-removes the 99% from life. The population will then fall below 100 million humans.”
Lloyd, you may be even more depressing than I am.
I fought in Vietnam in 1966. I came home with a very dark view of U.S. politics and the world, and the more I learn, the darker that view becomes.
I’ve been basically agreeing with you Lloyd about the lack of resolve of the gringos to stand up for much of anything except “patriotic” displays of grand buffoonery.
—-“patriotic” displays of grand buffoonery—
I think you were being too kind with the previous quote.
Given how many kids fail to learn to read in today’s urban public schools, people here need to think a bit more carefully about whether they really believe in a “constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren *actually learn* fundamental skills such as reading.”
WT,
Why do kids fail to learn to read? I think if you dig a little deeper past the manufactured propaganda of the reform movement, you will discover that the problem has little or nothing to do with the U.S. public schools and that this same challenge exists in every major English language country.
In fact, you might want to educate yourself on this topic to put it into perspective:
Measuring the Success or Failure of Public Education in the United States through Literacy
http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/2010/02/01/measuring-the-success-or-failure-of-public-education-in-the-united-states-through-literacy-viewed-as-single-page/
If reading is not important in a democratic society, then how can they justify spending millions to weigh and measure it?
Reading is important but we don’t need to spend millions to measure it through CCSS testing.
What we should do is follow an example that has already worked. That example might be France, for instance, where a national early childhood education programs starting as young as age two was implemented more than thirty years ago—-the result is a poverty rate that has been cut more than in half over the same period of time, and France did not turn these children over to corporations to teach. They kept the early childhood education program in the public schools with highly trained teachers who specialized in early childhood education. Funding for public education in France is also handled from the national level so all schools receive the same level of funds without corporate strings attached to profit billionaire oligarchs.
The French system is on target; we have lost our way. My cousin, a widow at a early age, lives in France. She had to raise two young children alone. After her husband passed away, everyone expected her to return home. Instead, she weighed her options and stayed in France. They have universal daycare and other benefits!
Prove it. The only thing you can prove is that kids in ‘today’s urban public schools’ fail to pass a so-called reading test whose cut scores move up and down like a thermometer, whose questions are racist, classist, and designed to create failure, and whose entire credibility is questionable.
Just repeating the reformists lies and being a parrot of FOX doesn’t make something true.
Go to any other non-English speaking country, and teach English at any local school for a year or two. Do your preaching that how bad and evil public school system is to your students out there. None of your students would ever come talk to you about teaching and learning English. They will mock you for ignorance of local culture, and so called “fundamental skills,” even though many of those don’t know how to speak and write English in the first place.
To Laura H. Chapman:
Thank you for the logical information that people who are called themselves educators in higher education should think about the cultivation in design a curriculum for faculty in legal, finance, politics, and Public Administration.
If business tycoons and military can be above the law, then we should ponder, NOT WONDER why should North American happily accept IMMIGRANTS whose background is to destroy their own countries by bribery, by killing innocent citizens + innocent foreign nuns, and by looting wealth from foreign aids???
If KARMA is the absolute truth and if this universal law is impartial, then how do God and all unseen, and seen Angels protect or bless conscientious people?
I certainly believe that God and Angels NEVER punish evils. However, evils kill other evils themselves. In other words, in the process of the competition for “SLICE OF PIE”, or “SWALLOWING a WHOLE PIE”, all involved parties from government officials, corrupted union leaders, all deceitful middle men/ followers to master minded business tycoons will eliminate one another according to their own evil strength and level of manipulation.
We do not need to experience in tsunami to acknowledge the powerful water damage to the land and people. However, the deadly disease like cancer and heart-attack can be a powerful reminder to all evils who will always live in fear on earth.
Who causes any intentional harm to humanity will pay a stiff price for themselves and their loves ones NOT only in this present life BUT also to their many reincarnated lives. Back2basic
Racist filth. And ignorance too. Wow.
How is the post “racist”?
Ignorance abounds in the post no doubt like “. . . the deadly disease like cancer and heart-attack can be a powerful reminder to all evils. . . ” or this “I certainly believe that God and Angels NEVER punish evils”. Those are opinions nothing more nor less but still not based in rational logical thought.
Generally I enjoy m4potw’s posts for many times bringing a different perspective but this post is quite a stretch, as all religious idiologies are to me.
Shocking, but not surprising. Education “reformers” do not support the idea of educating all children equally. They say they do, but their many actions to the contrary say otherwise. We have to respect their commitment to inequality: they believe it and they’re doing whatever they can to institutionalize it. They’re not hiding their beliefs; we are refusing to take them at their word.
While horrifying, I’m not sure the judges are acting maliciously. The Michigan Constitution contains no language related to the quality of education provided:
ARTICLE 13
EDUCATION
Supervision by the superintendent of public instruction.
Sec. 1. The superintendent of public instruction shall have the general supervision of public instruction, and his duties shall be prescribed by law.
School fund.
Sec. 2. The proceeds from the sales of all lands that have been or hereafter may be granted by the United States to the State for educational purposes, and the proceeds of all lands or other property given by individuals or appropriated by the state for like purposes, shall be and remain a perpetual fund, the interest and income of which, together with the rents of all such lands as may remain unsold, shall be inviolably appropriated and annually applied to the specific objects of the original gift, grant or appropriation.
Escheats.
Sec. 3. All lands the titles to which shall fail from a defect of heirs, shall escheat to the state, and the interest on the clear proceeds from the sales thereof shall be appropriated exclusively to the support of primary schools.
Primary schools; instruction in English language.
Sec. 4. The legislature shall, within five years from the adoption of this constitution, provide for and establish a system of primary schools, whereby a school shall be kept without charge for tuition, at least three months in each year, in every school district in the state; and all instruction in said school shall be conducted in the English language.
School term.
Sec. 5. A school shall be maintained in each school district at least three months in each year. Any school district neglecting to maintain such school, shall be deprived, for the ensuing year, of its proportion of the income of the primary school fund, and of all funds arising from taxes for the support of schools.
Regents of university; election.
Sec. 6. There shall be elected in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-three, at the time of the election of a justice of the supreme court, eight regents of the University, two of whom shall hold their office for two years, two for four years, two for six years, and two for eight years. They shall enter upon the duties of their office on the first of January next succeeding their election. At every regular election of a justice of the supreme court thereafter, there shall be elected two regents whose term of office shall be eight years. When a vacancy shall occur in the office of regent, it shall be filled by appointment of the Governor. The regents thus elected, shall constitute the boards of regents of the University of Michigan.
Same; body corporate.
Sec. 7. The regents of the university and their successor in office shall continue to constitute the body corporate, known by the name and title of “The Regents of the University of Michigan.”
President of university; supervision by regents.
Sec. 8. The regents of the university shall, at their first annual meeting, or as soon thereafter as may be, elect a president of the university, who shall be ex officio a member of their board, with the privilege of speaking but not of voting. He shall preside at the meetings of the regents and be the principal executive officer of the university. The board of regents shall have the general supervision of the university, and the direction and control of all expenditures from the university interest fund.
State board of education.
Sec. 9. There shall be elected at the general election in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, three members of a state board of education; one for two years, one for four years, and one for six years; and at each succeeding biennial election there shall be elected one member of such board, who shall hold his office for six years. The superintendent of public instruction shall be ex officio a member and secretary of such board. The board shall have the general supervision of the state normal school, and their duties shall be prescribed by law.
Institution for deaf, dumb, blind, or insane.
Sec. 10. Institution for the benefit of those inhabitants who are deaf, dumb, blind, or insane shall always be fostered and supported.
Agricultural school; appropriation; transfer to university.
Sec. 11. The legislature shall encourage the promotion of intellectual, scientific and agricultural improvement; and shall, as soon as practicable, provide for the establishment of an agricultural school. The legislature may appropriate the twenty-two sections of salt spring lands now unappropriated, or the money arising form the sale of the same, where such lands have been already sold, and any land which may hereafter be granted or appropriated for such purpose, for the support and maintenance of such school, and may make the same a branch of the University, for instruction in agriculture and the natural sciences connected therewith, and place the same under the supervision of the regents of the University.
Township and city libraries; disposition of fines.
Sec. 12. The legislature shall also provide for the establishment of at least one library in each township and city, and all fines assessed and collected in the several counties and townships for any breach of the penal laws shall be exclusively applied to the support of such libraries, unless otherwise ordered by the township board of any township or the board of education of any city: Provided, that in no case such fines be used for other than library or school purposes.
There’s absolutely nothing in there that requires the State to judge the quality of the education provided, although I would think lesser precedents must have been established over the years. It’s possibly another reason why Michigan was picked for its descent into private ownership of absolutely everything — a comparatively weak Constitution, with loopholes that lawyers love.
It’s certainly a good reason not to live there, assuming you have the wherewithal to get out.
I don’t know how the US Constitution might be involved, I don’t even play a lawyer on TV. But I hate even the idea of any legal precedent that diminishes the importance, value and responsibility of education.
It sounds like they can get off with providing free education three months a year! They need to amend this antiquated constitution.
And I thought Indiana is bad. I am ashamed to say that I was born and raised in Michigan, still have many relatives there.
How abysmally ignorant can people be?
“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.” RW Emerson
“How abysmally ignorant can people be?” Maybe it’s the fruit of
political labeling, forming the pious word clouds, that trigger
Cognitive Dissonance… A “fart” in the wind-storm linked to the
pious word clouds.
More than not, some thoughts are too concrete and clash with those
in a make believe world. Countless victims of their own propaganda
REFUSE to acknowledge the link of their performative role and the
power that established said role.
Refusing to consider or join the results to the “method” seems
to be the same as refusing to acknowledge the basis of Power 101.
Power rarely, or if EVER , establishes anything to diminish itself.
Look around.
It is SAD to be conditioned to believe that having a “badge of conformity” AKA a “Degree”, casts a glow of superiority over less
titled mortals, or power if you will. That alone seems to set the stage
for cognitive dissonance, as the “badges” realize to their horror, they
wear the same “yoke” as do the masses. The last in line to be
“equalized” under the proxy for capital, hidden under the veneer,
created by cumpulsory lessons.
What is the solution? Lamenting, bitching about injustices, blasting
testing, new methods, on and on? WHO doesn’t know “this” is all
about MONEY? How many times need it be established “this” has
NOTHING to do with education?
WHEN will it be time to fight fire with fire?
The Powers That Be are all geared up to defend “their” turf, funded by the money machine (around 70% fueld by consumption-shopping).
All geared up to stiffle any and all civil disobedience. Watchful eyes
via NSA, to quell any meaningful opposition to the stacked deck game.
Who doesn’t know where they live…In the WALLET. Shots fired
across the “bow” of conscience, justice, constitutional heritage,
MISSES the wallet, misses the “mark”.
A blogger from Ohio laments “Why do I pay these “schmucks?”
I ask, WHY do we continue to keep the money machine going,
that funds the PUKES ? STOP SHOPPING, to slow the money
machine, until we get their attention.
OR, follow “shrub’s” advice…Go Shopping.
If the State has no obligation to provide a public education then next will be the Commonwealth has no obligation to provide funds to Michigan to provide a public education… mmmm
And this from Governor LePage of Maine:
“If you want a good education go to private schools. If you can’t afford it, tough luck. You can go to the public school.”
Private schools aren’t any better; they just pick whoever they want to attend.
Old fashioned notions – democracy, common good, neighborhood schools, opportunity to rise above your circumstances, state colleges, ask not what…, bill of rights, freedom of speech, voting rights, equality…
who needs all that any more?
Gasp. Is the PROOF really in the pudding? I’m shocked…
To Duane Swacker:
Your comment makes me smile. I come from Viet Nam, a communist country where communist leaders are betrayers.
America has lots of veterans both Vietnamese and American ( pls. ask LLoyd: re his wife is from communist China.). I hope that one day, some educational magazine will provide a platform for all SURVIVAL Vietnamese commanders to narrate the truth for western audience to understand the communist policy ( exactly like Capitalism WITHOUT DEMOCRACY). As all of you now experience with DOE, Bill Gate…
Yes, I read on New York Time re: four American Nuns were raped and killed (you see why I doubt where GOD and UNSEEN Angels in this example?)by order from a General (from South America?) who now resides in California.
Look at Mao who harmed Tibetans and cause lots of havoc to His Holiness Dalai Latma. Mao died of old age or heart attack, nobody knew for sure!
In conclusion, I see God never punishes them so far. All fat cats still make millions of their citizens’ lives in misery. They and their children still enjoy life with money and power.
However, one thing is for sure that all communists leaders try to eliminate themselves to protect their own piece of pie.
I do not base my opinion on idiology (ideology?), but on the reality. I cannot express my opinion without what I witness or experience (like a story of 5 blind men who describe elephant based on their restriction of touching elephant’s body parts, not freedom to touch from head to tail.) For this sole reason, I would not need to say anything to Chris in Florida. Endurance, intelligence, physical strength, and determination cannot sustain a person in danger, but a PURE belief in GOD= DETACHMENT OF FEAR. This is the secret. Bad people will always have full of fear.
Yes, I survive many hours in ocean, not once but twice, so that I had my chance to challenge and bargain with God. You would not understand me even if I describe in details.
Nobody understand how fragile life is until terminal illness like cancer, or a sudden death like severe heart attack/stroke strikes on our brain or heart.
The most mild sickness like mild stroke can wipe out your short term memory, and can cause people with intermittent/shaking or in pain in every movement.
We can laugh or cry dependent on what we can detach or attach to our emotion, logical mind, or mostly our righteousness. Back2basic
To be fair to Mao, his policies during the Cultural Revolution that ran for the last decade or so of his life didn’t just harm the Tibetans. Those policies reached into every home in China and harmed everyone to some degree—more so in the cities by a degree of 10x.
The only difference is that the Tibetans were fortunate to get Richard Gere and other Hollywood stars to do PR for them for decades and make it look like they were singled out. They weren’t. The suffering and persecutions of the Cultural Revolution did not discriminate, and if it hadn’t been for Deng Xiaoping, after Mao died, Mao’s wife would have carried on that legacy of insane mass suffering for several more decades.
The Cultural Revoluiton worked because most of the young people cooperated as the engine of that insanity, and some of those Maoists are still around and want their glory days back, because they haven’t forgotten what it was like to wield that kind of power over others.
As surprising as some may find this, the army that drove Mao’s Cultural revolution were teenagers and the People’s Liberation Army mostly sat inside their military bases and did nothing to stop what was going on until after Mao died. The only exception was when a mob of teenagers were marching to burn down the Forbidden City where Mao lived. The PLA surrounded the Forbidden City with an armed division and the teenagers decided to drop that idea.
Mao, China’s modern emperor, who was being supplied with a steady stream of rural, illiterate teenage virgins, didn’t want his palace burned down. After Mao had one of these virgins, she’d be married off to a PLA officer as her reward for contributing to Mao’s longevity.
I think the Maoists who gave power to Mao’s Cultural Revolution have the same mind think as the fake education reformers in the US. The power they feel is like a drug and that rush will drive them to insane levels of abuse that they will heap on their victims as they laugh all the way to the bank.
To Lloyd Lofthouse:
Thank you for clarifying Mao’s policy in details.
I respect and admire you for what you have done in teaching career. Moreover, you have shown your endurance, strength, free spirit, and the will to help others.
People in general are very naive if they were brought up with GULLIBLE morality and blindly believe in God.(God=detachment of fear with being considerate, and omniscient, whereas blindly believe = being fearful, submit to do thing without being considerate and understanding with knowledge.)
In reality, not only Mao, but all communist leaders in some degree from light to severe needs for sexuality, completely abuse YOUNG, ILLITERATE, but god looking and virgin GIRLS.
In capitalism, this disease is glamorized under different environments like fashion show, figure skating artists, movie stars, music business…that affect not only GIRLS , but also BOYS.
Hugh Hefner, Donald Trump, and managers for famous rock stars … are a few of examples of people who can abuse their power of money/knowledge to ruin people’s lives. People are fearful to fight back because they cannot live without expensive material provided by abusers; or they are afraid of a sudden death like assassination or accidental death not only happen to them, but also to whom they love.
For these reasons, educators can present all tricky aspects that the power of money will use to abuse innocent people. That is all we can do. We can lead people to the water source like a river and fruit trees. People need to work their way to drink or eat if they are thirsty or hungry for it.
I appreciate my mother’s advice that I ONLY repay what I ask for, and ONLY accept what I am capable to work for. So, nobody can bribe me to do things that will harm my reputation, or will lead me into trouble.
Most of all, I always strive to learn and do everything at my best knowledge and capability regarding body, mind and spirit in order to gradually achieve my inner peace.
Back2basic
A few facts about three of Americans healthiest and fastest growing industries. Even during the 2007-08 recession, this growth did not slow.
The US private sector weapons industry is the largest in the world at almost 40% of the global market, and its sells weapons to some of the most brutal regimes in the world.
2nd place is China with about 10% of the market. Russia is 3rd with 5%.
The US porno industry is the largest in the world. The U.S. produces 244,661,900 porn pages for the world wide web. Germany only produces 10 million. Third place goes to the UK.
More than 60% of US adults who pay to watch porno on the internet earn $50K or more annually. More than half of them earn 75k or more.
http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html
There are more trafficked slaves in the world today than when the U.S. fought its Civil War to free the slaves—-most of them including children are sex slaves. On average, 17,000 enter the U.S. every year against their will to service clients who can afford to pay the price. The gateway for trafficked humans is Houston, Texas where there are more illegal houses of prostitution than the entire state of Nevada.
I’d be skeptical about how “healthy” the porn industry is these days, unless you’re just talking about the sheer amount of content out there. The number of Web pages probably isn’t a great proxy measurement. Nor is the amount of streamed content, just like with the music industry. My impression has been that the porn industry is under immense pressure, is growing less and less profitable, and is consolidating. Perhaps ironically, these developments may be a bad thing overall to the extent they increase incentives to make what was already a hugely exploitative industry even more exploitative.
The porn industry pages on the Internet are available to the world—not just the U.S. Did you click on that link and see how much is being spent throughout the world on porn, not just the US?
Porn, like human trafficking and the private sector weapons industries are all global players depending on the global market.
There are an estimated 20 to 30 million slaves today who are trafficked around the world.
“Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry (behind illegal drugs and arms trafficking). It reportedly generates a profit of $32 billion every year. Of that number, $15.5 billion is made in industrialized countries.”
Globally, porn is a $97 billion industry, according to Kassia Wosick, assistant professor of sociology at New Mexico State University. Between $10 billion and $12 billion of that comes from the United States. Revenue from traditional porn films has been shrinking, though, because of piracy and an abundance of free content on the Internet.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/porn-industry-feeling-upbeat-about-2014-n9076
I looked at the page — it’s not the kind of source I would rely on, it wasn’t clear to me what sources it was using for its sales estimates, and intuitively I’m disinclined to accept sales estimates for an industry that’s non-public and notoriously corrupt without seeing the methodology and the caveats. And sales are not profits. And the article you just linked to in your response seems to concur with my sense that the industry is under serious pressure from free streaming services.
I certainly agree that the slavery issue is grave, and I don’t doubt that it’s connected to the porn industry. Consider my perhaps counterintuitive point that declines in the profitability of porn may make this problem even worse.
To FLERP
You can disagree with Lloyd’s important INFO (re: POWER, GREED, and LUST) which is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
If you need fact and figure; or eyes witness; or your intuition…, there are plenty of logical evidences from mathematical calculation; or terrorized enforcement/threat; or emotional naiveté in lack of experience; or blind faith in authority figure; or plainly ignorant tradition/culture from parental figure.
Here are four guiding principles from the best enlightenment philosopher on earth, Buddha:
DO NOT quickly believe in the saying from:
1. People with authority, scientific knowledge, and wealth (due to THEIR OWN gain)
2. People with old age, claimed to be a Wise-man (due to HIS LUST for control and power)
3. Any written old testaments (due to it is possibly fake)
4. Any mystery, unfounded truth, and lack of proof of science (due to rumor or legendary).
Have you agreed with me that certain golden rules in certain sectors in our society? For example: (regardless of certain rules can be bent like in America Education Chaos of today)
1) In the business world, “show me the money”
2) In all professional trades, “show me your experiences”
3) In an academic world, “show me your degree, credential…”
4) In any marriage or partnership, “show me honesty, respect, humor and care”
Did you know that people who has the power of WEAPON, DRUG, and SEX SLAVE, rule the planet HERE and NOW? These organizations of crime cannot survive if people are well educated.
The more robots, and the less humanity education is promoted in any country, the better organizations of crime will control the mass of fearful and ignorant people.
I have to confess that I am fearful to protect my female friend who got raped due to naive and trusting in local undercover police, in the refugee camp. I still live with my guild because I am coward and took off and left her behind to be ruined under the force of three men with guns.
In Canada, in the parking lot of fast food restaurant in the exist of Highway 401 East, near to (Coburg?) in 1998, I witnessed an young Indian woman who called for my attention from the abducted car . There are two middle age Indian woman and man who held the young one in the middle of the back seat. Also, there are two Indian men in the driver and passenger seats at the front with guns. it was about 10:30 pm in the summer month. My husband went for fast food snack, I and my sleepy son in the back seat of my car. I wanted to get out of my car to take down their license plate, but I was afraid for the welfare of my son and I. My husband had a company cell phone with him, But I did not have one. They took off and my husband just returned with fast food. I told him about that incident, and we came to restaurant to report this incident. However, in 1998, there was not any camera in the parking lot, we just called local police and reported what we knew.
Yes, FLERP, there is not much we can do with our conscience, knowledge, and humanity to fight back against criminals with weapon and laws that they create to protect them. Children ( from new born to 19 years of age) from rich and poor families are the preys from all sorts of killers for money, drug habit, or revenge.
I have known three major SINS that Lloyd told in his post for 60 years ago from my mother when she reinforced 4 guiding principles from Buddha to all of her children. I do not believe and obey easily to the order from any authority figures without some researches and questions; or I call that as the SECOND OPINION.
Please keep in mind that:
1) We must REPAY whatever we ask for. So, watch out our ability to do what we ask for.
2) We ONLY ACCEPT whatever we can work for it. So be careful with what we accept.
This will protect us from being forced into an irreversible dangerous position of death.
Back2basic