Alexei Navalny: What Happens After the War in Ukraine?

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2022 //
26

Alexei Navalny has been Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic. In 2020, Navalny was poisoned while on a flight to Moscow and nearly died. He received treatment in a German hospital, where it was determined that he was poisoned by a substance made only in Russia. That’s the sort of thing that happens to Putin’s political opponents. Now Navalny is in prison, serving a nine-year term.

In 2021, he received the European Union’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. If you want to learn more about Navalny, watch the CNN special about him. His daughter is a student at Stanford. His wife stands in for him. They could have fled Russia when he was hospitalized in Germany, but Navalny insisted on returning to Russia. He was arrested as soon as he arrived, as he expected. He insists on being a thorn in Putin’s side or a burr under his saddle, as they say in Texas. The funniest part of the CNN special is when Navalny and his team track down the men who made the poison that nearly killed him, call them at their cellphones, and pretend to be their bosses, demanding to know why they failed to finish him off.

He wrote this article from his penal colony. His legal team passed it on to the Washington Post, where it was published.

Navalny writes:

What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?

If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself.

This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive. This is undoubtedly possible. Right now the urge for aggression is coming from a minority in Russian society.


In my opinion, the problem with the West’s current tactics lies not just in the vagueness of their aim, but in the fact that they ignore the question: What does Russia look like after the tactical goals have been achieved? Even if success is achieved, where is the guarantee that the world will not find itself confronting an even more aggressive regime, tormented by resentment and imperial ideas that have little to do with reality? With a sanctions-stricken but still big economy in a state of permanent military mobilization? And with nuclear weapons that guarantee impunity for all manner of international provocations and adventures?


It is easy to predict that even in the case of a painful military defeat, Putin will still declare that he lost not to Ukraine but to the “collective West and NATO,” whose aggression was unleashed to destroy Russia.

And then, resorting to his usual postmodern repertoire of national symbols — from icons to red flags, from Dostoevsky to ballet — he will vow to create an army so strong and weapons of such unprecedented power that the West will rue the day it defied us, and the honor of our great ancestors will be avenged.

And then we will see a fresh cycle of hybrid warfare and provocations, eventually escalating into new wars.


To avoid this, the issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue — and not just one element among others — of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them. Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability. That is possible, and that is what should be seen as a strategic victory in this war.


There are several important things happening to Russia that need to be understood:


First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.

Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.


Second, the view of war not as a catastrophe but as an amazing means of solving all problems is not just a philosophy of Putin’s top brass, but a practice confirmed by life and evolution. Since the Second Chechen War, which made the little-known Putin the country’s most popular politician, through the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the war in Syria, the Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly harm the economy, and — most importantly — winners face no accountability. Sooner or later, one of the constantly changing Western leaders will come to us to negotiate. It does not matter what motives will lead him — the will of the voters or the desire to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — but if you show proper persistence and determination, the West will come to make peace.

Don’t forget that there are many in the United States, Britain and other Western countries in politics who have been defeated and lost ground due to their support for one war or another. In Russia, there is simply no such thing. Here, war is always about profit and success.

Third, therefore, the hopes that Putin’s replacement by another member of his elite will fundamentally change this view on war, and especially war over the “legacy of the U.S.S.R.,” is naive at the very least. The elites simply know from experience that war works — better than anything else.


Perhaps the best example here would be Dmitry Medvedev, the former president on whom the West pinned so many hopes. Today, this amusing Medvedev, who was once taken on a tour of Twitter’s headquarters, makes statements so aggressive that they look like a caricature of Putin’s.

Fourth, the good news is that the bloodthirsty obsession with Ukraine is not at all widespread outside the power elites, no matter what lies pro-government sociologists might tell.


The war raises Putin’s approval rating by super-mobilizing the imperially minded part of society. The news agenda is fully consumed by the war; internal problems recede into the background: “Hurray, we’re back in the game, we are great, they’re reckoning with us!” Yet the aggressive imperialists do not have absolute dominance. They do not make up a solid majority of voters, and even they still require a steady supply of propaganda to sustain their beliefs.


Otherwise Putin would not have needed to call the war a “special operation” and send those who use the word “war” to jail. (Not long ago, a member of a Moscow district council received seven years in prison for this.) He would not have been afraid to send conscripts to the war and would not have been compelled to look for soldiers in maximum-security prisons, as he is doing now. (Several people were “drafted to the front” directly from the penal colony where I am.)

Yes, propaganda and brainwashing have an effect. Yet we can say with certainty that the majority of residents of major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as young voters, are critical of the war and imperial hysteria. The horror of the suffering of Ukrainians and the brutal killing of innocents resonate in the souls of these voters.

Thus, we can state the following:


The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endlessly self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target. This self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of Russia and the cause of all its troubles. We cannot get rid of it, despite the opportunities regularly provided by history.

Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.

Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. They have caused several wars and countless international provocations, and are now tormenting a neighboring nation, committing horrible crimes for which neither many generations of Ukrainians nor our own children will forgive us.


In the 31 years since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., we have witnessed a clear pattern: The countries that chose the parliamentary republic model (the Baltic states) are thriving and have successfully joined Europe. Those that chose the presidential-parliamentary model (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) have faced persistent instability and made little progress. Those that chose strong presidential power (Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian republics) have succumbed to rigid authoritarianism, most of them permanently engaged in military conflicts with their neighbors, daydreaming about their own little empires.
In short, strategic victory means bringing Russia back to this key historical juncture and letting the Russian people make the right choice.

The future model for Russia is not “strong power” and a “firm hand,” but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society. Russia needs a parliamentary republic. That is the only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism.


One may argue that a parliamentary republic is not a panacea. Who, after all, is to prevent Putin or his successor from winning elections and gaining full control over the parliament?
Of course, even a parliamentary republic does not offer 100 percent guarantees. It could well be that we are witnessing the transition to the authoritarianism of parliamentary India. After the usurpation of power, parliamentary Turkey has been transformed into a presidential one. The core of Putin’s European fan club is paradoxically in parliamentary Hungary.


And the very notion of a “parliamentary republic” is too broad.


Yet I believe this cure offers us crucial advantages: a radical reduction of power in the hands of one person, the formation of a government by a parliamentary majority, an independent judiciary system, a significant increase in the powers of local authorities. Such institutions have never existed in Russia, and we are in desperate need of them.
As for the possible total control of parliament by Putin’s party, the answer is simple: Once the real opposition is allowed to vote, it will be impossible. A large faction? Yes. A coalition majority? Maybe. Total control? Definitely not. Too many people in Russia are interested in normal life now, not in the phantom of territorial gains. And there are more such people every year. They just don’t have anyone to vote for now.

Certainly, changing Putin’s regime in the country and choosing the path of development are not matters for the West, but jobs for the citizens of Russia. Nevertheless, the West, which has imposed sanctions both on Russia as a state as well as on some of its elites, should make its strategic vision of Russia as a parliamentary democracy as clear as possible. By no means should we repeat the mistake of the West’s cynical approach in the 1990s, when the post-Soviet elite was effectively told: “You do what you want there; just watch your nuclear weapons and supply us with oil and gas.”

Indeed, even now we hear cynical voices saying similar things: “Let them just pull back the troops and do what they want from there. The war is over, the mission of the West is accomplished.” That mission was already “accomplished” with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the result is a full-fledged war in Europe in 2022.


This is a simple, honest and fair approach: The Russian people are of course free to choose their own path of development. But Western countries are free to choose the format of their relations with Russia, to lift or not to lift sanctions, and to define the criteria for such decisions. The Russian people and the Russian elite do not need to be forced. They need a clear signal and an explanation of why such a choice is better. Crucially, parliamentary democracy is also a rational and desirable choice for many of the political factions around Putin. It gives them an opportunity to maintain influence and fight for power while ensuring that they are not destroyed by a more aggressive group.


War is a relentless stream of crucial, urgent decisions influenced by constantly shifting factors.

Therefore, while I commend European leaders for their ongoing success in supporting Ukraine, I urge them not to lose sight of the fundamental causes of war. The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive imperial authoritarianism, endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself. Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again. This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this. It is the first step toward transforming Russia into a good neighbor that helps to solve problems rather than create them.

Categories Democracy, Evil, International

Oklahoma: Vote for Joy Hofmeister for Governor!

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2022 //
2

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, urges his fellow Oklahomans to vote for Joy Hofmeister for Governor. I heartily endorse Joy. When I visited Oklahoma a few years ago, I had the chance to speak with her at length. She is intelligent, public-spirited, and devoted to public service. I met her in her role of State Superintebdent of Schools and was deeply impressed by her understanding of the issues and to public schools. I join John in urging you to vote for Joy!

Thompson writes:

The main arguments for electing Oklahoma State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister as governor are grounded in her rescue of public education. Her record proves that Hofmeister is the best possible candidate for uniting the state and pulling ourselves out of the messes that Gov. Kevin Stitt and Trumpists created. And her current campaign, like her approach to reviving public education, illustrates Hofmeister’s ability to bring diverse people together.

In contrast, Stitt supposedly illustrated his commitment to students by rushing down school halls with a semi-automatic rifle.

When Hofmeister switched from being a moderate Republican to a Democrat, a number of young progressives said they supported Joy because she was the candidate who is best able to defeat Stitt. Fearing that young people who just believed that might be less motivated to vote, I’ve been sharing concrete examples of why Hofmeister deserves enthusiastic support; Hofmeister led the rescue of our public schools, and laid the foundation for meaningful and long-lasting school improvements. If voters remember how bleak the future of schools was in 2014, and how she successfully defended them, they will agree that Hofmeister is the proven leader for saving public education and our other public institutions from today’s rightwing assault.

I like to start by asking Gen Z and Millennials about their experiences with schools after the corporate school reformer, Janet Barresi, was elected in 2010. This was the height of the “Teacher Wars,” when schools were to be closed based on an invalid A–F grading system, and educators were to be fired based on an even worse algorithm.As documented byOklahoma City University’s Dr. Jonathan Willner, School grades were supposed to measure student learning, but they had little or nothing to do with teacher quality. They actually reflected:

The number of single-parents in the district; students on free and reduced lunch at the school; school mobility (proportion of new students each year); educational attainment in the district, and the median household income in the district. None of these have anything to do with the actions of teachers and administers. The damage became even worse when almost every teacher and students became subject even more invalid and unreliable high-stakes testing.

This was a time of education funding cuts, nonstop attacks on “Bad Teachers,” who supposedly could have transformed student learning had they wanted to, and increased segregation by economics and school choice. Hofmeister was elected in 2014, when urban schools could have easily crossed the “tipping point” if Oklahoma stuck with the mandate that required students to pass Common Core graduation tests that were written on levels that often were years above their reading levels. A key to Joy’s success was her professional team’s effort to assist in returning more of the authority for developing education policy to local districts.

Hofmeister led the fight to repeal seven inappropriate End of Instruction tests (EOI), to “reduce time testing and allow more time for rich instruction, personalized learning and multiple pathways to college and career readiness.” She also prioritized high-quality pre-K instruction and reading for comprehension by 3rd grade. Joy was successful in bringing back high school students’ access to Career Tech, mentoring, and internships. And she addressed our severe teacher shortage by helping lead the way to significant teacher pay raises, and listening to teachers about policies for making schools better.

I haven’t always agreed with Hofmeister on issues. But after listening to her, and her professional team, neither could I say I was right and she was wrong. Most of the time, a growing body of evidence now argues that her administration was right and I was wrong.

Yes, Kevin Stitt faced strong competition, but he has earned his spot as the worst governor in Oklahoma history. As COVID-19 surged, long before the vaccine was developed, Stittundermined the public health system and disrupted testing programs, as well as ridiculing masks and social distancing while posting family photographs from crowded restaurants. The governor purchased a stockpile of hydroxychloroquine, and later sought to suspend vaccine requirements for the Oklahoma National Guard. During the COVID-19 delta variant surge, Stitt signed a bill attempting to ban public schools’ masking requirements.

Stitt and his appointee, Secretary of Education Ryan Walters, have led the attacks on the so-called teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Walters ramped up attacks on a teacher, Summer Boismier, for posting a QR code to the Brooklyn Library’s banned books lists. He then called on the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke Boismier’s certification because, “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom.”

Stitt’s appointee is being investigated for distributing the federal, COVID-19 relief money for the Bridge the Gap program without following safeguards to prevent fraud or abuse. Stitt defended Walters, saying, “Secretary Walters is doing a great job fighting for parents’ right to be in charge of their child’s education and advocating for funding students.” Moreover, in addition to his state salary, Walters was paid around $120,000 a year by Every Kid Counts Oklahoma.

Stitt politicized the appointment process for the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals and the Supreme Court. He also obtained excessive control over the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs, and the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. And his change in the Tourism Department’s governance, apparently led to the Swadley’s Foggy Bottom Kitchen investigation and other conflicts

Stitt opposed Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma, and he has reversed gun safety regulations. And he has continually fought against established state rights of Oklahoma tribes, as well as rights newly established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s McGirt vs. Oklahoma decision.

Stitt also supported, and signed into law, SB 612, which makes performing an abortion a crime punishable by 10 years in prison or a $100,000 fine, with exceptions for medical emergencies but none for rape or incest. Stitt then signed into law a ban on “abortions from the stage of ‘fertilization’ and allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers who ‘knowingly’ perform or induce an abortion ‘on a pregnant woman.'”

Stitt issued an executive order that prohibited transgender individuals from changing the gender on their birth certificates. He said that “people are created by God to be male or female. There is no such thing as nonbinary sex.” Finally, Stitt signed a bill into law requiring public school students “to use locker rooms and bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificate.”

So, it is understandable that some would vote for a moderate former-Republican simply because of the havoc created by the current governor and his administration. I am very confident, however, that many, many more Oklahomans now realize that a Gov. Hofmeister will succeed in the two battles that have become even more important, and dangerous, than those she first faced eight years ago. Once again, she is revealing a talent for respectful listening and teamwork. Joy is the leader we need for building a 21st century Oklahoma that represents the best of our state.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Oklahoma

Liz Cheney in Arizona: Vote for Democrats!

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2022 //
48

Liz Cheney spoke in Arizona and urged people to vote for the Democratic candidates for Governor and Secretary of State. Both candidates have said that they will accept the results of the election only if they win. A hard-right Republican who voted with Trump almost every time, Cheney has decided that preserving democracy matters more than party.

Rep. Liz Cheney brought her unflinching criticism of the Republican Party to Tempe Wednesday, calling out the GOP’s “Putin wing” and saying the threats to democracy are so serious she recommends voting for Democrats in two high-profile Arizona races.

“The country is at the edge of an abyss,” Cheney, R-Wyo., said during a talk with the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.

“For almost 40 years now, I’ve been voting Republican. I don’t know that I have ever voted for a Democrat,” Cheney said, “but if I lived in Arizona now, I absolutely would for governor and secretary of state.

“We cannot be in a position where we elect people who will not fundamentally uphold the sanctity of elections. That’s got to be more important than anything else.”

Cheney cited Kari Lake, the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee, and state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who is running for secretary of state, for their unwillingness to pledge to accept the results of the upcoming elections. 

“I spend a lot of time thinking about Arizona,” Cheney said. “If you think about elections that are happening now, in Arizona today, you have a candidate for governor in Kari Lake, you have a candidate for secretary of state in Mark Finchem, both of whom have said … they will only honor the results of an election if they agree with it.

“They’ve looked at the law, the facts, the rulings of the courts and they’ve said it doesn’t matter to them. If you care about democracy, and you care about the survival of our republic, then you need to understand — we all have to understand — we cannot give people power who have told us that they will not honor elections. Elections are the foundation of our republic.”     

Categories Education Reform

Paul Horton: How Do We Navigate the Culture Wars in the Classroom This Year?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2022 //
74

Paul Horton is a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School, one of the very few private schools whose teachers are unionized. This article appeared in History Matters, the journal of the National Council on History Education.

Horton writes:

History teachers are beginning the new school year in a difficult place. Librarians and history teachers are being singled out all over the country as either not “woke” enough or too “woke.”

Constant and often contradictory messages from the left and the right, and self-censorship are on the rise as teachers and librarians either say they are going to quit or they intend to “quiet-quit” to stay off of the radars of “helicopter parents” and scared-to-death administrators.

Like most of my colleagues, I have given some thought this summer about how to navigate the minefield that has become social studies, civics, and history teaching.

I plan to take two steps to support my students’ critical historical thinking. First, to engage my students in talking about current events, I hope to begin each class with five minutes of time for them to read the “Reuters Daily Briefing.” According to “Media Bias/Fact Check,” Reuters is the most objective media source that is mostly free. In addition, the “Daily Brief” is all news and no opinion. This is important because many current events discussions are side-tracked by references to opinion segments that comprise much of the “news” on cable news.

Second, I intend to turn my first major United States History unit into a student evaluation of differing perspectives on American History: controversies surrounding the “1619 Project,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “presentism.”

Rather than ignoring these controversies, my classes will openly discuss and debate the issues surrounding them. My class will use a consensus standard textbook that combines political history and social history and integrates the standard lessons of America’s founding and the writing of the Constitution with what we have learned in the past fifty years about the history of slavery and the histories of peoples and cultures that were marginalized in textbooks until the 1970s.

But my class will also review representative texts that are championed by the left and the right. Student groups will examine the textbook used in the Hillsdale College 1776 History Curriculumcalled, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Hillsdale College historian, Wilfred M. McClay. In contrast, the same groups will also review Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s, Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusionthat represents a virtually opposite perspective to that of the Hillsdale curriculum.

After student groups have studied both texts and noted comparisons and contrasts, they will assume roles in a simulated State Board of Education hearing. Some students will be asked to represent Board members, while other students will represent interested groups and individuals that will offer their professional opinions on the texts. For example, in the simulation a representative from the National Association of Scholars, a conservative history advocacy group, will testify in addition to a representative from the American Historical Association. Parents representing a range of views will also be asked to testify.

At the simulation’s conclusion, the classroom school board will consult and make public a statement that justifies the state’s course of action. Will either book be banned? Will the board allow the teaching of excerpts from both books? Will the state adopt either book for exclusive use in the state’s classrooms?

To finish the unit, our student school board will be charged with the task of writing a letter to the state school board that establishes criteria for History textbook adoptions.

Rather than allowing our history classrooms to be censored, shouldn’t we use free speech to help our students grow beyond the Procrustean Bed of the stilted and shortsighted “culture wars”?

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, History

Teachers: Would Your District or State Allow You to Teach Ken Burns’ Series on the Holocaust?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2022 //
25

I recently posted a commentary by John Thompson, a retired teacher in Oklahoma who speculated about whether the state would permit high school teachers to teach Ken Burns’ series on the U.S. and the Holocaust. Oklahoma has a law—HB 1775–which might intimidate teachers.

In response, a teacher in Utah said that he or she felt sure that the Burns’ series would not be allowed because it’s controversial.

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post was taken aback by this intimidation. She asked me to invite teachers to send her an email and comment on whether they felt they would be in jeopardy if they taught the Ken Burns’ series, which acknowledges the unwillingness of the U.S. government to accept European Jews trying to flee from Hitler.

Please write her at Valerie.Strauss@WashPost.com.

She will protect your anonymity.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, History, Teaching

Anonymous Artist Dyes Tehran Fountains Blood-Red as Protest

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2022 //
11

The protest against repression in Iran continued, with a dramatic gesture. The photographs are striking. If you can open the link in The Washington Post, I think you will agree.

As Iranian protests sparked by the death of a woman in police custody continued, several Tehran fountains on Friday appeared as if filled with blood, according to photos and a video — verified by Storyful — that were shared widely on social media. The Persian-language Twitter account 1500tasvir, which has been monitoring the state crackdown that has killed dozens, credited the red liquid in the fountains’ basins to an anonymous artist/activist, referring to it as a protest artwork whose title roughly translates to “Tehran sinking in blood.”


The affected fountains are in culturally significant locations, including one in Daneshjoo Park, near the City Theater, which has been the subject of government censorship, and another in front of the Iranian Artists Forum, an interdisciplinary arts space founded during the reform-oriented presidency of Mohammad Khatami.


According to the Voice of America, citing the BBC’s Persian service, the fountains have since been drained. But for a moment, the ephemeral work served as a visceral reminder of the sacrifices made in the name of women’s rights.

Iran’s weeks-long protests began in mid-September, after Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested by the “morality police” for allegedly wearing a hijab incorrectly, and died in custody. The death has fueled sprawling protests. Schoolgirls have removed their head coverings and raised middle fingers. Women have burned their hijabs and cut their hair. People have flooded the streets chanting, “Women, life, freedom” and “Death to dictator,” a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Categories Courage, Cruelty, International

Finnish Prime Minister: “The Way Out of the Conflict”

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2022 //
21

Finland borders Russia.

Finland knows more about Russia than Elon Musk or China or India or the EU or the US.

The Finnish Prime Minister proposes a way out of the conflict.

Categories International

How to End the War in Ukraine Quickly

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2022 //
47

Elon Musk proposed a way to end the war in Ukraine on his Twitter account (@elonmusk). He proposes to conduct new referenda under UN supervision in the four regions that Russia occupied, so that the people who live there can decide whether they want to be Ukrainian or Russian. Musk would give Crimea to Russia, which it took by force in 2014.

This proposal is completely unacceptable to Ukraine, because these four regions are part of Ukraine. Russian forces do not fully control them, and with every passing day, Ukrainians are liberating more of the occupied territories.

In addition, it is not possible to hold a fair and free election in areas where a large part of the population has been killed or fled. As Ukrainian troops recapture villages and towns, they find many of them deserted. What does a referendum mean when the residents are gone?

Furthermore, Russia could pull the same stunt in all the former Soviet satellites: invade, terrorize the local population, then hold a referendum…the victors representing whom?

There is a far simpler way to end the war and stop the killing.

Putin could announce that he had achieved his goal of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, declare victory, and withdraw all his forces.

The war would be over.

Once the killing ends, someone must decide who will pay to rebuild Ukraine. Clearly it must be Russia, which started the war, without provocation.

Categories Education Reform

Hurrah for the Courageous Women of Iran!

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2022 //
52

For the past few weeks, Iran has been rocked by protests over the death in police custody of a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsi Amini, who was arrested by the infamous Morality Police for wearing her hijab incorrectly. Apparently a few strands of hair were showing, and she was beaten to death for defying the strict law about head covering.

Since then, women and men have joined to protest the harsh “morality” laws that govern women’s dress and hair covering. Led by women, the protests have featured women tearing off their hijabs and throwing them in bonfires. And women cutting their hair. In some demonstrations, young people have ripped down posters of the Ayatollah Homeini, the leader of the revolution that overthrew the secular Shah and created the strictly religious Islamic Republic of Iran.

The New York Times posted dramatic videos of the protests. They are amazing. You will see young women taking off their hijabs, twirling them in the air, then throwing them into the flames, as hundreds of other young people cheer.

The Times wrote:

Protests erupted in more than 80 cities across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, known by her first Kurdish surname Jina, after her detention by the morality police under the so-called hijab law. Footage of the demonstrations posted to social media has become one of the primary windows into what is happening on the ground and revealed what is different about this latest show of resistance inside Iran.

The New York Times analyzed dozens of videos and spoke with experts who have followed the country’s protest movements to understand what insights the often blurry, pixelated footage contains about what is propelling the demonstrations.

Attacking Symbols of the State

Now in their third week, protests have continued even as dozens of people have been killed. Many of the videos appeared on social media during the first week of the protests, before Iran’s government began limiting internet access in an effort to silence dissent.

The Washington Post wrote:

Iran’s bold and bracing protests, stretching across an unsettled nation for more than two weeks, have been marked by defiant acts and daring slogans that challenge the country’s clerical leadership and its stifling restrictions on all aspects of social life.
Government security forces have responded with deadly, uncompromising force. At least 52 people have been killed, according to Amnesty International, including women and children.
The ongoing protests began in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who fell into a coma after being detained by the country’s hated “morality police.”


Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed Monday that the unrest had been instigated by foreign powers and blamed protesters for the violence: “The ones who attack the police are leaving Iranian citizens defenseless against thugs, robbers and extortionists,” he said.
Khamenei gave his full backing to the security forces, signaling a further wave of repression could be coming.


To understand the extent of the government’s crackdown against protesters, The Washington Post analyzed hundreds of videos and photographs of protests, spoke to human rights activists, interviewed protesters and reviewed data collected by internet monitoring groups. The Post geolocated videos of protests in at least 22 cities — from the Kurdistan region, where the protests began, to Bandar Abbas, a port city on the Persian Gulf, to Rasht on the Caspian coast.

Categories Courage, Discipline, Extremism, Religion, Resistance

North Carolina: The Secret Plan to Sabotage Teachers and Make Money

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2022 //
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Peter Greene writes in Forbes about an insidious, nefarious, behind-closed-door plan to sabotage teachers’ pay and evaluations, while relying on the discredited value-added test-score-based system whose main corporation just happens to be in North Carolina. Greene relies on the relentless investigations by North Carolina teacher Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher.

Just to be clear: the proposed plan to change teachers’ pay relies on test scores and merit pay. No merit pay plan has ever successfully identified the “better” or “best” teachers. Tying teacher pay to test score increases has been tried repeatedly and has failed repeatedly. The most extensive trial of “value-added” measurement was funded by the Gates Foundation and evaluated by RAND-AIR. Gates gave $575 million to Hillsborough County in Florida, Memphis, and Pittsburgh, and to four charter chains, to evaluate teachers by test scores. The goal was to get the most highly effective teachers into the classrooms with the neediest students. The RAND-AIR report concluded that the Gates money “did not improve student achievement, did not affect graduation rates or dropout rates, and did not change the quality of teachers.” Some of the districts experienced higher teacher turnover. The neediest students did not get the most effective teachers, because teachers were afraid that their VAM scores would fall if they moved to classrooms with the neediest students. Overall, the program was a very expensive disaster. I wrote about it in my book Slaying Goliath (pp. 244-245).

So, North Carolina appears to be determined to drive its best teachers away, to increase its teacher shortage, when the solutions to their problems are obvious: increase teachers’ pay, reduce class sizes, and respect teacher voices.

Greene writes in Forbes:

North Carolina is considering a radical revamp of its teacher pay system, a framework that ties teacher pay to measures of merit, instead of years of experience. It is a bad plan, for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is that no teacher merit pay plan has ever proven to be a definitive success. 

This plan lowers the bar for entering the profession, while creating a ladder to higher levels of certification and higher levels of pay tied to “educational outcomes,”. Meaning, a system in which a teacher’s livelihood is tied to student test scores and a teacher training is centered on preparing students for a single high stakes test. 

The current pay scale offers little relief; a teacher with a bachelor’s degree starts at $35,000 a year, and that goes up $1,000 per year until they’ve been in the classroom for sixteen. 

Then their pay does not move for a decade, at which point they get a $2,000 raise—the last raise they’ll ever see. 

A North Carolina teacher faces the certainty that if they make a lifelong career out of teaching, they will see their pay in real dollars steadily decline.

The North Carolina Association of Educators have come out strongly against the proposal, as did working teachers on the ground. So did the North Carolina Colleges of Teacher Educators. Yet the proposal is still headed for consideration. Where did it come from, and who is pushing it?

Justin Parmenter is a veteran North Carolina teacher who has been asking those same questions. They turned out to be disturbingly difficult to answer.

The pipeline dries up

The roots go back over a decade. North Carolina had been a leading state for public education, but in 2010 the GOP established a super-majority in the legislature. What followed was a steady dismantling of public education in the state, combined with steps backward for the teaching profession.

Funding levels of public schools dropped, and the legislature has dragged its feet on implementing a court-ordered funding equity plan. At the same time, they have provided great opportunities for charter school profiteers. 

The GOP legislature has used school funding for Democrat-voting districts as a political football. In recent culture battles, the state has seen everything from County Commissioners holding school funding hostage to Lt. Governor Mark Robinson leading a hunt (complete with tip line) to catch teachers misbehaving.

On top of these and other measures that might make educators feel a bit beleaguered, North Carolina has had trouble offering competitive salaries to its teachers (the state sets the pay scale for all NC teachers). For years, a career teacher in North Carolina would actually take an annual pay cut in real dollars. At one point the legislature offered teachers a raise—if they would give up the due process protections commonly known as tenure. 

Mid-decade, I sat at dinner with a former student and seven other young professionals in Charlotte, North Carolina. Six were former teachers; they had each decided there were far better ways to make a living in the Tar Heel State.

The rules implemented by the legislature, says Parmenter, “made it less and less attractive for people to become teachers.” Enrollment in teacher prep programs began dropping. Faced with the problem, Parmenter says the approach was, “Instead of addressing the reason that nobody wants to go to college to become a teacher anymore, what could we do to approach it in a different way.”

The result: in 2017 the state legislature formed the Professional Educator Standards and Preparation Commission (PEPSCPSC -0.5%) to make recommendations on how to expand teacher preparation programs, create an accountability system for those programs, and to “reorganize and clarify” the licensure process.

For a year or so, PEPSC tinkered with the small edges of policy recommendations. And then in 2018, a whole bunch of other folks got interested.

At this crucial point, I am going to ask you to go to the link and open the article. One of the major players in this fiasco is SAS, a student evaluation system based in North Carolina, which stands to make a whole lot of money if the proposed system is adopted. The Gates Foundation, despite having failed in all of its previous efforts to implement a successful merit pay plan or test-based teacher evaluation program, became a player.

As you read the story unfold, you will see the strenuous efforts by the corporate actors to keep the whole nasty business secret. They encouraged their partners to speak cheerfully and positively about the changes they had in store for the state’s teachers. Justin Parmenter got his information by filing Freedom of Information suits.

Categories Education Reform
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