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Saturday, June 4, 2011

Schools Matter: Duncan and BBC Go After Ravitch

Schools Matter: Duncan and BBC Go After Ravitch

Duncan and BBC Go After Ravitch

There's an old quote that comes out the early labor movement: "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you."

From the heat coming off the attacks from ed journalism's junkyard jackass opinionator, Jon Alter, there is a fire being stoked by the Billionaire Boys Club, where an inability to buy the truth has reached a crisis point that demands that the truth tellers, now, be burned at the stake.

Long before the stakes were set and the wood piled, however, Alter was the well-worn, um, tool, shall we say, for the corporate thrusting that has long sought to degrade and humiliate those resisting the corporatization of schools. A couple of earlier examples that would come to inspire the likes of Governor Scott Walker and Chris Christie, the first from 2008, when Alter was writing for the bankrupt rag, Newsweek:
. . . .Railing against the tyranny of tests is fashionable, but it isn't going to save our children and our economy in the 21st century. Nor will more money for important programs like art and music.