John Ogozalek teaches high school in upstate New York, a long depressed area forgotten by Governor Cuomo and his Wall Street backers.
In response to the article this morning about the “beauty”of disruption, he writes:
“I have a lot of things to do this morning but I took the time to read this article….and I’m glad I did.
“Before I turned on this computer, I was just trying to wrap my head around how I can possibly connect with all the unique students who need my help this week…..students who have life challenging events (for example, suddenly gone for a health issue, maybe never to return to my classroom or spoken with again) as well as the more mundane concerns (Help, I need a recommendation…..by…right now. With all the snow days I didn’t get the forms until today.) Yes, yeah, I can write a recommendation and quickly. But the big events….what do I do now? And, will I have the time to even respond?
“Life is being disrupted so rapidly and oftentimes senselessly that I feel we’re losing our humanity. The fabric of civility that holds us together is being shredded day after day. As a machine metaphor continues to subsume our society and people (some people, at least) gleefully accrue power and money from all this disruption, what happens to the rest of us? What happens to our society?”
I share his concern.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for putting this note on the blog, Diane. Always an honor.
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Always glad to read your insightful comments, John.
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By the way, this is not worthy of a separate post, but…I was offline because I went to see a very funny, dark movie called “The Death of Stalin.” It does to Stalin and his henchmen what Mel Brooks did to Hitler, I.e., makes the perpetrators of great evil into figures of ridicule. However, they are different in scale. “The Producers” is a comic classic. “The Death of Stalin” is not hilarious but it is the first comic treatment of the Soviet thugs. When you read about Beria, Stalin, and their ilk, no movie captures the depth of their depravity.
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Glad you highlighted this. Passionately insightful as John’s comments usually are.
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Yes, you can stop the machine.
Blacks were freed from slavery. Women got to vote. Labor achieved a 5 day, 40 hour work week. Children eventually were not allowed to work. Blacks gained integration and civil rights in the 1960s. Women have had enough with male sexual and salary domination. LGBTQA have had a lot of steps forward in terms of rights in many realms.
No. It is far from over. But stopping the education reform machine is possible. Look to your ancestors and forefathers and mothers. Look at small and large victories, at teacher strikes in West Virginia, at student mobilization and advocacy lead by Hogg and Gonzales.
The list is endless. Just look and breath it in. Be inspired. Get informed, organized, and mobilized. Now is not the time to stop or slow down, but to speed up and rev up.
You can do it! You already ARE doing it! Use your might, your courage, your kids and your grandkids to make it happen.
Power in numbers. Divided, you fall . . . . United, you succeed . . . . Inevitably.
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Agree. Resist. We have to … a lot is at stake.
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Well stated!
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Thank you.
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The opposite of disruption is conservation. We don’t value cultural conservation enough in our culture.
Liberals often write-off the old as irredeemably tainted with -isms. The idea of teaching an appreciation of Western Civilization is scoffed at. Hate Western Civ, or forget it; do not appreciate it! But one can critique the bad without abandoning the good. Imbuing our souls with the old gives us ballast that steadies us against the winds of change.
Republicans (let’s not call them “conservatives”) often say let the capitalist wrecking ball do its thing. To them the market (plus Jesus) is the alpha and omega of civilization. Alexa is profitable, ipso facto it is good.
I want to conserve our public schools.
I want to conserve our country, by which I mean our Enlightenment-inspired pluralistic democratic republic, not white Christendom. (The fact that 40% of us seem not to give a fig about conserving democracy is an indictment of our current school curricula, which fail to teach kids to cherish what is good about America).
I want to conserve our heritage (Western, Eastern, and other) of art, literature, philosophy and the rest of the liberal arts by keeping them alive in the hearts and souls of our citizens, not just in digital files.
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So well said!
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Yes…nice way to start off a very cold Monday morning in April…i.e. .going back and reading these comments. Have a great week everyone.
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