Susan Ochshorn writes frequently about early childhood education: policy and practice.
In this post, she reports on an epic battle in Nevada between teacher Angie Sullivan and an alt-right critic of early childhood education. I have often cited Angie’s work in Nevada. She teaches little kids in Clark County, and her students are poor and include many who don’t speak English. She fights for them like a Mama Bear. Her regular email list appears to include every legislator and journalist in the state. She comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Usually they don’t listen.
Angie writes:
It takes a special kind of person to pick on a three- or four- year old. Victor Joecks is that person.
Joecks formerly worked for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a local alt-right think tank that regularly publishes articles attacking teachers and public schools. He’s now employed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Owned by billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, it was the first major newspaper to endorse Donald Trump.
Over the past six years, I’ve gone toe-to-toe many times with Joecks, who has zero background in educational pedagogy. He would not last in a public school classroom for a day, let alone a year. He knows nothing about helping a wide variety of students reach their potential. But this does not stop him from spewing his propaganda, as he did recently in his column at the Review-Journal.
Joecks starts his article like this:
A mega corporation is using skewed research to sell its product to gullible parents. The conglomerate claims to help kids, but its product actually has no effect — or a negative effect — on children’s cognitive skills and social behaviors.
This is how he expects to begin a serious discussion of early childhood research? Joecks equates nonprofit public schools with corporations, which sell products. But education is a service, not a product. And he insults parents.
“It’s time to fire up the outrage machine,” Joecks urges—captured in a video that accompanies his column—“ complete with congressional hearings, attorney general lawsuits and shocked, shocked politicians hamming it up in front of TV cameras. This company should be shamed, stigmatized and sued.”
You would think he was discussing a bank that foreclosed on homes—or a dirty politician. He’s actually shaming women, the majority of those who teach young children in preschool programs.
The entire piece is erroneous and foul. Lies, mingled with truth. Preschool is ineffective? My expertise is early childhood. I have studied at three universities. I have applied evidence-based practice for more than three decades. Every piece of research I have ever read over my career supports developmentally appropriate early intervention.
Picking and choosing the project you want to bolster your arguments without looking at the entire body of work will lead you to false conclusions. Extracting bits and pieces from research to justify false conclusions is not valid analysis. Joecks really has to stretch to find a right-wing think tank to provide the data for his rants:
…today’s politicians fail to mention that researchers described the participating children as being at risk of “retarded intellectual functioning.” The children received extensive services, including home visits, and had mothers who stayed at home.
This is like a business claiming a mass-market product will make your child smarter, but putting in the small print: Results only applicable to left-handed, brown-haired 2-year-olds born on Jan. 15 weighing 33.4 pounds.
Besides being utterly offensive, this is direct fear-mongering and waving of “red meat” to the alt-right base. The logic is crazy.
Every state and school district need a spokesperson for children like Angie. She is a tiger when anyone attacks the children.
If there were still hospitals for the mentally ill, most if not all of the Alt-Right freaks taking over the United States would be locked up in one, but “Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.”
Why is it that if we trace the beginning of what is happening today, it almost always leads back to Reagan?
http://www.povertyinsights.org/2013/10/14/did-reagans-crazy-mental-health-policies-cause-todays-homelessness/
Did Reagan’s Mental Health Policies in tandem with the end of the media’s Fairness Doctrine cause the Alt-Right of today and put the malignant narcissist and his Rasputin-Goebbels Steve Bannon in the White House.
In a sane world, Trump would be in prison sharing a cell with Bernie Madoff, and Bannon would be wearing a straight jacket locked up in a sound proofed, padded cell so no one would have to listen his lunatic ranting filled with hate and destruction for the human race and the planet’s environment.
You are being too generous, offering them a mental illness defense. I think they are totally able to understand the charges against them. Therefore are able to stand trial for their crimes. Some of which right to the present day are capital in nature .
Joel, they are not, technically, “mentally ill.”
That is an insult to the truly mentally ill.
They are evil and greedy, a bit different.
Although, you can certainly call many of them sociopaths.
But sociopathology is not exactly the same thing as true mental illness, such as schizophrenia or even severe clinical depression.
Zorba
Good so a sociopath can understand the charges against them .
PERFECT
Well, I am not a psychologist or a forensic psychiatrist (although I did major in psych as an undergraduate), but it does seem to me that sociopaths (and psychopaths, as well) can certainly “understand” the charges against them.
They just do not care about what is “right” or “wrong.”
So, what do we do with them?
They can certainly be a danger to society in general, and I don’t want them running around doing their “thing.”
OTOH, I am not convinced that throwing them in prison is the way to go, given the conditions of our prisons, which are not good.
Perhaps we could learn from the Nordic countries and their prison systems.
https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-what-the-u-s-won-t#.weqMgumKc
In that case, I want to bring back firing squads.
Caveat Lloyd….Reagan closed down Atascadero, the mental hospital for the CRIMINALLY INSANE…that is where Bannon and the Breitbarters would probably have been housed. Their ALT RIGHT bigotry brigade is now doing so many criminal acts…possibly having hanged a young Black man only days ago, and certainly having incited and abetted the threats and vandalism of Jewish institutions,.
Diane: This is not about your note, but just thought you’d like to see this about Trump and Betsy visiting a Catholic School in Florida:
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/president-trump-visits-catholic-school-praises-education-for-both-mind-and-
Note that Donald Trump has never given a philanthropic dollar to any nonpublic school, only to pay tuition for his own children. You won’t find his name on any museum or university or school or library or cultural institution in NYC. We have a city of philanthropists who are very generous. He is not one of them.
It is all very disingenuous. They choose which students get in not to mention which ones get to stay.
“We require admission testing for candidates at all grade levels.”
http://standrewcatholicschool.org/admissions/faqs
“Once the decision has been made that St. Andrew Catholic School is the right choice for your family”
http://standrewcatholicschool.org/admissions/application-information
“New Student Admission- New students are conditionally accepted until the office has received and approved transcripts and records from the previously attended school(s), and the student has satisfactorily completed an academic screening. Acceptance is finalized when the student’s initial report card from SACS indicates satisfactory achievement and behavior. Failure to meet acceptable standards will be considered just cause for disenrollment.”
Click to access STANDREW-PARENT-STUDENT-HANDBOOK-2016-2017.pdf
Not to mention, this school more than likely would have closed if NOT for the vouchers.
According to their 2009 BRS application:
“Pine Hills is an area that has dramatically changed over the past twenty years. The local community has seen a large increase in families living at or below the poverty line. In addition, an increase in violent crime has taken a toll on the image of Pine Hills. Marketing for the school has proven to be a formidable challenge given the physical surroundings and the negative perception of the area. Enrollment has seen a sharp decline in recent years from 600 students to below 300 as recent as the 2006 – 2007 school year.”
Click to access pv52p-st-andrew.pdf
But I bet Fred gave a ton of money to Wharton.
And this is the title of the #1 article on that Catholic site:
“Exorcists Warn About Dangers of Wiccan ‘Spell to Bind Donald Trump’”
Can’t make this crap up any better!