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“Grit” and “Resilience” Are Buzzwords that Blame the Victim for Not Pulling Him/Herself by Bootstraps

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2019 //
64

The Boston Globe published this opinion piece questioning the validity of concepts like grit and resilience. 

Author Alissa Quart interviews Christine White, a woman who grew up in extreme poverty yet managed to build a successful career helping people who struggled as she did. But not by coaching them to have more “grit” and “resilience.”

Christine White, writes Quart, has written

a number of posts on on her nonprofit’s blog questioning this resilience refrain. She believes that when “we are obsessing about resilience it obscures the fundamental issues that people have, like a lack of privilege or a history of trauma.” When “resilience” is applied to at-risk kids, says White, it implies “the solutions reside within an individual and not their context: ‘resilience’ skews conversations away from equity.” The assumption is that having “character” will help traumatized people flourish — and if they don’t flourish, there is an implied lack of character.

“Ninety percent of resilience conversations would be better if the focus was, instead, on racial and economic inequities,” she wrote in correspondence with me.

But “resilience” and “grittiness” have become ubiquitous honorifics — likely to come out of the mouths of not only teachers but also therapists, urban planners, businessmen, and policymakers, all praising individual pluck.

Thanks to Angela Duckworth’s bestseller of the same name, “grit” is now a part of American school life: In New Hampshire, for instance, some grammar school students are taught “grit skills” by teachers who follow a “grit curriculum.” One grit lesson includes interviewing a neighbor, for example, who has shown grit and creating that person’s “perseverance walk,” outlining how they achieved their goals.

The terms have even spawned an industry of books, apps, and gurus:

There is a now even a grit and resilience industry.

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and responsibility to pick yourself up,” says Mary Holloway, a “resilience coach” and the creator of the “Boom Bounce Wow Resilience Method.” There are also dozens of self-help books promising to make you more resilient or more gritty, including one that promises to create resilience with the subtitle “How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness.” One of the biggest resilience bestsellers is “Option B” by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Apps have also gotten into the resilience and positive psychology game, with names such as ResilientMe and Happify. And there is even a “resilience planner” bearing the legend “Stay Resilient 2019,” which is currently sold out…

There’s also a growing — though much smaller — academic backlash to the term “resilience.” Critics note the focus on “resilience” can ignore the structural gaps of our economy, for example. Should we really be building personal capacities to triumph over, say, the “adversity” that is the current scarcity of public funding for education?

Call grit and resilience what they are: a substitute for the structural and financial changes that give people genuine opportunity to get ahead.

These terms are an effort to substitute “the power of positive thinking” for equity.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Grit, Inequality, Poverty, Racism

Commonweal: What the Mega-Rich Owe to the Poor

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2019 //
17

As I have mentioned here, I am Jewish. Be that as it may, I regularly read the publication “Commonweal,” which is edited by lay Catholics (not Jesuits, as I originally sad) and often vigorously agree with its writers. Read this one by John Chryssavgis.

https://www.commonweal-magazine.org/prosperity-philanthropy

At the latest G7 summit in Biarritz, U.S. President Donald Trump reassured the world that “our economy is creating jobs and helping the poor.” A similar confidence was expressed in a recent op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal. It was titled “Making Money is a Patriotic Act” (August 13, 2019). Signed by Bernie Marcus, a cofounder of Home Depot, and the New York City supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis, the op-ed opened with a striking, quasi-religious claim: “The two of us are quite rich. We have earned more money than we could have imagined and more than we can spend on ourselves, our children and grandchildren. These days getting rich off a profitable business is regarded as almost sinister. But we have nothing to apologize for and we don’t think the government should have more of our profits.” The fact that the latter is a prominent member in, and generous donor to, the Greek Orthodox Church in America (as well as to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York) prompted me to reflect again on the age-old question of wealth and poverty in Christian thought. This is a question where Orthodox and Roman Catholic teaching are very similar, if not the same.

Of course, the connection or correspondence between prosperity and philanthropy has long concerned economists, political theorists, and moral philosophers, as well as theologians. Economic resources are indispensable to the church, but the church has an obligation to husband its resources in a way that includes the less fortunate. When it comes to wealth, the focus for Christians should be beneficent compassion (the law of love) rather than brutal competition (the law of survival of the fittest). Proclaiming that greed is neither sinister nor sinful and claiming that the government should not impose higher taxes on the wealthy is at odds with the Christian responsibility to recognize the dignity and parity of the least of our brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40).

The authors boast of creating employment (albeit at often degradingly low salaries) and supporting charities (while benefiting from generous tax deductions for charitable giving), but they’re also proud of having risen from meager origins to achieve the American Dream. This up-by-the-bootstraps success narrative may be convenient for the Christian right, but it is inconsistent with both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholic social teaching.

Before contemplating the spiritual message, however, let’s consider the economic argument. Fiscal conservatives have long insisted that private charity is better than government handouts; helping hands, they say, should be inspired by a heart of compassion rather than compelled by law. But to suggest that wealthy donors can replace government programs is both arrogant and dangerously irresponsible. Private philanthropy falls off during economic downturns, when poverty rises. In other words, philanthropy tends to be cyclical, whereas public programs are designed to be counter-cyclical, helping the most when there’s the greatest need for help. The idea that faith-based or privately organized charity is more efficient or more effective than government relief has not been true since the industrial revolution. It is especially untrue during a recession.

But much of secular philanthropy is less about providing relief to the poor than about stockpiling tax deductions and/or getting one’s name emblazoned on the front of a new cultural or religious institution. No matter how dizzying the donations of the wealthy, they are in fact a minuscule fraction—economists estimate it’s less than 0.031 percent—of current social needs. It would be wonderful if more of society’s most fortunate members would respond to the needs of the less fortunate. But it is a fantasy to believe that voluntary organizations, including religious ones, could adequately replace the array of government health and social programs that help the most vulnerable.

Take some examples from my own church, which is also the church of John Catsimatidis. How troubled are Orthodox leaders that the tens of millions of dollars worth of donations raised for a church at Ground Zero in New York City—all of which doubtless qualify for tax deductions as charitable gifts—will in no way benefit the underprivileged, in a city where there is visible evidence of material want on every street corner? How often do Orthodox Christians and perhaps especially Orthodox clergy stop to examine their lifestyle in light of their vocation to close rather than widen the gap between rich and poor? And when wealthy Orthodox Christians give, how much do they focus their generosity on impoverished fellow Christians—or, indeed, on impoverished non-Christians?

Recently, at a traffic stop in Lewiston, Maine, I observed a refugee woman cross the road in order to offer money to a beggar. I was instantly reminded of the episode in Luke’s Gospel “when Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two mites. And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had’” (Luke 21:1–4). I carry a mite with the cross that I wear—a reminder that the cross entails sacrifice and that my social obligations are central to any spiritual aspiration. This is true for everyone of course, not only the rich; and “rich” is a relative term. But there is no relativizing away the special duty of those who have much more than they need to help provide for those who have less than they need. Complaints about high taxes signal that one thinks of this duty as merely an option.

Even the subtler, seemingly softer mercantilism proposed by the recent Business Roundtable in its August 2019 “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” which seems to reverse course on the priority of maximizing shareholder value, and to soft-pedal the exploitation of offshore labor and ecological despoliation, is not really a confession of guilt but rather an admission that big business now has a public-relations problem.

Saints and mystics have always understood the connection between ascesis and communion: those who are unable to control their appetites—to say “enough” when their own needs have been met—are less likely to notice and respond when their neighbor does not have enough. Luxury is the enemy of solidarity. The tragedy is not just that the rich may never make it to heaven, but also that they may never understand why heaven is beyond their reach.

It may be “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God…but what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (Luke 18:24–26). In the larger picture of God’s beneficence, there is always ample room for forgiveness and redemption. Almsgiving allows us to confront our inner brokenness and spiritual poverty by reaching out to others, to the least and lowest in our community until, as Abba John wrote in sixth-century Gaza, “we reach the point of regarding the poor as our equal and as our neighbor” (Letter 636). But to recognize the poor as our equals is to understand that they cannot be left at the mercy of a philanthropist’s whim, and the satisfaction of their needs is not another charitable option, like the construction of a new opera house or university gym. Rightwing philanthropists need to get over their aversion to public-assistance programs and their resentment of the taxes that fund them. And before they write op-eds congratulating themselves for their own munificence or disparaging government programs they dismiss as “handouts,” they would do well to remember another famous passage from Scripture: “Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6:3).

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Reform, Equity, Inequality, Injustice

Bill & Melinda Gates on the State of Inequality in the World

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2019 //
62

 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued an annual report called the “Goalskeepers Report 2019,” signed by Bill & Melinda Gates.

The theme is “Examining Inequality.”

It is a useful compilation of data about inequality from around the world, focused mainly on Africa.

There are two things that really bother me, however.

First of all, Bill Gates has never admitted or apologized for the damage he has done to American education by his munificent support for high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by test scores, Common Core, and charter schools. His initiatives have wreaked havoc, demoralized teachers, harmed schools and communities, and he never says “I was wrong.”

The second thing that bothers me is that I do not believe that Bill & Melinda Gates wrote the report to which they affixed their names. It is unethical to claim authorship of something you did not write yourself.

 

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, International

Economic Policy Institute: CEO Pay Soars, Worker Pay Does Not

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2019 //
62

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO compensation has grown by 940% since 1978. Worker compensation, however, grew only 12% during the same period.

The report was written by economist Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe. Mishel led EPI for many years. The media always describes EPI as “left-leaning” because it is critical of economic inequality. It’s research is impeccable.

Categories Education Reform, Inequality

The Walton Family Makes $4 Million Every Hour

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2019 //
46

 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek posts this story about the rapidly escalating wealth divide: The Walton Family is the richest in the world. Its wealth grows by $4 million every hour of every day.

Twenty-five families in the world control $1.4 trillion.

In the magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s richest families, the Waltons are #1.

The numbers are mind-boggling: $70,000 per minute, $4 million per hour, $100 million per day.

That’s how quickly the fortune of the Waltons, the clan behind Walmart Inc., has been growing since last year’s Bloomberg ranking of the world’s richest families.

At that rate, their wealth would’ve expanded about $23,000 since you began reading this. A new Walmart associate in the U.S. would’ve made about 6 cents in that time, on the way to an $11 hourly minimum.

Even in this era of extreme wealth and brutal inequality, the contrast is jarring. The heirs of Sam Walton, Walmart’s notoriously frugal founder, are amassing wealth on a near-unprecedented scale — and they’re hardly alone.

The Walton fortune has swelled by $39 billion, to $191 billion, since topping the June 2018 ranking of the world’s richest families.

As educators know, the Waltons use a small part of their vast fortune to undermine public education and replace public schools with privately managed charter schools.

The least you can do is to avoid Walmart. Boycott Walmart. It may only cost them a few pennies, but do it.

In addition to their nefarious role as the single biggest founder of charters in the U.S., they are the biggest retailer of guns. Just another reason to boycott Walmart.

FYI, the founder of Walmart—Sam Walton—was a graduate of public schools. He graduated from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Education Industry, Inequality, Privatization, Walton Foundation

A Billionaire Declares: Better Public Schools Won’t Fix America

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2019 //
160

 

Nick Hanauer was a big supporter of charter schools. As he explains in this fascinating article, he swallowed the Corporate Reform Dogma whole. He believed that America’s “failing public schools” were the cause of poverty and inequality. Fix the schools and—poof—poverty and inequality will disappear.

He writes:

Taken with this story line, I embraced education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission. I co-founded the League of Education Voters, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education. I joined Bill Gates, Alice Walton, and Paul Allen in giving more than $1 million each to an effort to pass a ballot measure that established Washington State’s first charter schools. All told, I have devoted countless hours and millions of dollars to the simple idea that if we improved our schools—if we modernized our curricula and our teaching methods, substantially increased school funding, rooted out bad teachers, and opened enough charter schools—American children, especially those in low-income and working-class communities, would start learning again. Graduation rates and wages would increase, poverty and inequality would decrease, and public commitment to democracy would be restored.

But after decades of organizing and giving, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I was wrong. And I hate being wrong.

What I’ve realized, decades late, is that educationism is tragically misguided. American workers are struggling in large part because they are underpaid—and they are underpaid because 40 years of trickle-down policies have rigged the economy in favor of wealthy people like me. Americans are more highly educated than ever before, but despite that, and despite nearly record-low unemployment, most American workers—at all levels of educational attainment—have seen little if any wage growth since 2000.

To be clear: We should do everything we can to improve our public schools. But our education system can’t compensate for the ways our economic system is failing Americans. Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income.

For all the genuine flaws of the American education system, the nation still has many high-achieving public-school districts. Nearly all of them are united by a thriving community of economically secure middle-class families with sufficient political power to demand great schools, the time and resources to participate in those schools, and the tax money to amply fund them. In short, great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around. Pay people enough to afford dignified middle-class lives, and high-quality public schools will follow. But allow economic inequality to grow, and educational inequality will inevitably grow with it.

By distracting us from these truths, educationism is part of the problem.

Oh, my God! Did he read Reign of Error?

I wrote exactly that! I demonstrated that the graduation rates of every group were the highest ever, the dropout rates were the lowest ever, we were never number one on international tests but consistently mediocre or less because of high child poverty rates, etc etc etc. I said that test scores were a reflection of family income and education, not a cause of poverty.

Could I be dreaming?

Then he wrote:

Whenever i talk with my wealthy friends about the dangers of rising economic inequality, those who don’t stare down at their shoes invariably push back with something about the woeful state of our public schools. This belief is so entrenched among the philanthropic elite that of America’s 50 largest family foundations—a clique that manages $144 billion in tax-exempt charitable assets—40 declare education as a key issue.

Well, of course. These are the billionaires who want to privatize public schools without the permission of the families and children who like their public schools.

Here is the kicker: Educationism appeals to the wealthy and powerful because it tells us what we want to hear: that we can help restore shared prosperity without sharing our wealth or power.

Well, this is an article you must read.

I wonder if Nick Hanauer would join the Network for Public Education and help us push back against the powerful elites that he now understands so well. Then he could join with those who understand what he has happily recognized.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Senator Sanders: This Is Where I Came From

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
65

 

This article by Senator Bernie Sanders appeared in the New York Times.

 

My father came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 with barely a nickel in his pocket. I spent my first 18 years, before I left home for college, in a three-and-a-half-room, rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. My mother’s dream was to own her own home, but we never came close. My father’s salary as a paint salesman paid for basic necessities, but never much more.

As a young man I learned the impact that lack of money had on family life. Every major household purchase was accompanied by arguments between my parents.

I remember being yelled at for going to the wrong store for groceries and paying more than I should have. I’ve never forgotten the incredible stress of not having much money, a reality that millions of American families experience today.

We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world and, according to President Trump, the economy is “booming.” Yet most Americans have little or no savings and live paycheck to paycheck.

Today our rate of childhood poverty is among the highest of any developed country in the world, millions of workers are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, millions more owe outrageous levels of student debt, and half a million people are homeless on any given night. Over 80 million Americans have inadequate health insurance or spent part or all of last year without any insurance, and one out of five cannot afford the prescription drugs they need.

While wages in the United States have been stagnant for over 40 years, we have more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s.

Today, the wealthiest three families in the country own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people and the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Millions of workers earn starvation wages even as nearly half of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

Gentrification is ravaging working-class neighborhoods, forcing many struggling Americans to spend half or more of their incomes to put a roof over their heads. The rent-controlled apartment I grew up in was small, but at least we could afford it.

I am running for president because we must defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in the modern history of our country. But, if we are to defeat Mr. Trump, we must do more than focus on his personality and reactionary policies.

We must understand that unfettered capitalism and the greed of corporate America are destroying the moral and economic fabric of this country, deepening the very anxieties that Mr. Trump appealed to in 2016. The simple truth is that big money interests are out of control, and we need a president who will stand up to them.

Wall Street, after driving the United States into the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, now makes tens of billions in profits while forcing working-class Americans to pay usurious interest rates on their credit card debt. The top 10 American drug companies, repeatedly investigated for price fixing and other potentially illegal actions, made nearly $70 billion in profits last year, even as Americans paid the most per capita among developed nations for their prescription medicine.

Top executives in the fossil fuel industry spend hundreds of millions on campaign contributions to elect candidates who represent the rich and the powerful, while denying the reality of climate change.

Major corporations like Amazon, Netflix, General Motors and dozens of others make huge profits, but don’t pay federal income taxes because of a rigged tax system they lobbied to create.

Back in 1944, in his State of the Union speech, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded the nation that economic security is a human right, and that people cannot be truly free if they have to struggle every day for their basic needs. I agree.

We must change the current culture of unfettered capitalism in which billionaires have control over our economic and political life. We need to revitalize American democracy and create a government and economy that works for all.

Categories Economy, Education Reform, Inequality, Injustice

Jacobin: Foundations and Philanthropy Will Not Cure the Crisis of Capitalism

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2019 //
64

 

The billionaires understand the growing rage caused by inequality on an unprecedented scale. They worry that the rage might be directed at them. This far, it has been captured by rightwing populists like Trump, whose tax policies deepen the crisis of inequality by transferring more wealth to the one tenth of the one percent.

Jacobin explains that multibillionaires like Bill Gates are trying to buy time through their philanthropy and “the giving pledge,” which commits them to give away a big chunk of their billions when they die. Unfortunately, or fortunately for them, their capital is so vast that they make more money than they give away, without working. At a certain point, capital multiplies just by sitting in stocks and bonds.

Anand Girihadaras hit a nerve in his book Winners Take All, where he described the elite Charade of pretending to save the world through philanthropy, while building mechanisms to control the lives of others.

Charter schools are a perfect example of elite philanthropy that offers a way to “save poor children” while destroying democratically controlled institutions and transferring control to private boards directed by financiers. The parents of the children being “saved” will never have a voice in the education of their children, will never meet face to face with a board member, will never gain admission to a board meeting, and-if they complain too much-will be told to take their child and go elsewhere.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Philanthropy, Privatization

Katie Porter: A Freshman Hero in Congress

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2019 //
21

Katie Porter is a freshman in Congress. She ran for Congress in the 45th District in California, which has not elected a Democrat since the District was created in 1953. Porter was born in Iowa and had an elite education, studying at Phillips Academy, Yale University, and Harvard Law School (where Elizabeth Warren was one of her professors). She is a consumer advocate and a master of complex financial transactions. She co-authored a book with Warren titled The Law of Debtors and Creditors. 

She has fought the abuse of mortgage holders by banks. She has planted herself firmly on the side of the little guy, the public interest, and the victims of the powerful.

In her role on the House Financial Services Committee, she has challenged some of the most powerful people in the nation. She does it with facts, logic, and subtlety. She quietly sets a trap, and then it snaps.

Watch her take apart Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, who received a salary of $31 million this year. She explains the difficulty of a teller in his bank in her district who is paid $16.50 an hour. Better than the minimum wage, but watch her quietly pin him to the wall. 

The video went viral.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post says that Porter has framed the most important issue for the 2020 election: Inequality. 

He writes:

“Congratulations are in order to JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States. It just reported that in the first quarter of 2019 it made a record profit of $9.18 billion on $29.9 billion in revenue. Truly, we are living in an age of boundless prosperity.

“Well, some of us are. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, made $31 million last year. Which led to an interesting exchange between him and first-term Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) this week in a Capitol Hill hearing, when Porter asked Dimon to consider the financial situation of a teller working at Dimon’s bank in Irvine, Calif., the location of her district.

”A video of Porter questioning Dimon is spreading, and it’s an excellent reminder of something with profound implications for next year’s presidential campaign:

“Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) grills JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who made $31 million last year, on how a low-paid bank teller is supposed to pay the bills. (Danielle Kunitz, Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)

“Porter is uniquely situated to do this kind of questioning. A law professor with deep expertise in topics such as bankruptcy, she is quickly becoming one of the financial services industry’s most formidable critics on Capitol Hill. And she was doing more than making Dimon uncomfortable. She was obviously trying to make a larger point not just about JPMorgan Chase or even just about the banking industry, but about the American economy in general.

“That point is this: If you have a bank that’s making $9 billion in profit in a single quarter, with a CEO who makes $31 million a year, and yet people who work for that bank can’t possibly make ends meet, something is very, very wrong. And that should be at the center of the campaign of every Democrat running for president…

”Speaking of which, we just learned that as a result of that tax cut, twice as many of the largest corporations in the United States paid no taxes in 2018 as had the year before, despite making billions of dollars in profit. In many cases they even got large refunds, which means your taxes went right into their bank accounts. To take just one example, Chevron made a $4.5 billion profit and got a refund of $181 million. The banks did particularly well; the tax law increased bank profits by $28.8 billion. You’re welcome, Mr. Dimon…

”JPMorgan Chase could give every one of its 250,000 employees a $25,000 raise, and it would cost the bank only about two-thirds of the profit it made just in the first quarter of this year. But of course, it is not going to do that. We can’t rely on the generosity of corporations to tackle inequality. That’s the government’s job. Democrats just need to decide to do it, and to make clear to voters that it will be their top priority as president.”

Watch Katie Porter take on the CEO of Wells Fargo. (Ignore the misspelling on the placard she holds up. (Somebody goofed but not her.)

Watch her eviscerate the clueless head of Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, explaining basic rules of consumer finance.

I love AOC.

I love Katie Porter.

These are two amazing and powerful people. They give me hope for the future.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Economics, Economy, Inequality

The Failure of Market Reforms in Sweden

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
6

German Bender writes here about the failure of market-based school reform in Sweden.

Privatized schools that get public money, for-profit schools that get public money, the gamut of school privatization has degraded the education system of Sweden.

The main results of privatization: education inequality, falling test scores, and segregation.

Please take note, Center for American Progress, Ann O’Leary (the new chief of staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, former chief of staff for the Hillary Clinton campaign), and other devotees of school choice (Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, the Walton Family Foundation, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, the Dell Foundation, John Arnold, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, etc.).

Categories Inequality, International, School Choice, Segregation
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