State Representative Andrrw Brenner recently became chairman of Ohio’s House Education Committee. His views are extreme, to say the least. He believes that public schools are socialistic, along the lines of the old Soviet Union. He is upset that children don’t read the Bible in school, a practice banned by the U.S. Supreme Court half a century ago.
This is the kind of slander about public schools that was popular among hard-right Republicans in the 1940s and 1950s. I wonder if Rep. Brenner also considers police and firefighters to be socialistic and if he objects to public parks, beaches, and highways.
Brenner was co-sponsor of the bill that allows the state to takeover the Youngstown school district and to place a non-educator in charge with sweeping power.
Rep. Brenner reminds us that the assault on public education will end only when supporters of sane, centrist, and equitable education policies are returned to public office.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ohio is a mess.
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Next: “Are you, or have you ever been, a supporter of public schools?”
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“Have you no sense of decency, sir?!”
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Classic!!!
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If locally-controlled public education is “socialism”, how is state-controlled public education not even worse “socialism”?
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Or Federal control which equals the Sovietization of American locally democratically controlled public education.
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Tago!
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I’m hard pressed to understand how “centrist” in the last sentence follows from anything else in this post. Centrism isn’t the only possible response to the radical rightwing. Even if you’re not a radical lefty (which I’m not), we’ve seen what ostensible centrists do when they take control of ed policy.
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If a corporate board appointed a CEO of, say, Apple Computer, who then called all technology a treasonous plot and those buying iPods must be communists, that CEO would not even have time to unpack into the corner office. Yet Ohio appoints someone anti-teacher and anti-education to lead the schools. Ohio – where Crazy rules.
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Voters, please send these ignorant know nothings packing. I personally am tired of watching our country get more narrow minded and regressive. Now we have to defend the right of public education to exist?
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I’m unclear why I’m paying a huge group of public employees in this state to “oppose” the public schools that 93% of the kids attend.
Is this how he talks when he’s standing in a public school in his district shilling for votes from parents and grandparents and community members who value their public schools? Somehow I doubt it.
Maybe he should run on his opposition to the schools in his district next time he’s up. Have the courage of his convictions and stop snowing voters.
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Do voters actually bother to educate themselves about a candidate’s positions on issues before they vote? It’s truly disturbing that this kind of person gets elected and spouts this kind of dangerous nonsense.
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No.
Where are the unions, in terms of marshaling teacher support for Ohio Democratic legislators? Judges? Governors? Members of the Ohio Board of Education?
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Although Ohio is part of America’s “Rust Belt,” with a long history of labor organizations, the state has adopted a very limited right-to-work law. Specifically, the law states that union membership or non-membership employment conditions are “contrary to public policy and void.” So employees are not required to join a union. – See more at: http://statelaws.findlaw.com/ohio-law/ohio-right-to-work-laws.html#sthash.3T8WhFbC.dpuf
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Yeah, I have my students sing “The State Anthem of the USSR” instead of saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
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Milton Friedman said the same thing and he was called Reagan’s economic guru! Friedman influenced education reform during the era of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama! Cuomo a Dem. is just about saying the same thing. So I am not shocked!
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Don’t forget! These are the people the Obama Administration just gave a huge grant to build still more charter schools:
“Ms. Norris of the state education department says the new law and federal grant offer “an opportunity for the state to take a giant step forward in providing high-quality schools.”
So we have a state government that is openly hostile to the schools 93% of children attend and a federal government that is cheering them on, and funding “the movement” and you’re all paying for the whole thing.
https://www.toledoblade.com/DavidKushma/2015/10/25/Don-t-let-abuse-cronyism-kill-charter-school-reform.html
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State Representative Andrew Brenner alleges the community based, democratic, public schools are socialistic, but he has no problems with the Bible being forced on every student in the country as if the U.S. was a theocracy.
From the entry in Britannica.com about the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Republic:
“Although orthodox Christians participated at every stage of the new republic, Deism influenced a majority of the Founders. The movement opposed barriers to moral improvement and to social justice. It stood for rational inquiry, for skepticism about dogma and mystery, and for religious toleration. Many of its adherents advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state. If the nation owes much to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is also indebted to Deism, a movement of reason and equality that influenced the Founding Fathers to embrace liberal political ideals remarkable for their time.”
I think Brenner should start over in kindergarten and go through K-12 again, but this time “He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”
And Brenner should start by learning that socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
I’ve heard this two or three times from others in the corporate reform movement in the last few weeks. This must be one of their new propaganda campaigns to fool the people with one more ploy, one more lie—a very simple talking point that the public schools equal socialism. Next, they will start claiming that every teacher is a communist. I guess they gave up on their other false claims that the schools were a monopoly.
They twisted the definition for monopoly too: “the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.”
How can anyone rational and sane claim either word describes the more than 15,000 community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools?
Anyone who falls for the schools being socialistic or a monopoly is a total fool and beyond reason.
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Lloyd,
I always appreciate your contributions and perspectives when I read these posts.
I am currently composing a letter to Brenner and I address how a BS in Business Administration “obviously makes you an expert on not only education, but also in the organization and operations of social and economic systems.”
I go by further by asking,”what do you know about Fascism?”, noting that “Those who overuse the term “socialism” are often experts when it comes to Mussolini’s exquisite little creation. Nudge…nudge…”
Does it surprise anyone that this person is a member of ALEC?
To further shine light on Brenner and his wife, read about the Prestige Music Studios tax lien//employment malfeasance/ business registration brouhaha at a website called Peacock Panache. Pretty easy to Google.
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It probably is socialism, as is our Army, Navy, our roads, Social Security, Medicare etc.
SO
What is wrong with Socialism when it works better than the Crony capitalism, not even true capitalism, which we have now in which the plutocracy promotes THEIR agenda?
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This legislator was elected by a socialistic process?
I guess so.
That seems to meet Brenner’s perverse and ignorant view of the meaning of “public.” The language comports with the beliefs and the recommendations of some billionaires and kings of bombast who think that it is politically useful to make “an enemy” of selected aspects of the public sector then put in motion a “rescue scenerio.”
That expands their power and conveys the idea they can even undermine the authority of the Supreme Court and say that democratic processes and values are dumb, over the hill, boring, too complicated if you want to make deals.
The case for “public schools are socialist institutions” was made over and over in speeches and books by the recently deceased “Samuel L. Blumenfeld (born in 1927 – New York died June 1, 2015 – Waltham Mass) big fan of phonics, foe of John Dewey, hero to John Birchers.
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I guess the passage of the Northwest Ordinance that created township schools was socialism?
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As a post once stated here, “the only answer to these people is unremitting ridicule and exposure to sunlight.” (obviously a paraphrase)
The only way to keep these morons in the public light is to point out their fallacious reasoning and fact-impaired thinking. The readers of this blog are always in the forefront of giving these ninnies “what for.”
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https://www.facebook.com/BrennerForOhio
http://www.ohiohouse.gov/andrew-brenner/contact
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One word: Idiot!
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We will remember in November.I wonder if farm subsidies given to Ohio’s farmers in Republican districts adds up to socialism.
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