The Army Occupying America’s Public Schools
By
When a nation is invaded by an occupying army, there are multiple responses from those whose communities have been occupied. Some resist openly, at great risk; some decide to collaborate; others grimly go about their business in sullen compliance; still others decide to feign compliance, but take their resistance underground.Such would be a good description of the varied resistance to the corporate takeover of American schools, which has many of the elements of a foreign invasion. Those who have coordinated the campaign of privatization, testing. and union busting that has swept through America’s public schools — Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg, and the like, none of whom have a background in teaching — have used the shock and awe tactics employed by invading armies to overwhelm opposition.
They have crushed or bought off opponents, controlled public media, and found an eager army of