Earthside Comments: The opinion essay and the news item that form the basis for this commentary on the state of education in the United States support the same objective: perpetuating the economic interests of the education-industrial-complex. This institution is about making money and holding onto power; it is about 'schooling' ... that is, training, regimenting and processing our kids to the end of creating obedient, submissive workers and consumers.
Our 'education' establishment is very much about preserving a multi-hundred-billion-dollar spending machine. Corporations make tremendous profit from selling high tech hardware and software to virtually every school district in the nation. Textbook companies and testing companies and education consulting companies and pension investment advising companies and public relations firms and bond dealers -- all have a vested interest in making sure that nothing much changes in the way 'education' is provided to our children.
Then there are the politicians who get campaign contributions from the above mentioned special interests and the 'educrat' administrators who make hundred thousand dollar a year salaries, who have no deep desire to see genuine reform and change in the current system.
And they are getting what they want because Dimocrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, they can influence the public to keep the financial and political gravy-train running by the proclaiming the words: "For the children!"
Our number one example today is an opinion piece printed in the New York Times authored by Harold Levy, former chancellor of New York City public schools and a member of the corporate class. He calls his suggestions to improve public and higher education "radical" -- but that is a laughable description because his proposals are reactionary and clearly meant to perpetuate the current system and its failures -- because, we suspect, that is good for business.
He wants kids to be in school longer ... add pre-kindergarten to an extra year at the end, from twelve years to as much as fourteen years in public school. For what? The public schools cannot get the job done now and giving them more time to practice the same old pedagogical theories on the students won't change any outcomes -- but another year or two will necessitate even bigger budgets for the system, get the idea? Furthermore, self-perpetuating failure is guaranteed with this "improvement". Imagine the drop-out rate with an added year of one-size-fits-all curriculum and more standards based testing. Except for the very subservient and very compliant, what self-respecting kid wouldn't want to quit?
Levy wants even stronger, sales-marketing-based measures to force reluctant kids into the plastic and metal chairs at the schools. Instead of asking the profound, but obvious questions of why kids won't come to school, this guy apparently thinks sophisticated threats and fearmongering will end truancy; it sounds like something emanating from a dark 'Ministry of Propaganda and Education'.
The remaining three of Levy's suggestions are all geared towards what has become the mantra of the schooling cadre in government these days: everyone goes to college. The latest 'education' craze is to sound lofty and idealistic and propose stuffing every young person in America into one ridged box, everyone the same, everyone with the same end results, everyone in debt up to their eyeballs from paying taxes to public schools and with college student loans. It's a great deal for the education-industrial-complex, but if individuality, freedom, intellectual curiosity, making a living doing something you like, if honest labor or craftsmanship are of importance to you, as a person, well, you're out of luck.
Because the public school system has been so dumbed-down that a fundamental education cannot be acquired in twelve years, the taxing and spending now has to go on and on and on. And then, at the end, the results is a docile, allegedly college educated, under-paid consumer working at a service job with no time left at the end of the day to participate in civic or political affairs. Education and learning as a quality of life endeavor is never, never part of the current schooling establishment's agenda.
After Levy's opinion article is an item that proves our point and shows that the Obama administration is lock-step on board with this concept. The Secretary of Education threatens the state of Maine with lack of federal largess because they have not yet gotten into the charter school box. It is becoming more apparent to us that the charter school movement is being used as a method to insert privatization, that is a private school system into the 'public' system; in other words, another Bushian, public-private, corporate subsidy scheme. Charter schools are starting to look more and more like private schools with private sector privileges and protections, but funded by the taxpayers.
And Obama is right on board. Whether you like it or not Secretary Arne Duncan is decreeing that state and local control of education is over and that the national central government is dictating what public schools are going to look like ... it is a corporate and militaristist dream come true. By the way, here's even more proof that the goal is to crush everyone into the same box: Forty-Nine States and Territories Join Common Core State Standards Initiative.
In the next post, we want to tie-in a concrete, real-life example of how the 'schooling' impulses of the school administrators and educrats overcomes their empty rhetoric supporting 'education'.
Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools | Harold O. Levy/New York Times
American education was once the best in the world. But today, our private and public universities are losing their competitive edge to foreign institutions, they are losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges and they are losing control over their own admissions because of an ill-conceived ranking system. With the recession causing big state budget cuts, the situation in higher education has turned critical. Here are a few radical ideas to improve matters:• Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. ...
• Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy. Casual truancy is epidemic; in many cities, including New York, roughly 30 percent of public school students are absent a total of a month each year. Not surprisingly, truants become dropouts.
But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. ...
• Advertise creatively and aggressively to encourage college enrollment. The University of Phoenix, a private, for-profit institution, spent $278 million on advertising, most of it online, in 2007. ... Traditional colleges need to do far better, using advertising to attract paying older students and to recruit the more than 70 percent of the population who lack a post-secondary degree.
• Unseal college accreditation reports so that the Department of Education can take over the business of ranking colleges and universities. Accreditation reports — rigorous evaluations, prepared by representatives of peer institutions — include everything students need to know when making decisions about schools, yet the specifics of most reports remain secret.
Instead, students and their parents rely on U.S. News & World Report rankings that are skewed by colleges, which contort their marketing efforts to maximize the number of applicants whom they already know they will never accept, just to improve their selectivity rankings. ...
• The biggest improvement we can make in higher education is to produce more qualified applicants. Half of the freshmen at community colleges and a third of freshmen at four-year colleges matriculate with academic skills in at least one subject too weak to allow them to do college work. Unsurprisingly, the average college graduation rates even at four-year institutions are less than 60 percent.
Duncan: Maine at 'Disadvantage' for Charters Ban | Portland Press Herald
States like Maine that don’t allow charter schools are putting themselves at a “competitive disadvantage” when it comes to applying for education reform funds, the country’s top education official said Monday.The 10 states that do not allow charter schools and the 26 that put caps on the number they allow will endanger their chances for awards from a $4.35 billion education innovation fund that’s part of the federal economic stimulus package, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.
"They put themselves at a competitive disadvantage for the largest pool of dollars states have ever had access to," Duncan said during a conference call with reporters.
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