Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee : Wrong again
Tuesday, Feb 26, 2013 By David Sirota
Her education “reform” movement sends the lovely message that communities should stay out of their schools
Most who are reading these words will probably agree that our country is facing a democracy crisis, thanks, in part, to the dominance of money in our political process. Many who read these words will also probably insist that our country is facing an education crisis (though many try to deny the actual cause of that crisis).
Getting past the denial stage and acknowledging both of these problems is certainly a step toward one day fixing them. However, there’s another more subtle and self-reinforcing form of denial that makes getting to those solutions more difficult. That denial — or perhaps cognitive dissonance — evinces itself in an American psyche that tends to perceive the democracy and education emergencies as separate and distinct.
Essentially, we see the cause of voting-rights activists, get-out-the-vote pushes and same-day registration crusades (among others) as divorced from the concurrent education policy fight between public school advocates, teachers’ unions and corporate education “reformers.” We see them as disconnected from one another even though the two battles are fundamentally fused by a simple truism: Basically, you can never hope to have a functioning democracy over the long haul if your education system is trying to convince students and parents to abhor democracy.
That, of course, is exactly what is happening right now thanks to a scorched-earth campaign by the corporate
Her education “reform” movement sends the lovely message that communities should stay out of their schools
Most who are reading these words will probably agree that our country is facing a democracy crisis, thanks, in part, to the dominance of money in our political process. Many who read these words will also probably insist that our country is facing an education crisis (though many try to deny the actual cause of that crisis).
Getting past the denial stage and acknowledging both of these problems is certainly a step toward one day fixing them. However, there’s another more subtle and self-reinforcing form of denial that makes getting to those solutions more difficult. That denial — or perhaps cognitive dissonance — evinces itself in an American psyche that tends to perceive the democracy and education emergencies as separate and distinct.
Essentially, we see the cause of voting-rights activists, get-out-the-vote pushes and same-day registration crusades (among others) as divorced from the concurrent education policy fight between public school advocates, teachers’ unions and corporate education “reformers.” We see them as disconnected from one another even though the two battles are fundamentally fused by a simple truism: Basically, you can never hope to have a functioning democracy over the long haul if your education system is trying to convince students and parents to abhor democracy.
That, of course, is exactly what is happening right now thanks to a scorched-earth campaign by the corporate