Since the Reagan era, Republicans have touted the virtues of individual choice. The idea was appealing but ignored the fact that none of us lives alone on an island. We form communities and societies to solve problems and create possibilities that none of us can do alone. We collaborate for our common well-being and safety.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party decided to co-opt the language of Republicans in the crucial area of education. Whereas once Democrats championed equity and support for teacher professionalism, the Obama administration joined in the chorus seeking school choice instead of better public schools for all and belittled our nation’s career educators. So for the past 15 years, we have had a Bush-Obama agenda of testing, accountability, school choice and competition. This agenda has done incredible damage to children, teachers, and public schools. Arthur Camins writes that it also hurts our democracy.
In this post, Arthur Camins explains why individual choice undermines democracy. Camins is Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Camins writes:
“In an 1857 speech, Fredrick Douglass offered this advice: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. […] If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
“Douglass called for a struggle for a democracy in which the disempowered are the active agents and shapers of their own destiny.
“Donald Trump and promoters of unelected school boards would have us acquiesce to a contrary subservient vision. How dare I equate Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, authoritarian appeal with charter-school advocates who wrap themselves in the mantle of civil rights? Well, I am not equating, but I am asserting that they share a dangerous dismissal of the vitalness of democracy.
“Trump wears his disdain for democracy proudly on his sleeve. I am your voice… No one knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Trump’s message is that the solution to persistent problems is not democracy or for people to join with one another in a struggle for a better life, but rather to trust him.
“Advocates for privately governed, but publicly funded, charter schools are more circumspect. To justify abandonment of democracy, they point to the dysfunction of elected school boards. Netflix’s billionaire CEO Reed Hastings, a charter school cheerleader, argued that instability due to turnover in elected school boards makes long-term planning difficult. Similarly, in one post the Fordham Foundation asserted, “When it comes to school boards, what matters most is the character of those who serve — not how they were selected.” Whatever it takes to get the job done assertions have a practical and utilitarian patina, but are profoundly anti-democratic as its apostles typically eschew the inconvenience of dissent and challenge. History is replete with examples of the slippery slope that begin with constrained restrictions of inconvenient democracy in the name of addressing real or trumped up threats but end with more generalized despotism. The solution to the necessary messiness of contentious democracy is never its avoidance in the name of expediency.
“In contrast to Douglass’s call for struggle, Trump, and advocates for privately governed charter schools share a let others solve your problems for you philosophy. Many share something else. They are- or claim to be- billionaires. The already empowered stake their claims to legitimacy on convincing “the less fortunate” that despite vast differences in wealth, power, and life circumstances, they should trust the judgment of their self-appointed defenders rather than one another. One such disingenuous pitch is that poor folks should have the same school choices as the wealthy. The cynical messages are: Give up on struggle for equity across your racial differences. Give up on democratically governed schools. Improvement depends on being out for yourself, just like us.”
There is more. Please read it.
Let’s call it what it is – neoliberalism – and that concept applies way beyond education issues – free trade even if whole segments of your nation are savaged- and the freedom of corporations to move and take advantage of free labor. In this world unions are obstructions to the free choice of individuals and economic obstructions to school officials and to corporations. Much of the Democratic party subscribes to neo-liberalism since Cllnton – repeal of Glass steagal, etc — too much regulation. Let Wall st flow. Push back came from Bernie and in its own twisted way from Trump who is viewed as a threat to the historic Republican agenda.
Your logic seems to say that the historic Republican agenda has a new label, neo-liberalism, to which the Democratic party has attached itself. Why not just talk about the legacy of Milton Friedman and economic theorists who see “distruptive innovation” as a virtue…which certainly would make Donald the Trump virtuous.
I think the disruptive aspect is certainly important. Joel Klein who worked for Clinton always used that expression in disrupting the NYC school system – he said it numerous times as did his merry band of former TFA subordinates. But that also applies to disruptions like the i-phone which many do find virtuous.
“Trump, and advocates for privately governed charter schools share a let others solve your problems for you philosophy”
This idea to let someone else do your thinking for you is a cornerstone of far right hate media.
For instance, Rushy Limbaugh coined the phrase “ditto heads” decades ago and repeats the words often.
“Any person who loves the Rush Limbaugh radio show. Ditto heads totally agree with Rush’s opinions and stand behind him without question. The word ditto was first used by a caller on his show who agreed with the accolades given Rush by a previous caller. The praise Rush was given by callers was becoming too long winded and Rush promoted the use of ditto by his callers as a means to be brief and to show their approval at the same time.”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Dittohead
“Ditto Heads” pretty much sums up the followers of all of the far-right hate media shows. To this crowd, the “Deplorables” that Hillary Clinton mentioned, facts are to be damned and ignored if those facts do not agree with and support the host of any hate media show.
Interesting read… Of course, a few years ago I was reading a book about the “Paternalistic attitude” of Democrats. “We know how to fix things. WE will make all the plans. WE will make your health insurance work for you. WE don’t think you need to read it before you have voted on it…”
That particular author went quite a way back with his examples of how Democrats claimed to be the better care-takers of society.
Just an observation from an immigrant…
Rudy,
And Republicans claim that no one needs help. Everyone on his own. They have tried to keep that promise.
Somewhere there has to be a compromise…
SPREAD THE WORD because state lawmakers and voters everywhere need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
Supporters of democracy and equity need to be mindful that the challenges posed by charter schools go beyond transparency, potential corruption, and financial accountability. By design, they threaten democracy and give primacy to individual solutions over social responsibility. Parents may choose a charter school as a good solution absent a strong local public school. That does not make it good education policy.
The false equation that society is nothing more than the sum of its individuals is also the basis of almost all consumer and citizenship surveys. The information that a certain percentage of people endorse a certain politics is mostly false or at least misleading because each participant has been asked in isolation and had no chance to exchange his or her notions with other people in order to find out about their moral and social agreeableness. That’s what most people usually do when they think about controversial matters, but are hindered to do in surveys.
To give you an example. During my first survey I did some interviews myself in order to see how my questionnaire was working. The survey was about citizens’ preferences for two alternative projects for a leisure time park in town. One respondent was mother of two small kids; she said she needed much more a kindergarten for her kids than a leisure time park. Lesson #1: My questionnaire should have included a question about the need for kindergarten.
Next interviewee was a young married man without children. He and his wife demanded a tennis court. Against all rules of survey research I tried: “Another participant wished that there would be a kindergarten in town.” “Oh,” the young man said, this is certainly much more important than a tennis court if there is not enough money to have both!” HIs wife strongly agreed. Lesson#2: Surveys should be always conducted as a series of interviews and feedback instead of forcing the participants into isolation.
Your narrative really resonated with me. Actual face to face conversation can be messy and time consuming, but a survey just does not capture the back and forth that really creates informed opinion. Too many organizations these days go overboard on the efficiency end at the expense of thoroughly investigating or understanding an issue that would necessarily involve a lot more dialogue.