The New York Times published an article about how critics of public schools now call them “government schools.” This is supposed to conjure up an image of a faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy, like the IRS, not your neighborhood public school whose teachers you know well.
I first heard this term used at the Hoover Institution. At first I didn’t know what they were talking about, then I realized that the public schools were, in their minds, “government schools,” a heinous institution that should be replaced by private schools, vouchers, religious schools, charters, home schooling, anything but those hated “government schools.” I began to wonder if they referred to highways as “government highways” and found a way to avoid them; if they referred to public parks as “government parks,” to be avoided or privatized; if they referred to public beaches as “government beaches.”
Privatization always has a bottom line: profit. And as Peter Greene recently pointed out, the difference between for-profit charter schools and non-profit charter schools is an illusion. The nonprofits like to grow, increasing their revenues and salaries for top administrators. They too exclude the hardest-to-educate children (they cost too much, which affects the bottom line).
One area where privatization has been a major failure is privatized prisons, publicly funded but privately managed. They produce profit. They do not reduce recidivism because they want more prisoners, not fewer.
Our faithful reader John Ogozalek, who teaches high school in upstate New York, sent a letter this morning on the same subject. I decided to let him tell the story:
Diane,
You probably saw this New York Times article about the efforts to redefine public schools in Kansas. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/us/schools-kansas-conservatives.html
It’s another fascinating example of how linguistics is being used to twist the argument over school reform.
Once again, the public good is demonized and complicated challenges are reduced to a simplistic need to “rebrand”.
I’m also in the middle of reading a very lengthy piece in Mother Jones (August 2016) about the for-profit prison industry. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer
The parallels to the for-profit school industry are scary: lack of adequate training for staff, the obsession with profits over people and outright cheating to get around government safeguards…gag rules to keep employees from speaking out. And, of course, ALEC rears its ugly head once again.
I taught many years ago in the New York State prison system. It was for about as long as the reporter for Mother Jones worked at the for-profit prison in Louisiana. Of course, there are very significant differences between the New York State Department of Corrections and the Corrections Corporation of America -not the least of which is the low pay, non-union labor force that the CCA relies on to make money for its shareholders.
And, interestingly enough, the shareholders of for-profit prisons includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Are their tentacles missing from any corner of the U.S.A.?) https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/jul/6/demonstrators-protest-gates-foundations-22-million-investment-geo-group/
My time teaching at the prison was invaluable -not only for helping me understand the huge role that this industry plays in our democracy but also for giving me a way to connect to former students who end up incarcerated. (I recently went to see one young man I taught years ago. The prison he’s in looks like a child’s drawing of a medieval fortress. Visitors walk up to the massive, rusticated castle and enter a thick, steel door that opens right out of the prison wall. If it wasn’t so frightening you might feel like you’re part of a cartoon. To see someone you knew as a child emerge from deep within that stone labyrinth is heartbreaking.
All Americans should visit a prison, I think -especially if you know someone who works as a corrections officer. It is a tough job and I respect the people I worked alongside. Shane Bauer makes it clear in his Mother Jones investigation that the COs at the for-profit prison are sort of prisoners in a manner, too. They’re treated as cogs in a brutal human assembly line.
I remember quitting my job at the correctional facility 30 years ago. It was a very happy moment as I walked up to the razor wire fence on my way out. The Superintendent (i.e. warden) had tried to convince me to stay. “It’s a growth industry,” he said, citing the career I was giving up. Hell no!
I could afford to leave. I didn’t have a mortgage, no kids going to college. I’m not the quitting sort but it was clear I had to go.
It’s very unsettling to now see public schools nationwide being turned upside down by some of the same forces that have made some prisons so incredibly inhumane now. Frightening is a better word. I sit at my desk some days and imagine how it will feel when I walk out of school for the very last time.
-John O.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“It’s a growth industry” sums it up. The weapons industry is also a growth industry. It even weathered the 2007-08 global financial crises and profited from the crises because job loss causes unrest so autocratic governments bought more weapons to control the unemployed and restless. The United States also has another growth industry, pornography.
The U.S. has the largest weapons industry in the world, the largest prison industry, and the largest porn industry. Now industry wants to gobble up our children for a profit.
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Privatization is a greedy byproduct of a stalled economy. It seeks to profit from public services and resources in order to turn public assets into private equity. Even though liberals have benefited as well as conservatives, the rhetoric comes from conservative camp. “Big government and taxes are bad.” This message has been repeated by the media ad nauseum. Military contractors have been riding the unregulated gravy train for years costing us millions in waste and fraud. The big lie is that privatization saves money. Privatization keeps all the money at the top as it destroys former middle class jobs. It does not help the economy as displaced citizens have less buying power, and the people at the top of the chain that now have the money have overseas tax havens. Privatization is a big lie that is hurting, not helping us. We must fight any attempts to privatize either Medicare and Social Security as the consequences would be a disaster to a vulnerable population.
The worst examples come from prison industry. The reports of inmate mistreatment are shocking and appalling. Charter schools are another misguided example of putting profit before people. We should stop using the misleading term charter which implies something forward thinking, and instead use the term privatized school which better describes the relationship. Prior to running for office, it is notable that Hillary dumped her privatized prison stock. She now speaks openly against privatized prisons. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/10/23/3715544/clinton-private-prisons/
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“There are no government schools”. That is the end of it.
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“I began to wonder if they referred to highways as “government highways” and found a way to avoid them; if they referred to public parks as “government parks,” to be avoided or privatized; if they referred to public beaches as “government beaches.””
Well, as I’ve said before, there is very definitely a contingent that is actively trying to privatize public lands (parks and beaches) and prevent currently private lands from becoming public.
As far as roads, yes, probably most of the reformers appreciate public roads, but don’t imagine that’s completely off limits either. Just look at the debacle of the sale of the Indiana toll road or the Chicago parking meters fiasco. Some day I envision people will open their garage doors and be faced with a toll booth to get out of their own driveways.
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Public private Partnerships springing up on road projects throughout the country. So how does that work,income tax is a progressive tax ,tolls are not . Got it
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We are experiencing the same rhetoric of government schools here in Canada, specifically in the province of Alberta, the province that gives more per student to private schools than any other province. It is especially odious here as it conjures up the image of residential schools, which were so harmful to the indigenous people of Canada.
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Tied up in the belief that privatization is good, is often a fundamental belief that liberty is for “one” (yourself) and not for “all.” Still, in the effort to privatize, we can find other motives than “profit” and “self.” It could be about power and egotism, or someone could truly believe that the way to “better institutions for all” would be to remove them from a misguided oversight or inefficient bureaucracy.
The privatization “movement,” as a whole, is more a movement for profit, but it’s difficult to know the motives of a certain individual. That’s why it’s important to investigate the history and words of someone who says something like: they are afraid and pissed off at “government.” It is possible that some given “reformer” is actually well-intended, not just wanting to make profit or power — they really do want a better education for all. Maybe this parent who pushes VAM, perhaps, is really in it for their kids, not themselves. Especially if it is a lone parent and not a paid shill/thinktank, this might be true. They may have a different method they believe will get us there, and that is taking schools out of (what they perceive as) the bureaucracy and government “tyranny.” Lots of parents, especially, believe in private schools, charter schools, vouchers, because they think it’s a better way. I don’t agree this this, but through compassion, they may see differently.
There are better methods for their goals. In the end, privatization is much more the problem than the solution. Those who want “quality education for all” must understand that this will not happen through privatization.
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This is so important and it is why charter schools have gone off the rails. In my opinion, there are significant parallels with Social Security.
Both Social Security and public schools were so-called “government programs” that the public loved. Time and again the haters of anything that was public tried to promote privatization — via vouchers, private accounts invested by you, etc. It never worked and the public rejected it again and again.
But the privatizers had many billions and if that money wasn’t enough to convince the public to privatize schools and Social Security, it was certainly enough to buy the politicians. New tactics by the privatizers: destroy the public schools first and THEN offer the privatized charters as a “choice”. Undermine social security and convince the public it won’t be there for them, then offer a “choice”.
These very ugly people could not play fair. They knew they would never win by being better unless they made public schools worse. That’s why they give billions to charter school chains that promote the lies that they are doing something other than viciously shedding their unwanted students. That’s why the wholly own “non-profits” that give very high paying jobs or consultancies to people who should have been overseeing the high attrition and suspension rates of charters, to people who should have been overseeing the financial shenanigans, to politicians who go wherever the money is greatest. They owned the Obama DOE and many former DOE employees are happily ensconced in high paying jobs now thanks to their promoting what the billionaires wanted. Do whatever it takes to make a public school look bad.
Arne Duncan – who happily steered billions in tax dollars to charters while forcing public schools to focus on test prep and educating the most expensive students that he happily rewarded charter schools for pushing out, is a case in point.
Duncan’s job was to convince middle class parents that their public schools were terrible. He knew it and threw a complete hissy fit at the opt out movement because he was obviously terrified his masters in the reform movement would be unhappy. When he claimed public school mothers cared about housing values more than their own children’s education, he showed just how far he had fallen. But he was well-rewarded.
These people have no scruples. None. They use the poorest kids who help their agenda and throw out the kids who don’t without a second thought. The fact that President Obama enabled these people will one day be looked at as one of the darkest parts of his Presidency. I truly don’t know if public education can recover from the last 8 years of targeted destruction by Obama’s DOE.
The only lucky thing is that Obama couldn’t do to social security what he did to public education. He certainly indicated earlier in his administration he was more than willing to try. Fortunately, he didn’t have time.
I voted for Obama twice but I blame him entirely for his embracing of this attempt to destroy public education in this country. He did what Milton Friedman could have only dreamed of. Shame on him and his people.
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Did you think it was a slip in the 2012 debate when O turned to Romney and said they agree on Social Security
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I don’t recall that moment, but it is clear that the Obama administration embraced the definition of “reform” of social security just like they embraced the notion of “reform” of public education.
Reform = privatize. Period. That’s the only kind of “reform” that the Obama administration embraces. And will target billions to enact.
Notice how the Obama administration gave bare lip service to raising the social security threshold. They made sure hedge funders pretending all their income was taxed as capital gains and thus not subject to social security tax at all.
Because if you taxed hedge funders income like that, they will get lazy and refuse to work, apparently. But middle class people won’t get lazy like billionaires if every single penny of their work income is taxed. That is what the Obama administration believes and if they had more time they would have figured out a way to privatize social security as well. As long as the billionaires promised them high paying jobs in the private sector when they left.
The bottom line Is the Obama administration barely fought for any policies that were the lynchpins of the New Deal and the Good Society. They were nice for lip service to get elected and then they just weren’t worth fighting for. Obamacare is a good example of abandoning the public option without a peep. So fast that the public never even knew that the Dems wanted it.
If Hillary Clinton continues Obama’s policies, they will abandon social security as fast as they abandoned public education.
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The use of the terms “government schools” and “public charter schools” are equally egregious. On June 14th the LA Times informed the public: “Charters are independently operated, free public schools.” The term”public charter school is becoming common usage. There Is No Such Thing as a “Public Charter School.”
***
Charters are not public schools. The term “public charter school” was developed by a PR firm to reframe the way we understand schooling in relationship to “public” and to democracy. Any public institution—school, library, zoo—is, at least in theory, funded by taxes from all the people in its jurisdiction—local, state and national—and is accountable to those who pay the taxes.
Most public schools are accountable to an elected school board made up of community members. Residents of that community have the right to be present at Board meetings, weigh in on votes and debates, and access public financial documents.
Charter schools are run by executive boards, committees or corporations whose members often live outside the community in which they are located and are not accountable to parents or the taxpayers/community members who fund them.
If you don’t like what your traditional public school is doing, you can make your voice heard by addressing administrators, voting for new leadership or taking a leadership role yourself. If you don’t like what your child’s charter school is doing and you express yourself, you may be asked to leave. There is no democratic mechanism for spearheading policy change.
Public institutions are the motors of democracy. Their purpose is to promote and preserve the fundamental values of a democratic society: liberty, equality and the public welfare or common good.
Public schools recognize that the welfare of everyone’s children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all. Through support and oversight by the communigy, public schooling is intended to serve the common good and preserve fundamental qualities that sustain democracy beyond getting students “college and career ready.” If public schools have not always lived up to their promise then it is necessary to redouble our efforts to have them do so, not to abandon them.
When students leave public schools for charter schools they take their per pupil expenditures –which in California averaged $9, 794 last year–with them, leaving public schools with less revenue but the same overhead. The federal government also spends millions on charters at the expense of public schools. Taxpayers paid one consulting firm nearly $10 million to the U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools. That’s $10 million fewer federal dollars for public schools. The law forbids local districts, which in California are the main authorizers for new charters, from taking into account the potentially crippling impact of new charters on district financing when considering approving new schools. So even if you find an excellent charter to send your own child to, you are reducing the chances of every student remaining in the public school having their own excellent education.
Charter schools’ claim they enhance democracy is disingenuous. The highly touted freedom of individual parents to choose their child’s school comes at the heavy price of reducing two other essential functions of democracy: providing for the general welfare of a society that requires well funded public schools and insuring equal opportunity for all children. Competing with traditional public schools for space and funding reduces the quality of the remaining public schools, and ignores patterns of clear advantage for the children of savvy parents, thus assuring that some children will be better schooled than others.
Being publicly funded, charters cannot be considered private. However, their private governance and their marginalization of fundamental democratic values disqualifies them as public.
The most accurate label for charters is “Publicly–funded private schools.” Don’t let them abscond with our language. There is no such thing as a public charter school.
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Perhaps we simply need to add that phrase to the discussion of this subject whenever it comes up. Never “public charters” which is misleading, but always “publicly-funded private schools” which is transparent.
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Your post gives a clear account of the harmful impact of charters which most of our leaders choose to ignore. Even the whole “choice” sales pitch is way over stated. The reality is that most decent sized public systems provide many more options, more efficiently and effectively than any charter ever could. Parents may get a different school for their child with a charter, but the instruction is generally one size fits all. Many comprehensive public schools offer support for a variety of needs and talents as well as access to the arts and sports. Charters can never offer all those options, nor can they compete with the superior training many public teachers have.
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“Publicly-funded private schools” is an excellent suggestion. For too long, Conservatives have selected the vocabulary for the conversation – any conversation – and thus dominated the discussion from their perspective.
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Republic Report has this headline today, “Ex-New York Times Reporter Now Lobbying to Block Student Debt Relief”.
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It’s getting worse: not only have many ordinary Americans lost their bearing with respect to who benefits from “public goods,” but the One Percenters are now opening another front. Because Trump and Sanders are getting support from so many ordinary voters, our trustworthy and public-spirited elites are writing op-eds decrying the very idea that voters should have a say in public policy in the first place. Yes, you read that right: elites are so out of ideas about to keep us in line that they are arguing that the “consent of the governed” is passé.
They should not have to get our permission to run our lives. They should not have to get our permission to run our lives. Say it out loud to help you wrap your mind around it.
Privatization of public education is bad, real bad. But arguing that eliminating voting is good for us takes privatization to an entirely new level of elite governance (and arrogance).
One more banking crisis and schools will simply be one area of public life that will be taken from “the public.” (If “We the People” allow it.)
Public schools are about kids, hope and our collective future. But “The Public” itself is about an entire society in which the rich and well-connected must get our permission to exercise power—the awesome power over life and death, the education of the next generation, whether we will have a society and planet worth living in. If “The Public” dies, schooling will be but one of the casualties.
The stakes get bigger and bigger as the One Percent shrinks to the One Hundredth Percent, to the One Thousandth Percent, and finally, to the One.
Elites have always been suspicious of popular sovereignty and the “consent of the governed.” But, except for the 1930s perhaps, when elites flirted seriously with a fascist response to what was going on in the streets, the political class has defended the idea of this democratic Republic.
They are now turning against the Republic itself. They are so corrupt, incompetent, arrogant, and worthless, that they can’t even figure out how to save themselves short of denying us our freedom. That’s scary.
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Diane, it’s important to note that the term “Public” clearly means accepting of, and open to, ALL citizens. Public parks admit all visitors, public transportation take all commuters, and public schools – unlike private, parochial or charter schools – accept ALL kids. The term “Government” confers no such inclusive (and democratic) meaning other than run by and/or paid for by the government. Thus one could rightly term charter schools as “Government schools” – funded and sanctioned by the government – but not “Public” schools as they don’t take all kids and lack any accountability to the public.
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It’s because of the compulsory aspect, that government mandates all children must attend school. The current structure of public school does not give parent’s control over their children’s lives, how they spend their days, or vacation time.
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“The current structure of public school does not give parent’s control over their children’s lives, how they spend their days, or vacation time.”
Beth, thanks for bringing that up. Most private schools and charter schools are the same in this regard: most of what the students do in these schools will be assigned to them in advance. This is an issue that should be discussed more often. The law of compulsory education is something different, and an issue of its own. For example, you could mandate that students must go to school (or do homeschool), and yet have a much more flexible structure of school that allows students and parents to decide more of what will be happening to them.
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No, Diane, not “government schools”. The preferred term is “gubmint schools” said with just the right derogatory patois.
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Unfortunately, I can hear the Jebster saying it over and over. AAArrrgghhh!
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Diane Exceptional piece. God Bless
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A few points to round out the discussion…
* The NYT article says that, even among Kansas republicans, there is some pushback to the term “government schools”. Glad for that! It’s stupid wordplay that overreaches. It demonizes schools in locally-controlled districts, including suburban schools that voters are happy with.
* Using “government parks” or “government libraries” is not the best way to show the fallacy. Ask about publicly-chartered police and fire departments. Should we have those? Obviously not! The rich and poor disparity would be too great, and we’d all feel less safe.
* There’s a reason some researchers are starting to discuss the “charter school to prison pipeline” Consider how similar is the instructional model at Success Academies to inmate discipline. That charter chain is *not* educating students for good jobs. Instead, its purpose is seemingly to make poor urban kids more compliant. Maybe that will help when they’re forced to walk in straight lines and forbidden to use the bathroom by non-union prison guards instead of poorly-trained TFA’ers!
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/study-charter-schools-suspend-more-black-students-disabled-students
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/featured-research-2016/study-finds-many-charter-schools-feeding-school-to-prison-pipeline
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Increasingly privatized schools, increasingly privatized prisons, and yes, there are calls for privatizing both Social Security and Medicare.
There are also those (although, at least so far, a very small group) who would like to see national parks sold off to private interests, as well as the Cliven Bundy types who believe that the public lands where they are grazing their cattle (and not paying for the privilege) should be theirs.
I’m sure that there are also the “privatizers” who would approve of making all public roads, privately-run toll roads, all public libraries, museums, zoos, etc, privately owned, and even the police and fire-fighting functions.
After all, if somebody can’t make a profit off of it, it’s not worth anything.
😦
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I could be wrong, but I don’t think the public hates public schools as much as politicians and lobbyists do.
The vast, vast majority of us attended public schools. A lot of people like their local schools- unimaginable in political circles, I know 🙂
20 years these folks have been bashing public schools and public schools and teachers STILL have better approval ratings than politicians.
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You are not wrong.
Have you seen the PDK/Gallup poll on education?
If you click the link and have a look compare public opinion of the nation’s schools to local public schools (two different questions), and you will discover when people have a personal knowledge of the schools those school rank highly across the nation, but when people answer a question that asks them about the quality of all the public schools across the nation without mentioning the local public schools, all the schools they don’t have any personal experience with, the numbers drop.
I think that difference in opinion about what people know and what people don’t know about is because of the nonstop, long term propaganda campaign — that started seriously with Reagan’s fraudulent and misleading A Nation at Risk Report in 1983 — to destroy the community based, democratic, transparent, successful (Yes, I said ‘successful,’ and I’ve seen enough data that proves that they are successful even if there is still room to improve, as many followers of this blog also have, if they have open minds) and non profit public schools and replace them with autocratic, child abusing, opaque, often fraudulent and inferior, for profit (anyway you look at it someone profits), cherry picking facts and children, corporate charter schools.
The first question is about K through 12 in the U.S. today. The results are 54% are dissatisfied and 45% are satisfied.
You’ll have to scroll down to find the next important question: How satisfied are you with the quality of education your oldest child is receiving?
For August 2015, the two satisfied columns add up to 79 percent. The three dissatisfied columns add up to a paltry 22%. One percent had no opinion.
There’s another interesting question further down: For each of the following business sectors in the US, what is your overall view of the education sector?
The two postive columns added up to 41 percent.
The two negative columns added up to 43 percent
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
There’s a lot of questions here and for the corporate reformers to mine this data and come up with something positive about them, they are going to have to drastically cherry pick and ignore most of the results.
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Lloyd,
It is interesting to note from Gallop poll data negative feeling about education sector is slightly greater than the positive feeling.
I wonder why is this happening? If they had asked me, I whole heartedly would say that I have a good feeling about the education sector. But I have some concerns.
We do have charters in my area but they are a very small fraction to impact the polls.
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The charter industry spends million on often misleading media propaganda to fool the public. The community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public schools are not allowed to spend money on media propaganda.
For instance, the money that Eva spend to close her Success Academy schools in New York City and bus thousands of students to the state capital to protest. Public schools are now allowed to do the same thing so the public schools can’t fight back with their own information. The public schools have to rely on volunteers like Diane and other supporters of tradition public education to state their case, because the public schools can’t spend money its own defense.
For instance: Diane’s “Another Fake University to Award Master’s Degrees in Test Score Raising” reported that Aspire Charter K-12 schools brags that “An unrelenting focus on college preparedness led to 100 percent of graduating Aspire seniors being accepted to four-year colleges or universities over the last six years.”
To find the true attrition rate is difficult due to the protection of opaqueness offered to the corapote education sector.
How many kindergartners attend Aspire’s Charters compared to the number that graduate 12 years later. What is the class size for each grade level – not just the attrition rate for the last three years but from year one to last year? It is obvious that if Aspire only reports the last three years before high school graduation, the cherry picking took place starting in kindergarten and Aspire had ten years to winnow out the students that would be the most difficult to teach and send to college.
When I did a Google search to find out how many children Aspire teaches by grade level, I couldn’t find that information, but if I wanted to find that info for a public school, there would be no problem because public schools are required to publish that informational annually and make it easy to find.
The first page of the search was loaded with links to Aspire sites providing informative but not what I wanted. All the info was murky and there were a lot of incredible claims but no long term data equal to what public school are required to provide to prove those claims were true.
If Aspire keeps all of its students from kindergarten to 12th grade, there is nothing to hide. Why not make it easy to find out how many students Aspire has taught from its first year to its first high school graduation class?
Eventually I found this post about Aspire on Diane’s site and ASPIRE is mentioned 9 times.
Study: NYC Charters Lose 80% of Students with Disabilities by Third Grade.
” A study by the city’s Independent Budget Office finds that charter schools have incredibly high attrition for students with disabilities.”
But when Aspire only reports the last three years of attrition from 10th, 11th and 12th grade, the fact that they dumped 80% of their students by 3rd grade doesn’t appear and it makes their claim that they graduate 100% of their seniors and send them to college sound incredible when it is really based on misleading misinformation.
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The attack on anything government is an attack on “Public Goods” if you portray government as failing . If you” starve the beast ” Than Government fails . A failing Government has no legitimacy to levy tax dollars . A failing Government has no authority to regulate private industry .If you can make a profit while doing it so much the better. However till they hire their own private armies once again, they will rely on the police state to protect their wealth. Quite a dystopian future .
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What, if anything, is the connection between education, as it exists in the US right now, and the horrors of violence that consume us?
There seem to me to be two conflicting theories of education at play today. One, I think, leads to ever more separation, despair, and violence. The other leads to change, however painful, and a future we can all live in, or at least with.
The first presents the idea that children of poverty, largely black and brown, must learn to imitate the successful, largely white, in American society. To do so, they must learn to follow the teacher, with their eyes and with their thoughts, to attend to what is in the teacher’s mind—and not, not what is in their own. They must learn to obey, to pass through the filters known as tests, to leave behind them the corrupt communities from which they hope to emerge, to understand that their futures depend on how they themselves perform on the tasks assigned—however arbitrary or silly these may seem. Schools, from this perspective, must be detached from the communities out of which the children appear—or, more precisely, schools must create their own crowds of students and adults, dress them alike in brown shirts or red, teach them the proper words and chants to make at the proper times before the proper people at the proper signals from the proper leader. This theory ends by isolating most black and brown children from most white children—a.k.a. segregation—and leaving most communities of poverty stuck in the swamps of despair and rage.
The other theory of education begins from the inescapable reality that schools are wedded to the communities in which they reside. How will they relate? How can schools, unlike any other social institution, serve their communities, help bring to them resources—like health care, literacy training, entertainment and play, and learning—not otherwise available? And if these communities are despoiled, that fact and how to change it must become from the very beginning part of the subject matter of schooling. This theory asks not that children try to bury the troubles they’ve seen, but learn how to define them, understand them and ultimately change them. For this theory maintains—what is clear and clearer with each snuffing out of a black life—that only by changing ALL the communities from which ALL of the children come can we not only advance individuals, but, to use the words of Aeschylus, “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” This theory offers no gleaming Oz at the end of the road but a path, however full of thorns and rocks, out of the swamps.
There are implications , some obvious, some less so, of these educational theories both for teaching, on the one hand, and for social theory on the other. I won’t get further into teaching here. The first of these theories in the United States in the 21st century is fundamentally connected to the idea that only in private hands can social institutions thrive. Whether one talks of prisons, or water, or housing—or schools—government is the problem, never the solution. There is, of course, no necessary connection between authoritarian education and private control: the Nazis used government to accomplish authoritarian goals. But in our society today, privatization is joined at the hip to authoritarian education. To challenge the spread of such dangerous ideas, we need to do what this important thread is doing: bring into question the whole corrupt ideology of privatization.
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….”Privatization is joined at the hip to authoritarian education.”
It is, but the sales pitch is all about freedom of choice, freeing students trapped in failing public schools, caring about the children who are classified as low income, members of minority groups, and so on. The privateers want to be viewed as having superior moral and ethical concerns.
This afternoon, I have been listening to the Republic party platform committee deliberations. The micromanagers of details were putting spurs in the underwear of the people who said details should never be in the platform.
Defenders of a “principles only” platform were up against assorted mavericks, some defending the parenting skills of single moms and same sex two-parent families, some claiming the platform needed to affirm the long-standing principle of supporting a traditional family with a man and a women married and raising kids. Some sought amendments declaring the Bible should be taught as literature, or history, or in arts and humanities classes. Others wanted something closer to indoctrination in schools, teaching the Bible in the service of patriotism and understanding the foundations of the nation. The social and the fiscal conservatives were equally concerned with the platform as a sales pitch.
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the post dispatch in st. louis bars me from commenting on their editorials. I am allowed use of the forums. i patsed their editorial today—a good one about prisons for profits, and challenged it with the material presented here….and it led to a discussion they probably would not have had just printing their editorial http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1182733&p=16132916#p16132916
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Wonderful comment. Thank you. glad to see Diane picked up on the “government” schools piece. I think you are supposed to say “gum’int” There was at one time a difference between government (meaning federally run army/air force base schools) and state (meaning what we call public schools run by each state).
The remarks the Dallas Police Chief made about asking too much of policemen would have been perfect if he would have included teachers in that category. Notice he did not say police departments–just police.
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Charter schools operate on government money, and they wouldn’t exist without government money, so they are government schools.
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Except autocratic, corporate charter schools are not one of the almost 100,000 community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit 15,000+ public school districts divided up between 50 states that each manage the public schools by their own codes/laws.
The only time autocratic, often fraudulent and inferior, alleged child abusing FOR PROFIT corporate charter schools are public schools is when they get public money and once the public money hits their opaque and secretive bank accounts, they become private corporations sheltered from the ed codes of 50 states and any federal laws that exist.
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Ours is a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Therefore, government schools are the peoples’ schools.
From Online Etymology Dictionary:
public (adj.) late 14c., “open to general observation,” from Old French public (c. 1300) and directly from Latin publicus “of the people; of the state; done for the state,” …from Old Latin poplicus “pertaining to the people,” from populus “people” (see people (n.)).
…
Public school is from 1570s, originally, in Britain, a grammar school endowed for the benefit of the public… The main modern meaning in U.S., “school (usually free) provided at public expense and run by local authorities,” is attested from 1640s.
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