The Public School Counterinsurgency Field Manual
 |
| Extreme Campbell Brown |
PRIVATIZATION EXTREMISTS
Their means may not be military, but across this great land, insurgent extremists are at work attacking public institutions and undermining the citizenry's confidence in the same. Our public schools are on the front lines.
In certain regions, the school casualties mount. Witness the "murder" of public schools in Philadelphia, the cyber attacks by virtual ed. corporations on brick-and-mortar schooling in Tennessee, the "policy of neighborhood school closing in Chicago", and the battles being fought in Milwaukee, "ground zero for school privatization."
Yes, the forces against us are strong. And while our public school foundation is solid, we mustn't let the insurgency gain further foothold in our communities.
THREAT ASSESSMENT
Our intelligence agents have determined that the private sector itself is not the enemy. Main Street businessmen and women are our allies. It is the privatization extremists, driven by free-market fundamentalism and greed, whose influence on the general populous we must neutralize.
To defeat the extremists, public school defenders need a counterinsurgency approach. Our brothers and sisters in uniform have something to teach us.
The Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual classifies insurgencies as struggles "designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government." Affirmative. Our fight is for legitimacy, for the people's confidence in an essential government institution, our schools. This is a battle for hearts and minds.
Unfortunately, the insurgents are skilled at information war, and many innocent Americans have succumbed to the "hoax" that privatization is good for the public school system. Many believe, for instance, that since some charter schools do a good job then you must be a charter school to do a good job. On the contrary, the positive attributes of some privately-run charter schools - like energetic and mission-driven teachers, innovative scheduling, etc. - are common in public schools. Consider the much-lauded Expeditionary Learning network: some schools are charters, many are not. (WHEELS, the EL school praised in our President's 2014 State of the Unionaddress, was not a charter.)
Alas, when good educators take advantage of the policy convenience of charters to start a new school, it can unwittingly advance the agenda of insurgent profiteers who are using charter schools and other tools to pad their billfolds with dollars designated for the care of children. Privatizing core public infrastructure is their aim. To understand grim reality of this threat assessment, one need look no further than theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a clever and vigorous organization, deliberately chipping away at public institutions across the country.
STRATEGY
What strategies can public school defenders use to thwart the agile ALEC and the privatization fundamentalists that are fueling this insurgency? To answer this The Public School Counterinsurgency Field Manual | T. Elijah Hawkes:
