David Sirota reports that billionaire Stephen Schwarzman told a high-level audience of business and government leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that schools don’t need more money. He suggested that they could improve by enlisting unpaid labor, like retirees, to tutor children.
“DAVOS, Switzerland — Private equity investor Stephen Schwarzmann is generally a believer in the power of money, a trait that has netted him billions of dollars worth of that useful commodity. But when it comes to education, Schwarzman says more money is not necessarily a fix for ailing American public schools.”
He added:
““I’ve always wondered, what you do in a society with people who just retire,” he told conference attendees. “If you could get those people, like a board, [to be an] unpaid workforce, pay them next to nothing or nothing, and have them go into the school system to be mentors to kids, and be an example of a certain type of success that you would get dramatically different outcomes. If you can get unemployed people that cost nothing, that can have this dramatic difference, that costs nothing. I love things that cost nothing that have great results. Imagine if you laid on technology and other types of things, you could really set the world on fire with this type of stuff.”
And more:
“Schwarzman’s firm recently touted its investment in an expanding private education company. Yet, more than a third of Blackstone’s entire investment pool is comprised of money from public pension plans — that is, the retirement money of government employees like public school teachers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Because providing work for FREE is always a good motivator to provide high-quality services? Right? Don’t you want a bunch of unpaid people working with your kids? (And, what would the cost of screening all these “unpaid” people be so we don’t have a bunch of pedophiles in the system?). Being rich does NOT mean you are that smart. But, it can mean you are self-centered. (I doubt Mr. Sirota works for FREE – but, after his comments above, I ask myself, “Why not?”
It’s not Sirota proposing the work for free but the billionaire.
Not all billionaires have the best ideas! Gates’ has had some terrible ones, especially about education. Lots of seniors already volunteer, but some are not fit to do so. My idea is that if more billionaires paid their fair share instead of hiding money in places like Swiss banks and off-shore accounts, public education would reap the benefit.
Well, maybe retirees should be “required” to so some volunteer work, ex. tutoring, and give back to the institutions that gave them the skills and knowledge to be successful. If it really does take a village to raise a child, then the child when they get older should give back to the village.
This concept, fallacy?, that one retires, then lives out their golden years just spending their savings on themselves, as they do what they want, is….perhaps… a very selfish outcome of our misplaced “American dream”; a dream with the final scene of one having no concern about giving back to the society and culture, but just consuming?
My faith teaches me that such concepts of the “retired life” are misguided; for one should all the way to the grave be concerned about helping out others.
Ah, your faith. Well, who can argue with your faith? Schwarzmann has found himself a patsy, just like all the school teachers who won’t join unions because they don’t like controversy. It reminds me of the ministers who cautioned the slaves that Jesus wants them to be obedient… to their masters. Convenient for the masters, heh? Convenient for Schwarzmann that he so easily taps into your sense of “I don’t deserve to do what I want to do but must always serve others”. I am sure you will be first in line to replace a paid teacher with your faith-based service mentality. Meanwhile, I will serve my family and my community rather than letting the Reformers get away with replacing teachers with lackeys. Setting up false dichotomies between people who serve vs those who “just spend their savings on themselves” does not reveal the truth of the matter. But then you have Truth.
pbarret writes, “Schwarzmann has found himself a patsy, just like all the school teachers who won’t join unions because they don’t like controversy.” what union? there’s no union for many of us to join. we’re in right-to-work states. right or wrong, it’s the wave of the future.
Agreed, Pbarret, I used red-herring, straw men, and false dichotomies. NO! I don’t believe in replacing paid teachers with retired volunteers (that was your straw man errant interpretation). All I really intended to say (behind all my faith) is that retirees can be a great resource to our schools and kids, and many currently are. Maybe there is a way to utilize them more? If society is like a living organism (my faith uses the analogy that organizations are like bodies, with living parts each contributing to the function, use and success of the others….none live in isolation for “self-serving”), then as the parts get older we have this “American dream?” idea that retirement means no longer serving the service of the body? No, I realize many people still want to do something for others. Hopefully, we can channel that good-will into helping students in our public schools.
Grace!
Rick, if you want to do something (volunteer) because your religion requires it I’m okay with that. I’m NOT okay with your religion requiring me or anyone else to do something. That’s called Theocracy!
I am a retired scientist and volunteer at the local elementary school spending at least 10 hours a week in what can only be called teaching children. I am not involved in class room teaching but I do participate in extra learning for the children. I am proud to make my contribution to society. I am not doing this because it is required, or I am giving back. All I want is to make a difference and that makes me feel good.
I volunteer, too, as do many others who work with me. Your point is? I suspect that you will find that most retirees volunteer their time and skills. You will also find many “retirees” who continue to work out of necessity as well as volunteering.
What a great idea, but why limit it to retirees? I propose a jury duty system where everyone, regardless of social status and income, be called upon to “serve” in public classrooms for 10 weeks. The first 5 weeks can be TFA training, and the last 5 weeks can be actually working with the kids. Come one, come all; the only thing needed is a heartbeat. Don’t have a car? Too bad; take the bus. Incarcerated? We’ll let you out to “serve.” You’re Billy Gates and above this nonsense? Too bad, everyone must “serve.” Where could we apply this next – DMV? Prisons? Hospitals? Want to be a “policeman for a day?” “Firefighter?” What a bunch of hooey. Even as you wrote it, Rick, you didn’t believe it.
Rick,
I think that many retirees still have to make ends meet by working. Many of the retired teachers in my district supplement their meager pension by substituting. Why are you not asking billionaires to volunteer?
Agreed, and yes, the richer you are (because the schools that prepared you did a good job), the more you should have to volunteer, for two reasons: 1) one is more indebted to the schools 2) one has all that extra money, so no need to work, and therefore more time to volunteer.
Yes, billionaires should volunteer more (after all, most of them got that way by oppressing and underpaying their employees)…kind of like a late-life Karma readjustment?
Rick,
You said, “Well, maybe retirees should be ‘required’ to so some volunteer work.”
You have a right to your opinion but stop and think: Are we going to become a cradle to grave work culture where you never retire and get to do what you want. You just start work at maybe 16 and work until you die—-except the billionaires who do what they want everyday?
I started working when I was 15 and I didn’t retire from teaching until I was sixty. During those 45 years, I washed dishes, served in the U.S. Marines and fought in Vietnam, worked a number of other jobs and then eventually at 30 went in the classroom to teach for thirty years.
When I left teaching, I took a 40% pay cut and left with no medical. If I hadn’t served in the Marines and fought in Vietnam coming home with a service related disability, I wouldn’t have had any medical until I was eligible for Medicare. My current medical provider is the VA.
“Volunteer work” should not be “required”—-that is an oxymoron. It should be voluntary and those who want to give their time away free have the right to do that without being forced.
In addition, if the U.S. were to make it mandatory for teachers to tutor for free after they retired, that would be discrimination and a form of forced servitude (the same as slavery) unless every worker in the country was forced to work as slaves for free after they retired and started to collect SS, and what do we do with the people who can’t work for free because of health problems and disabilities—cut them off and let them starve to death and deny them medical even though they may have worked forty-five years of their life?
Lloyd, Schwarzman I guess has forgotten about the 13th Amendment. No forced servitude unless you are in jail. I guess he would want a law that would give the teacher a choice of the penitentiary or forced volunteer labor (an oxymoron). By the way, now that I am retired, I only have to work two jobs to make ends meet instead of three thanks to all our billionaire friends. My father had to work only one job to make ends meet and had something called a family life, which is slowly but surely disappearing among the middle class who struggle to keep their heads above water.
I don’t think he forgot about the Bill of Rights. In fact, the more I interact with people from the far right of the political spectrum, the more I think they don’t know anything about the Bill of Rights just like many of the born again fundamentalist Christians that I’ve talked to over the years that don’t know much about what the Bible says beyond a few cherry-picked passages that supports their warped views.
A dry sense of humor. V e r y d r y.
Being a former teacher and a retiree…this sounds like slave labor not volunteerism. His statement a bout always wondering what you do with retirees Is offensive on so many levels. And this is how the 1% would like to run the world…pay nothing and still get the job done. Anyone who does not see the writing on the wall is blind. They want to systematically dismantle a profession, a union and therefore a pension system.
After 26 years teaching, I am now retired. I CHOOSE to teach a knitting class at the school where I formerly taught. I CHOOSE to volunteer as a homework coach at the library one day a week. I read, knit, and am learning French. Sirota’s proposition is an insult to retirees.
Again, please read carefully. Sirota is a journalist (one whose work we should all be familiar with), not a billionaire. He’s quoting billionaire Stephen Schwarzmann.
This really gives a new meaning to working for your pension! Maybe billionaires can do a little free service in exchange for their tax exemptions. As for you, Rick, have at it. I agree with you on the concept of morality and retirement, I will never retire from life and I plan on giving to my community, but how to do that is a decision of conscience. Retirees should not replace gainful employment to the younger that need the job, and furthermore, should not absolve the community, state, and wealthy from any financial obligation to the common good. Yes, I hold with that evil notion that there is a price to pay for living in a civilized society. The people like Mr. Schwarzman are the ones that disagree with you Rick. They think YOU should work and volunteer, you will not find them doing so.
If working for nothing is such a good idea, perhaps Mr. Sirota will volunteer his services and let stockholders earn a dividend without investing.
It’s not Sirota proposing the work for free but the billionaire.
Oh my, unpaid labor???? It must be so nice to have the billions to have a different colored sky on your world than the rest of us.
The headline could be: “Billionaire Says Schools Don’t Need Teachers.” Because isn’t that the implication in his suggestion that unpaid unemployed people + tech + “other types of things” (whatever that means) = setting the world on fire?
It is AMAZING how little they value the work of other people, especially when compared to how highly they value their own!
Yours is worth nothing. Zero. HIS work, on the other hand, is worth millions.
And this:
“Speaking Friday at a World Economic Forum event called “Business Backs Education,”
This is where our political/policy class get their “ideas!” which really explains a lot 🙂
We already have many volunteers in our schools.We have seniors that volunteer on our classrooms, parents who volunteer everyday (PTA), community members who sit on our school boards (unpaid) just to name a few. Schwarzenegger is just another deformed who doesn’t have a clue as to what happens in our schools.
It is unfortunate that money buys you access to media.
Clueless. Money and monumental ignorance, sloppy thinking does not deserve the platform he was given.
His assumptions about pensions treat them as a gift that retirees should have to work for – not as deferred income.
Further, he suggests the unemployed be enlisted for these efforts.
Sounds like a great idea. Get a bunch of people who ostensibly lack job skills, get them to teach students in subjects they may or may not know, and take away from their own time to get job skills and interview for the workforce.
You get what you pay for and what he’s suggesting is a form of indentured permanent servitude – after a certain point you get your pension but you MUST work X number of days with no excuses or ostensibly you’d lose your unearned pension for failure to provide public service.
Even the unemployed in states where they must volunteer 20 hours a week for welfare, are PAID something and their obligation ends when they become employed – this treatment of pensions as some gift to teachers that must be repaid until they’re in the grave is simply absurd.
Is this the same Blackstone Group?
“Across the country, there is a booming business in lending to poor people with bad credit who need cars to get to work. But this market is “as much about Wall Street’s perpetual demand for high returns as it is about used cars,” DealBook’s Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg report. “An influx of investor money is making more loans possible, but all that money may also be enabling excessive risk-taking that could have repercussions throughout the financial system.”
“As it did with mortgages, Wall Street is bundling together thousands of subprime auto loans and selling them to investors. Led by companies like Santander Consumer; GM Financial, General Motors’ lending unit; and Exeter Finance, an arm of the Blackstone Group, such securitizations have grown 302 percent, to $20.2 billion since 2010, according to Thomson Reuters IFR Markets. Subprime securitizations increased 28 percent from 2013. In a time of low interest rates, investors are drawn to the relatively high returns of such securities, which ratings firms have nevertheless deemed as safe as some Treasury securities.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/morning-agenda-subprime-auto-loans-spun-into-gold/
And, there are the Frankenstein, social impact bonds.
Billionaire says, billionaires need money, schools don’t. Yes, a little wisdom for the ages.
Someone should ask him if LESS funding benefits public schools, because public schools continue to lose funding under ed reform leadership. I assume it’s deliberate, unless the hundreds of paid ed reform advocates and the hundreds of ed reform politicians are just lousy advocates who are bad at their jobs and lose every funding battle:
“The reports, which capture a period of the U.S.’s slow recovery from the recession, also show a decline in state and local revenues per student.”
Or,
What you do in a society with people who just get rich? If you could get those people, like a board, [to be an] unpaid workforce, pay them next to nothing or nothing, and have them go into the school system to be mentors to kids,
liquidate a Gulfstream or a Global for some art supplies,
Schwarzman and his reformer buddies should volunteer to pick up the BS they have been dumping on our schoolhouse steps..
Ridiculous. Common sense would tell you that many retirees may not want to volunteer under these circumstances. Many retirees retire and do other things with their life, not continue to teach for free (when they could keep teaching for pay, crappy pay, but pay). I find it astounding how the people in power are in fact not teachers, have little experience with school systems, and don’t realize what it takes to really help children and their families. All children deserve the best education possible, and funding will only help to achieve that. Books and other materials in the classroom are often bought by the teacher themselves out-of-pocket, with money they have earned that is less than what they deserve. I could go on, but just thinking about the way that the education system works regarding who has power and who does not infuriates me to no end.
Another stellar year for public schools under ed reform leadership at the state and federal level:
“Thirty-seven states saw per-pupil expenditures decline at least 1 percent, and some states saw much larger slides.
Per-pupil spending climbed steadily by at least 1 percent per year between 1996 and 2008, when the nation began to feel the effects of the recession. Spending flattened out between 2008 and 2010, and then in 2011 fell for the first time in 15 years. ”
With so many paid ed reform advocates and groups, one would think public schools would be doing a little better. It’s like the more of them there are on the payroll, the worse public schools fare.
Will he be volunteering his services when he retires? Or is that just something for people who are not billionaires?
Schwarzmann is part of the financial sector that drags down U.S. GDP. Because of Wall Street, Americans have to work harder to grow the nation.
The world economy would improve, if Schwarzmann just stopped spending his time siphoning off, from the engine of growth. Then, if he wants to be proactive, he can divide his net worth by the number of years he has left and, with the grit Gates lacks, spend enough each day, in communities across the nation or world, to deplete his bank account. As is, he’s failing to have the multiplier effect, that salaries of workers and pensioners have. He’s a net loss to the world, economically speaking…..and, likely in every way.
He’s a big supporter of John Kasich’s public school policies so that tells you a lot right there.
I don’t recall an Ohio governor with less interest in public schools. I love how national political media keep asking him about Common Core. He has no earthly idea what THAT’S all about, nor does he care.
Oh, I suspect Kasich knows all about Common Core and supports it but doesn’t see any reason to come out and say that. The Tea Party after all does not like Common Core and what’s the gain for Kasich in riling them up? At any rate, Common Core is going great guns here in my Cincinnati suburb. To my deep dismay, needless to say.
Reporter Jeremy Kelley wrote about Common Core, in the Dayton Daily News this week. Interestingly, Gates name never makes it into mainstream Ohio media print, in discussions of Common Core. Kelley even identified the Ohio Educator Leader Cadre without mentioning Gates funding.
Ohioans can find their geographic representatives, for lack of a better word, at the Ohio Department of Education page for Ohio Educator Leader Cadre. Apparently, the deformers like the word, cadre, like Republicans like the word trickle down.
I think perhaps it’s the billionaires who don’t need more money.
I don’t think Rick knows (or perhaps cares) that we’ve earned our pension by working for less than we would have made in the private sector. That was the deal set up years ago for government employees. If they want to change the deal they’ll have to pay market value up front. We have also contributed financially toward our pensions. My former intermediate school district hired a firm to evaluate the private sector market value of our positions and required skill sets and build a salary schedule. We were plugged into this schedule at 75% due to the fact that we had a decent pension plan.
Regarding volunteerism, those with no teaching or school administration experience fail to comprehend the concerns and liability of allowing “volunteers” to be in direct contact with children. Even if well screened, you risk a mismatch of skills and possible inappropriate interaction with students. Inconsistent attendance is also an issue since they’re not being paid, Children just build a rapport with the volunteer and then they don’t show up. You know this doesn’t happen in the private schools that children of the wealthy attend. Parents hire highly skilled tutors and pay them well.
The 21st century robber barons are gutting public education and unions to pad their own pockets and gain total control of their “human resources.” (Remember when we used to be personnel?) The implementation of the “Communist Core” has sounded the death knell for a rich, broad based curriculum. Their psychopathy and reptilian brain function cannot be tamed. We must pull together and push back now!
Billionaires like Sirota should keep their hands off pensions!
C’mon, FLERP!, you can read better than that!! (I hope-ha ha!)
Steve Schwarzmann is definitely one of our best investigative journalists.
I propose that billionaires work for free and tutor our students. I would specifically like Bill Gates as my personal TA for my kids. I can get him
90 essays to help me grade, and some copies to run off right now, in fact lol.
Please read people. Sirota did not make these comments.
You are right Titleonetexasteacher, right there in the first sentence, third word it says that David Sirota REPORTS….:
David Sirota reports that billionaire Stephen Schwarzman told a high-level audience of business and government leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that schools don’t need more money.
David Sirota is a true friend of teachers and education, as well as a first class journalist. He used to be the best live progressive talk show host in Denver and the U.S., In my humble opinion. People need to read a bit more carefully!
Did Steve Schwartzman volunteer to forego all fees and carried interest for investing public pension funds? It would be a sensational public good, save governments billions and boost returns on investments. How about it Steve?
First, you want to force me to retire at a reduced pension due to my feeblemindedness. Then you want me to work for free. Am I missing something?
No.
NJ Teacher –You nailed it! First laugh I have had all week. Nothing but Nonsense.
NJ Teacher, Duane Swacker and AlwaysLearning: I am a bit flummoxed…
Ok, “Stephen Schwarzmann is generally a believer in the power of money” but money has no power to help schools and so retirees should “volunteer” their time, effort and money to the schools that folks like him say don’t need it and can’t use it wisely because—
You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it. Except, of course, you can solve Mr. Schwarzmann’s problems by throwing and tossing and shoveling and snow blowing humungous amounts of money at him.
😒
Not that any of this is new. For example, charters that require parents of attending customers, er, students, to “volunteer” many unpaid hours and impose money fines for minor client infractions and such. And naturally charters do more [for the owners and managers] with less [accountability and transparency for how they spend the monies given them]. And it’s not at all about the money for charters because the midyear dump is a common public school tactic [?!?!?] that charters have just improved on and so forth…
Ok, at this point I am afraid that the pontifications of a member of the BBBC [BoredBillionaireBoysClub] have, as word salad and cognitive dissonance are wont to do, scrambled my brains.
And I don’t like them scrambled but sunny side up.
😳
Could you give me an English-to-English translation of what Mr. Schwarzmann said? Is that possible?
Honestly, either I am just not getting his drift or he needs professional help and perhaps a lot of meds…
Thanking you in advance, your friendly—but at the moment, very much at sea—neighborhood KrazyTA.
😎
“Bored Billionaire Boys Club” and villainthropies, the best nomenclature to capture the destruction of American democracy.
“Word salad”, made of iceberg lettuce with no nutritional value-good update for the prior-alphabet soup.
Maybe the piece should be retitled “Public Schools don’t need more money, but billionaires should’ve never hoarded all theirs to begin with?”
If we believe in the rational, or morality, of a minimum wage (to avoid oppression and wealth-hoarding [aka: unjust gain], then why not a maximum wage to? What gives CEOs the “right” to keep too much of the profits? If every organization is like a body, why would the head so undervalue the little toe (the CEO paying the workfloor laborer less than living wage)? Economies grow and are stimulated when more money gets down into the hands of the working class, which elevates them into being able to live a better life, consume more goods, create more demand, which means businesses will have a bigger market. While I’m a capitalist, I disagree with the stereotypical, are real?, problems of the upper 5% hoarding 95% of the profits, allowing just a few to enjoy better buying power, which actually does little to stimulate growth, as compared to the growth if more wealth is allowed to “trickle down” (I believe legislation should improve this rate of “trickling down”). “The give more wage = more empowered consumers = business/economic growth”, is superior to the “give less wage =fewer consumers = slower economic growth (except for the “privileged few”)”. I’m thankful for men like Warren Buffet who is working to convince the rich to be more charitable (which would first be addressed by wage/salary reform…… wage justice for wage-justice).
Rick,
Agree, except about Buffet. He gave substantial “charitable” money to the Gates Foundation to dispense. Gates, almost immediately, after the announcement, gave more than $300,000 to ALEC.
And, Gates opposes raising the minimum wage and ranted against pensions.
In lists of villainthropies, Gates name is often among Walton’s, Arnold’s, etc.
Unless Buffet supports Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, Center for Public Accountability, Mother Jones, Bernie Sanders, etc., his talk just makes for good pr.
I had a small chunk of ceiling tile land on my head today from our over 100 year old urban school. I would have complained but my desktop has had a virus for over 3 weeks, and I also love the old hammered tin work ceiling design that restaurants are buying up like banshees. But then, they have money.
“I love things that cost nothing that have great results. ”
Is he referring to scams that rob billion-dollar pension funds?
Or to tax-payer funded bailouts for those who run scams that rob billion-dollar pension funds?
SDP, some how your spot on comment did not generate the attention it deserves. Perhaps you feel a poem coming on?
SDP is genius, rhyming or not.
I have a better idea… let’s see this “brilliant” billionaire hire some of those unemployed and wow surprise… PAY THEM! Stephen Schwarzmann’s quote is in the category “you cannot make this stuff up” and belongs in the “Onion”. If I had read it there first, I’d be laughing at the satiric ingenuity. But alas, Schwarzmann is speaking his mind… which is disconcerting and none too bright!
Schwarzmann and the former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, are alike. The two can’t stop exposing themselves in the media. Welch thought himself brilliant for articulating the idea that companies should have no loyalty to employees and employees, no loyalty to the company. He hand-picked his successor and GE’s price, unlike almost all other stocks, has never recovered from the 2008 debacle, brought to us by Wall Street.
Well, you know, we could extend this concept. If retirees and the unemployed are good enough to teach without training or pay, then maybe we can get them to work as nurses or physicians in underserved communities. Just think of all the tuition buydowns we could save nationwide for those pesky med students. Or what about, as someone suggested, working as firefighters or police officers? We could trim city budgets everywhere thanks to the “volunteer” help. But personally, before rolling this out elsewhere, I think Schwarzmann should try the experiment first and conscript retirees and unemployed workers for Blackstone.
That was funny.
Isn’t unpaid labor also known as slavery?
So, he suggests the use of retirees as free labor and to add insult to this, he wants to use their pension money to foot the bill. Horrendous.
If billionaire Stephen Schwarzman actually said retired teachers could tutor for free, I have a message for him from this retired teacher, and I can’t print that obscenity here.
If that suggestion came to pass due to legislation, then I think Schwarzman might find himself hunted down by millions of retired teachers.
How would this be different than taking a 70 or 80 year old combat vet and telling him he or she has to go back in uniform—for free—and fight for their corrupt government again because all the endless wars cost too much and the U.S. can’t afford to fight ISIS anymore.
Well said!
At that point Lloyd, speaking as a disabled vet and former Special Forces soldier, I can say that some of us just might join ISIS. Will fight my new enemy for food. The slogan, “Be what you used to be, for free(dom).
Not ISIS
It would be better for form our own resistance group
What could we call it?
“because all the endless wars cost too much and the U.S. can’t afford to fight ISIS anymore.”
…and pay their private contractors, too. Has anybody bought a $600 toilet seat lately?
From what I’ve read about the cost of the toilet seat fiasco, $600 would be a bargain.
Next thing you know, we will have 80 year olds teaching for their social security payments.
I am a retired teacher who still teaches part time (twice a week) in the school where I worked for many years. However, I would not work for free. I still have to prepare lesson plans and data to justify my position. No one on this earth would do such work for no salary. And why should I? My pension is decent but it is still somewhat less than what I used to make. I am working to make up the difference and, at the same time, have a little extra. I definitely deserve what I am getting way more than this billionaire. At least I get paid to help others while Blackstone is nothing less than a vampire. By the way, if you take Schwartman’s ideas to their logical conclusion, you have an economy based on free labor and no one with any income to buy the products from the companies this group invests in.
Schwarzman would probably have really enjoyed living in the Old South.
Lots of “free” labor.
“I love things that cost nothing that have great results. Imagine if you laid on technology [cotton gin] and other types of things [whips], you could really set the world on fire with this type of stuff.”
It’s great he’s so comfortable devaluing other people and volunteering their time (but not his – he’s way too valuable – money = merit remember)
I’m a senior and very much against ageism because I’ve experienced it a lot personally. However, considering the fact that we are still feeling the repercussions from having elected Ronald Reagan to the presidency at age 70, who used to fall asleep at state dinners and years later revealed that he had Alzheimers, and who also worked in concert to increase profits for elites and against social programs for the masses with Margaret Thatcher in the UK, who we later learned had Alzheimer’s, too, I think we need to think long and hard before listening to the bizarre notions of anyone who sends out red flags that they are out of touch with humanity and should have been let out to pasture long ago.
This is especially true of greedy billionaires like Schwarzman who get a bully pulpit just because they are wealthy. Fortunately, Oxfam has their number, as indicated in the report they released this month for that very same meeting in Davos, Switzerland, “Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More”
http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/wealth-having-it-all-and-wanting-more
Billionaires are brilliant people and brilliant people can only have brilliant ideas! Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzmann says schools should be staffed by unpaid retirees! Schwarzmann also made the observation that Catholic schools “spend much less money than the public schools and they get amazing results.” Historically, one reason for this is their ultra-cheap work force, nuns. So why not combine these two brilliant ideas and staff our public schools with retired nuns? And it gets better and better: since nuns’ only purpose in life is to serve God, they will have absolutely nothing to do when they retire and they will be so happy to be useful again, they’ll probably pay us! Now the only problem I can foresee is that nuns tend to retire rather late, and they may not be as nimble or forceful as they once were, so discipline might be tricky. But this can be easily solved by another brilliant idea that comes from our helpful friends on the extreme right: arm teachers! Nothing instills respect like a pointed gun. Now some may argue that 90-year-old nuns with poor eyesight and a Parkinsons wobble in the shooting hand may have trouble aiming effectively. So give them sawed-off shotguns. These are not terribly cumbersome and require minimal accuracy to deliver satisfactory results.
It’s a swell idea, & glad someone finally shifted the conversation to the ‘do-less-with-more’ Catholic schools segment of Schwartzman’s bloviations. [OT: there may be a gold-mine screenplay here– aged armed nuns action thriller]. Schwartzman’s ideas on this subject (just like his other pearls) are circa whenever-he-was-a-kid. Nuns– & Catholic schools– are swiftly going the way of the dodo.
One day, Catholic schools will read the research showing their demise was the result of charter schools.
But, by that time, it will be too late for them to speak out against
a system that doubles down on the despair of children.
Wow, how blind is Schwartzman, how ignorant of statistics and sample differences. Saying that Catholic schools get better grades, while running on less money, is as saying that Magnet schools have better teachers because the grades are better. Wrong, both examples have better grades because the samples of the students within them are not representative to the larger population, for they both have skewed samples, and are selective in admission and quick in discharge.
What, a homeschool child gets goods grades, at no cost to taxpayers (because of the 1:1 student to teacher ratio), so we can infer public schools should operate on no money.
These “ex-spurts” that were never teachers or pedagogues are so ignorant of the basic variables affecting education.
The Catholic school system is gradually dying out thanks mostly to Catholics being fully assimilated into our society as a whole. The arrival of charter schools will finish off most of the rest remaining.
Catholic schools are on the way out. There are only about half as many now as fifty years ago because the reason for them existing in the first place, prejudice against Catholics, isn’t applicable today. They aren’t better anyway, and they pay their teachers trash. When a public school job opens up, these teachers leave. Furthermore, if schools can frontload their student body with high achieving kids, then of course their curriculum will be geared for those kids. It doesn’t make them superior, since these schools can keep the “riff-raff” out. If these schools had to take all comers, they would have their overrated reputation s.
Should read: They wouldn’t have their overrated reputations.
Few Catholic school teachers today are nuns. Like private schools in general, they are staffed by teachers who want to teach public, but can’t find jobs.
The only thing left out is the lawyers (can’t leave them out) to create the “legal framework”
“Send lawyers, nuns, guns and money” (as Warren Zevon said)
LOL!!!
I have a much better idea. Let’s bring back tax rates to 1950s levels, so that these leeches don’t have so much money and so much time on their hands that they spew about things they know nothing about.
These people are dangerous because they are able to buy off politicians.
Susan…bring tax rates back only to 1979 pre Reagan and the underclass, meaning all the rest of us who are not in the top few percentile, would be living an easier and far more fair life.
What I find interesting is that even a billionaire can be naive. We do encourage retirees to volunteer, but guess what…they’re retired, they don’t all want to work any more. They are not a consistent work force, if they want to take a 1 month cruise in the middle of the school year, they can. And those who want to volunteer may not be interested in working with children, but may prefer other forms of charity or hobbies.
It’s not like the education system is trying to keep out retired volunteers, it’s just that we don’t have the resources (money) to recruit, train and retain a volunteer system. And it’s not like retirees are sitting around saying to themselves, “Gee, I wish a school would call me up and make my golden years more fulfilling.” If a retiree wants to volunteer, they are doing it. If they aren’t volunteering at a school, it’s for a reason.
How many of the boards Schwartzan serves on are unpaid?
I’m a longtime reader of your blog, but this is my first comment. I’m a special education teacher in the Bay Area. I saw you speak in Berkeley last year and read your book after that.
I used to teach in a charter school in Oakland that had no intervention, health services, ELL services, etc. So this year, I moved to a public school in Alameda, which I think is a wonderful model of a full service public school. 60% of students are economically disadvantaged. We have counselors, a health clerk, intervention teachers, etc.
Today we had a staff meeting and were informed by our principal that although state funding is actually increasing, federal money will be decreased next year. Apparently, we have been given too much money under title 1 and now the amount is being adjusted. This is going to mean the loss of 2 out of 3 of our title 1 reading teachers, and our counselors that are not funded through Medical. Class sizes are large and many of students have experience trauma, so having extra teachers to work with low readers and counselors are so crucial. Even more depressing is that most of the other schools in our district will not be affected, because they are not title 1.
Do you know anything about this loss of title 1 funds or the claim that schools were over-funded in the past? The idea sounds so ridiculous to me.
– Julia H