Truthout: In Defense Of Public School Teachers In A Time Of Crisis

[Dinger]

http://www.truthout.org/in-defense-public-school-teachers-a-time-crisis58567

". . . Little is said in this discourse about allocating more federal dollars for public schooling, replacing the aging infrastructures of schooling or increasing salaries so as to expand the pool of qualified teachers. Nor are teachers praised for their public service, the trust we in part to them in educating our children or the firewall they provide between a culture saturated in violence and idiocy and the civilizing and radical imaginative possibilities of an educated mind capable of transforming the economic, political and racial injustices that surround and bear down so heavily on public schools. Instead, teachers are stripped of their worth and dignity by being forced to adopt an educational vision and philosophy that has little respect for the empowering possibilities of either knowledge or critical classroom practices. Put bluntly, knowledge that can't be measured is viewed as irrelevant, and teachers who refuse to implement a standardized curriculum and evaluate young people through objective measures of assessments are judged as incompetent or disrespectful. Any educator who believes that students should learn more than how to obey the rules, take tests, learn a work skill or adopt without question the cruel and harsh market values that dominate society "will meet," as James Baldwin insists in his "Talk to Teachers," "the most fantastic, the most brutal and the most determined resistance."<1> And while the mythic character of education has always been at odds with its reality, as Baldwin noted in talking about the toxic education imposed on poor black children, the assault on public schooling in its current form truly suggests that "we are living through a very dangerous time."<2> . . . "



This sums up my feelings on the situation pretty well.

[jellen]

1. K & R Dinger!

Rec #5!

[Dinger]

3. Thanks . . .

Mom!:loveya:

[amborin]

2. K&R

[riderinthestorm]

4. Dinger, you are a treasure!

"Instead, teachers are stripped of their worth and dignity by being forced to adopt an educational vision and philosophy that has little respect for the empowering possibilities of either knowledge or critical classroom practices. Put bluntly, knowledge that can't be measured is viewed as irrelevant, and teachers who refuse to implement a standardized curriculum and evaluate young people through objective measures of assessments are judged as incompetent or disrespectful. Any educator who believes that students should learn more than how to obey the rules, take tests, learn a work skill or adopt without question the cruel and harsh market values that dominate society "will meet," as James Baldwin insists in his "Talk to Teachers," "the most fantastic, the most brutal and the most determined resistance."

To re-emphasize....

Honestly, it chaps my ass that so many DUers and yes, the larger American public don't "get" the dire nature of this assault on our public schools (and by extension our teachers).

This is a national crisis. Obama is facilitating a radical change in our public school education. Wake up everyone! This is shameful, terrible stuff.

[Solly Mack]

5. k/r

[Dinger]

6. Thank You Solly (nt)

[tonysam]

7. The only thing missing is the mention of the World Bank's role in this.

We now know this for a fact there is a worldwide movement to destroy public education in ALL countries and to deskill teachers for the very reason this author notes near the end of the piece:

If the right-wing educational reforms now being championed by the Obama administration and many state governments continue unchallenged, America will become a society in which a highly trained, largely white elite will continue to command the techno-information revolution, while a vast, low-skilled majority of poor and minority workers will be relegated to filling the McJobs proliferating in the service sector. The children of the rich and privilege will be educated in exclusive private schools and the rest of the population, mostly poor and nonwhite, will be offered bare forms of pedagogy suitable to work in the dead end low skill service sector of society, assuming that these jobs will be available. Teachers will lose most of their rights, protections and dignity and be treated as clerks of the empire. And as more and more young people fail to graduate from high school, they will fill the ranks of those disposable populations now filling up our prisons at a record pace. In contrast to this vision, I strongly believe that genuine, critical education cannot be confused with job training. At the same time, public schools have to be viewed as institutions as crucial to the security and safety of the country as national defense. If educators and others are to prevent this distinction between education and training from becoming blurred, it is crucial to both challenge the ongoing corporatization of public schools, while upholding the promise of the modern social contract in which all youth, guaranteed the necessary protections and opportunities, were a primary source of economic and moral investment, symbolizing the hope for a democratic future. In short, those individuals and groups concerned about the promise of education need to reclaim their commitment to future generations by taking seriously the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's belief that the ultimate test of morality for any democratic society resides in the condition of its children. If public education is to honor this ethical commitment, it will have to not only re-establish its obligation to young people, but reclaim its role as a democratic public sphere and uphold its support for teachers.

The point is to limit access to higher education for the masses.

[Bozita]

8. K&R