At the family Christmas dinner in New Jersey, someone asked the question, “What is the best Christmas movie of all time?” There were many suggestions, but the consensus was Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring James Stewart.
When I got home from dinner, I found Stuart Egan’s post about the film. It turns out that Bedford Falls High School plays a significant part. Frank Capra knew, and his audience understood, the central role that the town’s public school played in the life of the community. There was no talk of choice or accountability or data. Just an institution that bound together the life of the community.
I was reminded of Garrison Keillor’s great statement about those who dare to attack public schools:
“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”
― Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And a message there is that without love we become hardened and cynical, dote on material things and how to get them, revel in the failure and demise of others and figure out ways to ridicule and destroy. The deformers.
George even worries about the angel, Clarence, at one point, right after Clarence saves him.
And since Betsy DeVos has never been a member of an every day local community, she has no inkling what she is bent on destroying. Can you imagine Betsy taking cookies to the elementary school bake sale or selling hot dogs at the local high school football game? How about sitting on the front porch waving to the neighbors or barbecuing in the backyard for the annual neighborhood picnic? She doesn’t even know what a neighborhood is!
That’s what I’ve been thinking about Trump also. Trump has never spent time with us, the 99%. He has no friends that are among those who voted for him. His friends are in his cabinet, and in his home. He doesn’t know a Joe the Plumber, or Stacey the Teacher, or John the Heating and AC Guy, or Vilma the Restaurant Worker, or David the Chimney Guy, or Pat the Nurse. He doesn’t know us.
Remember this: Billionaires live in bubbles. Whether Trump, Gates, Koch brothers, DeVos. They know chauffeurs and doormen and security guards and cooks and maids, but not well. They know them as servants. Their will is unbounded.
Betsy just pretends to want to spread the Kingdom by way of education as part of her family delusion and scam.
This article starts with a basic misconception: The idea that you can teach Betsy DeVos anything. Like so many rich people, particularly rich heirs and heiresses, Betsy Devos is totally convinced that her inherited wealth has given her great wisdom. And like all deluded billionaires, she is surrounded by toadies and sycophants who will tell her anything she wants to hear.
It’s pretty simple for me. She has a duty to work for public schools, whether she’s ideologically opposed to them or not. I don’t care about her personal loathing of labor unions or her belief that “government sucks”.
It’s wrong to take a job when you don’t plan on doing it. It’s unethical.
She’ll have to get over her disdain for public schools since 90% of children attend one, or she simply isn’t doing the job and she should let one of the thousands of better qualified people who value public schools have it.
The Trump Administration haven’t made a single gesture towards the schools 90% of children attend. That’s outrageous. They’re not fulfilling the minimum requirements of the job.
Only in the ed reform echo chamber would ignoring or denigrating the schools 90% of children be acceptable. i think most ordinary people would consider that odd.
You-all should read ed reformers. They’re really excited about “revolution”. Obama was just a warm up. Now that they have Trump and Democrats are irrelevant they really believe they’ll succeed in going to 100% vouchers. They’ve completely ditched any talk about “compromise” with the (supposedly) liberal faction in ed reform- they don’t need them anymore. It’s a far Right movement now. They hold all the power and they intend to use it.
Democrats and liberals in ed reform got played. Republicans and conservatives are rolling right over them. They’re irrelevant.
Half of these twits will be tasked with taking apart their own departments. This will be the anti-cabinet (someone call a carpenter!) It will take a decade to fix what these fools do, because, you know, they know not what they do.
It will take a century to reconstruct public intitutions. A large swath of the American public appears not to care.
Abigail, many in that large swath of the public who do not seem to care, may find themselves caring a bit more when their Social Security and Medicare are cut, when they find themselves drinking (or unable to drink) water that has been ruined by oil pipeline leaks and fracking “mistakes,” when the air they breathe causes them breathing problems, when they find out that those promised manufacturing jobs are not coming back, and I could go on.
Yet, sadly, they continue to vote against their own self-interests.
Chiara: I must agree, sadly, with your statement—
“Obama was just a warm up.” And the previous administration was a warm up for him.
As for your last paragraph…
Predictably, they did it to themselves: what goes around, comes around. In Hinduism and Buddhism there is the concept of karma: “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.”
Each reincarnation of corporate education reform seems worse than the previous one. But as they transition from one self-serving group to another, what do they fight over? $tudent $ucce$$ and power and celebrity…
That’s what’s rheeally important to them.
Genuine learning and teaching? A “better education for all”?
That’s only of concern to the vast majority, i.e., us.
How far will they go? Remember the words of a genuine American hero:
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
Frederick Douglass was right then. He’s right now.
His solution?
“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
😎
Dear Krazed one…a wise old teacher of the Gnostic philosophy once told me that, simlarly to the flailings of Job whose miseries kept compounding, true karma presents ever increasing challenges, always hardened, so that in overcoming each step, the next is a greater test. And then, in overcoming it all, one reaches the higher plain.
I am far from an expert on this philosophy, but have thought about it recently in the era of Trump and his motley crew. As a personal belief system, it does leave me quaking in my boots.
Chiara
“Democrats and liberals in ed reform got played”.
So try as I may,
I can not remember Roosevelt (either) taking a stand on GOD, GAYS, GUNS or GRASS. Even the repeal of prohibition was handled as a loss of revenue and a States issue by FDR
Truman Kennedy nor Johnson ran or governed on social issues either . Not until the “Southern Strategy” united Republicans with anti segregationists using religious academies to avoid segregation ,did social issues become high on the political radar.
The problem is how we define liberals . As James Carville said
” its the economy stupid”
Civil rights and Women’s rights as well as universal healthcare …. are economic not social issues.
No! ed reformers are not liberals never have been.
Or as Bernie is now saying abandon the word liberal use the word Progressive . Not enough for a candidate to be a minority or a woman are they progressive on the real issues .
Here is the 1912 Progressive party platform not a word about God .Gays ,Guns or Grass (drugs). And sadly too little progress
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/tr-progressive/
I doubt she has any intention of improving public education. She is being put in power by Trump to destroy them. This will appeal to her own personal bias and agenda. When it comes to serving public schools, what did Duncan and King do? They imposed a harsh test and punish policy, and not much else. The only way to protect public schools IMHO is to go on the offensive. Parents, teachers and social justice groups must unite to fight back. We have to let them know we want authentic public education for our young people, not charters, vouchers or any other cyber garbage. Otherwise, many communities will be forced to adopt corporate education in order for the wealthy to gain access to public money. It won’t stop with the urban schools. Corporations always want more territory and money.
“It’s wrong to take a job when you don’t plan on doing it. It’s unethical.”
You know if that wasn’t such an important statement I’d respond: Bingo, bangle, boingo, we have a winner. Give that gal a Kewpie doll.
Duane, I agree. “Bigly,” if I may say that. 😉
Unfortunately, way too many Trump appointees seem to have been nominated in order to destroy the very agencies that they are supposed to be in charge of.
I guess Trump would call it “draining the swamp,” but he is also putting the alligators in charge.
Betsy DeVolves is totally right. As of January 20, 2017, government sucks bigly. It will be time for the Betsy DeVolution!
“Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom’s chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.”
Time to Make America Regress Again! Make America Small Again! I’m concerned, though. With many of my mostly Catholic students about to receive vouchers to go to religious schools, how are we going to retrieve and sell all their edu-data? Will there be a standardized test for saying Hail Marys? (I hope I’m not offending anyone.) Will there be blended confession? Remember, government sucks. Betsy DeVonian will open the Bill and Melinda flood Gates for using the State to meddle in the business of the Church. The Pope will have to submit, taking money from Washington D.C. That will be, um, interesting.
Sadly, my ever dear respected friend and colleague on the Left Coast, the Pope will welcome parochial ed funding with open palms, as will his many American Cardinals. And this is an unusual super liberal people’s Pope.
In LA, former mayor, Richard Riordan, a prime charter billionaire (and acolyte of Eli Broad, and figurative lover of John Deasy…well, maybe more of a Siamese twin of Eli) who has long considered himself LA’s own Catholic-in-Chief in many people’s eyes, and whose big donations helped build the beautiful cathedral which now is a sanctuary for Trump’s Mexican deportation targets, has always ONLY funded parochial schools. His 501c3 stipulates, or dances around, this as to grant RFPs and subsequent proposals. Our current mayor’s wife worked for him about a decade ago on this grant funding of Catholic schools.
Also, some years ago, the Catholic Church was in dire straits economically from paying off all the lawsuits of those kids who were molested by their priests, and they had little financial ‘wherewithall’ to run their schools. They have long welcomed and pleaded for a voucher plan, even before their near bankruptcy some years ago.
BTW, and off topic, the famous LA Cardinal who withheld documentation on his molester priests, was never charged with conspiracy nor as an accomplice both before and after the fact. It was damning to his legacy and will be long remembered by both the vast number of honorable Catholics in this community, and by the hoards of children damaged by his protected priests.
The painful irony being that unless the states intend to manage priests and nuns, there will be no accountability. The ESSA or NCLB or ESEA, whatever it’s called, will be devoid of meaning.
Yes…bottom line with most of this privatizing is NO accountability.
Ellen, I know you research carefully, but are you sure your local Diocese has ” long welcomed and pleaded for a voucher plan”? The parents, probably, but not necessarily the church. Catholic clergy around here (opposite coast)– despite declining enrollment & a few closed schools– maintain they’re against taking tax $ in exchange for fed/ state contol of curriculum.
A year-old report has only 1/2 US parochial schools adopting CCSS, & many of those opted out of the 3rd-8th-gr + 11th aligned assessments, choosing instead testing every 2-3 yrs. Said one Dan Guernsay, Director of K-12 programming at Cardinal Newman Society, “”We don’t open Catholic schools to get kids into college,” Guernsey said. “We open Catholic schools to get them into heaven.”
Pope Francis is an independent thinker. Any evidence for your claim he’d “welcome parochial funding with open palms [as will his many American Cardinals]?
bethree5…I am far from an expert on Catholic politics, but there was much commentary in the media and even on this blog some years ago when the Catholic Church was filing bankruptcy in various states to pay off the multitude of law suits re priests molestation charges.
I do know first hand about LA and stand by my comments on Riordan and the then Cardinal. If you do some research you can find more on this in the LA Times archives. However, please keep in mind that Richard Riordan, charter supporter and billionaire, tried to purchase the LA Times around that time, with Eli Broad as his partner. They failed in their attempt to bifucate it from the Chicago Trib.
If I offended you as to my admitttedly rash comment, about the new Pope for whom I have great respect, as to possibly having ‘open palms’ for vouchers from DeVos/Trump, I apologize. That was written in haste and was out of line.
In LA, Catholic schools welcomed and always supported a voucher system as far back as the early 1990s when it was a major political issue here, and teachers fought hard against taxpayer funded vouchers. Also even then, unitlateral grant funding from Riordan and other wealthy Catholic donors, was directed solely to Catholic Schools. it is not new news.
I have been a grant writer for over 50 years so I do know which donors can be approached for public school funding (and as you know, most California schools have PTOs which have 501c3 status).
Does DeVos plan on parachuting into our actual schools with the “public schools suck!” ed reform message?
Do local people have some obligation to host politicians who are opposed to the continued existence of our schools IN our schools?
I don’t want to host ed reformers who are opposed to public schools. Would charter and private schools host politicians who oppose THEIR schools? Why do we have to do it?
I don’t owe this woman anything. I haven’t seen a single benefit accrue to our local public school in 15 years of ed reform. I don’t want to host any of them anymore. They can stay in DC for all I care
That was our high school Christmas play this year. Many teachers were in attendance to support the kids and enjoy seeing them out of the classroom doing their favorite activities.
Here’s the single mention you’ll find on DeVos and public schools in the echo chamber:
“Failure of traditional public schools: “[T]raditional public schools are not succeeding. In fact, let’s be clear, in many cases, they are failing. That’s helped people become more open to what were once considered really radical reforms—reforms like vouchers, tax credits, and education savings accounts.” 2013.’
Me and millions of other public school supporters are supposed to pay thousands of federal employees to promote this dogma?
They offer NOTHING to public schools. In fact, they spend 90% of time campaigning AGAINST our schools.
This “movement” is ridiculous. It’s ludicrous that I’m supposed to pay them for this. NONE of these people work on behalf of my school. Not one. I can’t find a single person in DC who advocates on behalf of kids in public schools. It’s ALL this “revolutionary theory” nonsense.
Here’s Fordham:
https://twitter.com/educationgadfly
Looks for yourself. Try to find a single mention of a benefit to public schools offered by ed reformers. You know what the echo chamber is discussing in dc? How to structure vouchers.
This is in a country where 90% of kids attend public schools. It’s like some alternate reality, where public schools no longer exist. They’re thrilled that our schools are simply omitted in elite ed reform circles. Now they don’t have to pretend they value them.
Chiara,
I’m terrified. I cannot take this level of threat. I’m looking for reasons to disbelieve what I see… Surely a good deal of what’s being tweeted is Trumpian hubris?
here’s two supposedly ‘liberal’ ed reformers debating deVos.
http://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2016/11/30/choice_without_accountability_puts_children_at_risk_1327.html
Their one and only concern? Charter schools. They all buy the DeVos ideology. It’s simply a matter of quibbling over details on regulation.
Public schools? Not a concern. Who cares what happens to THOSE icky places while the “revolution” is being fought! Onward, warriors! So what if 90% of schools are collateral damage!
So……as we take more and more money away from public schools in order to shovel that money to charter schools, and under DeVos, it looks like that money will go towards vouchers for private schools, including religious schools…….
What are they planning for the 90% of children in public schools? Many of those children will not be deemed “acceptable” in a whole lot of the charter and private schools. I’m talking about the kids who have behavior problems, the English Language Learners, the special education kids. The children, even if they might (a big “might”) be accepted into such schools in the first place, will be bounced out when they don’t “fit in.” Many of the charter schools and the private schools simply are not prepared to deal with and educate these students appropriately, to develop educational plans and IEP’s for them, and to implement those plans.
And as more and more money is sucked away from the public schools, they will not be left with the resources to educate these children appropriately, either. It’s already happening in some districts.
What do we do about these children?
They are all our children.
In California, Zorba, it is a vicious circle.
We have a big teacher shortage here, as the smarter college students see that they will not be able to earn a fair salary as a teacher, nor have retirement and health care benefits which are guaranteed. So more and more ill trained and marginal ‘teachers’ are being hired to be in the classrooms of the hardest to teach students. Then, when they fail, the privatizers can say with glee, ‘see, we told you so.’
The California State University System, particularly CSUN, has for many decades been the main university system in the nation producing teachers from K – 12, but it is crying out now for students for the Dept. of Education. This whole syndrome has been building for a long time (with the Ca. Charter School state law passed in 1994). DeVos is the culmination.
Sigh. 😦
Unfortunately, it’s not just in California, Ellen.
I can’t say that I blame the younger people for not wanting to go into education any more, given all that you have said.
I still haven’t heard from any of the privatizers what their plans would be for those “hard to teach” students. Throw them under a bridge? Let the increasingly privatized state prison systems “take care” of them when they get older, can’t get jobs because they have very little education and turn to a life of crime? Let them starve? What is their plan?
It would seem that they simply do not care about these kids, as long as they can destroy the public schools and make money for the privatizers.
Zorba,
They have a plan for the kids who don’t get high scores. Let them eat cake.
Well, Diane, that plan didn’t work out so well for Marie Antoinette.
(Although, and here I’m putting on my nerd’s hat, it seems that Marie never said this, although it was attributed to her years after she lost her head.)
Zorba,
Let them eat cake has now become a saying to mean “go sleep in the streets” or under a bridge. Die a miserable death because life is unfair.
Yes, I know, Diane. I was just being a picky nerd. 😉
Yes, Zorba…I think all that you state is probably the DeVos/Trump/privatizers plan for those students left behind in under funded public schools, with too many ill trained, low paid teachers.
Yes, but that’s CA, which has a long record of anti-public-school funding, going all the way back to Prop 13 in 1978, & also squashed their long history of free state universities. CA is not the US.
California is not the U.S., true. But in Utah, which is incredibly different from California, teacher shortages are huge and growing. In fact, the Salt Lake Tribune had “the vanishing teacher” as one of its choices for readers to vote on for Utahn of the Year. It was in third place overall.
T.O.W., this is becoming a growing problem in a lot of states and districts.
So they hire minimally trained “teachers,” pay them less, and then throw up their hands when the public schools cannot as a consequence meet any of the inappropriate “testing” goals and say “See? Public schools don’t work. We need to close them and give their money to charter schools and for private school vouchers.”
People here are smart. Please put 2 + 2 together and not get 5. Both the DEMs and the REPs set up the lambasting of public schools and spinning tales … and ALL for $$$$$ and political favors. Horrors.
Frank Capra was a friend and mentor. Back in the 1970s, before “It’s a Wonderful Life” and other Capra pictures gained renewed interest, I was teaching in a suburban public high school and introduced students to Capra’s filmmaking. Counselors sent difficult or troubled students into my drama classes because they needed someplace to go, and they enjoyed being there. I recall how even the toughest-guy students had tears in their eyes at the end of “Wonderful Life.” Later, Frank and his wife Lu generously visited the school, an event the former students have not forgotten. In this time of Trumpism and kingmaking, an important, somewhat neglected Capra picture comes to mind: “Meet John Doe,” with its reference to “heelots” and authoritarian attempts to take over the nation. And while giving Frank Capra credit for outstanding work, we must not ignore Bob Riskin and the other writers who made his stories possible.
Doug Giebel
Big Sandy, Montana
A wonderful story. Thank you for this.
I love the Garrison Keillor quote and I believe the same. Thanks for sharing.
Happy Hanukkah! Please stay healthy in the New Year. Public education needs you!
Linda (our So. Cal. most noteworthy and consistently published letter to the editor writer)…I have a birthday on Jan. 16 and treated myself to a ticket to see Garrison Keillor perform at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza theater a few days earlier to celebrate so many years. Come join me.
Echo her sentiment, Diane.
Thanks, Ellen. You make me feel important!
OMG…Linda. YOU ARE IMPORTANT. You are a teacher.
But..but…but charter schools and vouchers are gonna make all the children above average. 😉
DeVos has nothing new to say. She’s just recycling the same bogus talking points and inane arguments from the playbook used by Duncan, Rhee, et al., which are intended to make themselves sound like they are altruistic people who are on a civil rights mission, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth.
At some point, a lot of the people who were foolish enough to forget history and vote for billionaires, thinking they actually care about the common man, will soon learn that the true aims of the super-rich are not altruistic, but are to wield power and serve their own ideological and economic agendas. That includes decreasing taxes on the rich, privatizing public holdings and services, and reducing regulations, so they can diminish democracy, break unions, toss out labor protections, and eliminate pensions, social security and medicare, while they further increase their own profits.
Today’s ruling class in America are no different from the elite aristocracy of the past in foreign countries, and our own Industrial Age robber barons, who necessitated the enactment of protections under the Roosevelts for the less fortunate people that the rich exploited. I have confidence that, since working class people stand to lose the most under this new regime, soon the masses will see the uber-rich and their minions for what they really are, self-centered, dishonest, insatiable, greedy, power mongers who think they are entitled to their wealth and are more deserving than those less fortunate. If that is not class warfare, initiated by upper class con-artists, I don’t know what is.
Capra’s story is about the power of grass-roots local community, & he includes the high school as a building-block of the community. Among our 90% US public-school kids there is a large majority who attend schools supported by municipal govts whose schools are run by locally-elected boards. There is a huge– majority– group of Americans who live in med & small towns, whose families build their communities on relationships fostered by public schools. “School choice” is a faux meme that undermines community-building.. This is the message we need to be getting out to the public.
DeVos said she does not like the fact that schools have become the anchors of communities and that she wants to return to the days when churches served that role. I don’t know when the time was that she’s referring to, because in my experience, religious organizations have always been and continue to be instrumental in uniting like-minded people in the community.
What this suggests to me is that she does not like how schools can effectively unite diverse community members around a common cause, where no religious sect dominates others, so she prefers segregation.
I love that movie. Big fan of Miracle on 34th Street, too. But Jimmy keeps it real.
Garrison’s quote is classic.
I keep thinking of Joel Klein touting how much the private sector can do for education. That picture of him holding the Tablet in the Times Magazine, as though it was the Savior of modern day education.
At this point I don’t even care whether these amateur’s motives have been pure (somewhat) or not. Their interference is a disaster.
Happy Holidays, btw, Diane. This blog means the world to me!
Joel Klein’s tablet melted. His tech company went bankrupt. Cost Rupert Murdoch $500 million in losses. He moved on. But he did get that big puff piece in the Times.