Arthur Camins, Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) at the Stevens Institute of Technology, has a terrific letter to the editor in today’s Néw York Times.
He points out the paradox of choice.
“A look at the ways in which the idea of individual choice is applied by politicians to different issues is revealing. Some politicians want the public to pay for their private choices when it comes to vouchers for religious education, but are against choice when it comes to a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have a baby.
“In both cases they are prepared to violate the basic constitutional principle of separation of church and state. In one case they want the public to pay for their religious choices. In the other they want to impose their religious views on everyone else.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And a handful of people should have the “choice” to pull the parent trigger for vast numbers of others for generations to come on public schools but huge numbers of people should not have the choice to opt out their children from the abusive hazing ritual known as high-stakes standardized testing.
One of the hallmarks of the privatization/charter/voucher crowd is their reflex use of the sneer, jeer and smear against those they perceive as opponents. Another is their profound hypocrisy on the issues they themselves trumpet as their main points.
Double talk. Double think. Double standards.
At the commanding heights of the “new civil rights movement of our time”—have they no shame?
Is the last really a question?
I don’t think so…
😎
Camins’s letter in this morning’s NYT was so good, concise and eloquent that I quoted it in a comment I posted in the Wash Post, whose same day editorial excoriated the TX ruling. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
The amazing thing is that the NY Times publishes this example of the double think.
Speaking of people and groups who have no shame, I am working my way through a new book called “Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool” by Jennifer Jacquet, 2015, NY: Pantheon.
Jacquet teaches at NYU, studied economics, is interested in how people make decisions and is doing some nice analyses of the concepts of guilt and public shaming as tools for social control, with damaging reputations of individuals and groups part of that. Also political posturing so that consumer choice is the all-purpose escape from big problems that require collective action and collaboration–think poverty, global warming (euphemism climate change); pollution (air, water, sea) and so on.
I hope that Diane can find an opportunity to talk with Jennifer Jacquet. She needs some tutoring on why she is wrong to think that the publication of teachers names attached to stack ratings based on test scores is NOT just a “transparency policy” but a version of shaming and the stack ratings Gates employed to run Microsoft, which she recognizes as counter productive. I have letter drafted to acquaint her with the well-coordinated process of shaming public schools and targeting teachers for the last two decades, also a short list of recommended readings.
Laura,
Write a public letter to her and I will post it. When she googles her name, she will see it.
Well said.
Here is my letter to the editor. Our paper allows only150 words so I squeezed in as much info as I could. Hopefully the message is not lost.
I lost my cool when the editor allowed me the “privilege” of responding to the editor they promote as a continuing editor whose educational capabilities are more than a little suspect. This was my 150 allowed words, exactly, a minuscule amount of what I had previously submitted but not allowed.
Like fabled lemmings suicidal stampede for annihilation homo sapiens destroy the planet sustaining us.
Nationally, Constitutional freedom guarantees drastically diminish. Crony capitalism labeled capitalism. Middle class disappearing, national largess siphoned into upper 1%. Perpetual war promoted, diplomacy questioned. Fear promoted. People, ideas categorized: liberal, conservative, ethnic, etc. Quality of thought, integrity; subservient.
Best government money can buy. Money supplants people’s interests.
Why? Whose educational failure? Corporate controlled media promotes corporate interests. Its media denigrates public schools. Profound chutzpah. Corporate schools cost more, produce worse results but pushed by them.
Corporate media fails us abysmally. Government lies promoted unexamined. Gulf of Tonkin; war expanded. Weapons of mass destruction? Iraq war cost trillions of dollars, untold death, misery. Unexamined bank problems; Bank failure, depression.
The TIMES promotes a reporter questioning one political figure while allowing 1/3 that space to reporting philosophically fundamental questions for ALL political candidates. Corporate media informing adequately?
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.