Mike Klonsky writes tonight about the Twitter war between AFT and Betsy DeVos.
Betsy has the nutty idea that a public education system somehow is bad for individual children. She favors individual children.
Right, so do we all.
But for some indiscernible reason, she is in charge of the nation’s educational system, which she abhors. Maybe she should resign and make way for someone who believes in the job.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Her latest tweets regurgitate the overarching idea of her ALEC speech, in which Secretary Devos makes this strange argument arguing that all “systems” are bad, and can only cause harm to “individuals.”
“We should be about individual students and not about systems.”
Well, a hospital is a system. Would somebody ever argue,
“We should be about individual patients and not about hospitals.” ?
A police department/prosecutor’s office is a system.
“We should be about individual citizens, and not about police departments/prosecutors’ offices.”
Roads and highways, with traffic lights, driving laws, pavement markings such as yellow lines dividing roads, or broken lines dividing lanes … well, all that’s a system, too.
“We should be about individual drivers, and not highway/road/traffic enforcement systems.”
It’s a singularly dumb statement that Devos is making.
By definition and by design, voucher-funded private schools, and privately-managed charter schools serve a select few, while refusing to service the vast majority of students — the concept of every man for himself, rat-eat-rat, dog-eat-dog, Survival of the Fittest. *I’m getting mine (and my kid’s getting his) and screw everyone else!
By definition and by design, an educational system services everyone (or it should, if it’s working right) — the American ideal of equity for all, and we’re all in this together for the common good of all … you know, the way it works in European countries such as Finland.
We should all remember that a pyramid scheme is a system designed to separate people from their money. DeVos should be familiar with this system as it created a mountain of money for her family.
Agreed.
Amway, Betsy Devos’ family businss, is most certainly “a system” — with all kinds of levels and titles and procedures, etc.
“We need be about servicing the individual Amway partner, and not servicing the Amway “system”
SAID NO DEVOS FAMILY MEMBER EVER.
(NOTE: the Devos family keeps changing the name of Amway, once people get wise to it. They call it Quixtar, then Alticor, then …)
First, watch the following 2-part Amway exoise…
… then ask yourself
Does anyone in his/her right mind want our nation’s education system to be run like Devos’ Amway organization, or want it to be run by the people who run this evil farce — i.e. Betsy Devos?
OK, that’s just weird.
“The Amway System”
A system for taking money
Away from honest folk —
In land of Milken honey —
Who often end up broke
Good GAWD! DeVoodoo is more than reprehensible, stupid, and really, really ‘BATTY!’ She makes no sense except she delivers lines. Ah…the script, which made her an Amway fortune. Now I “get” it.
Just when my stomach tells me this country has hit a new low, whammy, bang … it does get worse. My stomach is doing huge flip-flocks re: this country’s new low. Where’s that sink hole when it’s needed.
Betsy will never stop lying for Jesus! That’s her job!
I would submit that DeVos has a point. If a system, which seems the operant word in the fray, does not help the individual, you eventually get a rebellion against it, even if the system is the monarchy of France in the eighteenth century. DeVos’ point, however, may be easily turned on its head. If her system were truly a way of helping individuals, we could support it. But it is not. Rather it is a system of damning some to live in poverty so a few can live in luxury.
When DeVos calls public education a system, and seeks to supplant it with another system, she is being dishonest when she does not call it a system. All attempts at societal organization are systems. It just so happens that her system seeks to rip the support for public education from it by enticing the most dedicated participants in the system from it and passing them off to a group of schools where these people, who have the time and money to advocate for the kids, will advocate only for the kids who are in that particular school. This is a good plan if you are trying to wreck public education.
We could argue that the DeVos plan (we wreck public education so that concerned parents begin to choose alternatives and then we make money off the alternatives) has precedents in the way the public system works. Local control of school boards can mean that parents are really interested that students in Jones County are well served. All well and good, but Smith County, which is right beside Jones, cannot afford to fund education. The people in Smith have to just get by. Their teachers teach for a few years, then get a job in Jones, where the pay is considerably higher and the number of problematic students is lower. No one in the Jones County political system will be willing to go to the state capital and argue for higher funding of education. No one in the Smith County district will dare suggest more funding because most cannot pay it. So parents who care about education move to the rich places so their kids can get a good education.
What we need to rectify this inequitable system is not a DeVos blowup of the present one. If you blow the bridge, no one crosses it. What we do need is a public funding of public schools that actually helps the public, not small parts of it. Then, and only then, will “the system” help the individual student. If DeVos and the rest of the voucher proponents truly wanted to help the individual, they would get on board with taxing those who can pay for the good of the system. But they would lose their political base. Everybody wants a great system, but nobody wants to pay for it.
Why ask why. The Prince/DeVos family is the first family of Radical Republicanism. They pour billions into helping get Radicals elected to offices. Betsy at one time was reported to have said, “In Michigan we have the best elections money can buy.” This family is a major part of the money behind Trump and the Radicals in Congress! The family bought her this job and is buying Eric’s private army to fight in Afghanistan! Wake up and smell the horse manure! .