Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice
After today, this blog will take a winter break. Congress and state legislatures will recess. Schools will close for winter break. Universities that do the research on educational policy will break at semester’s end. And here at home, it’s time to cook and shop and prepare for the visit of adult children. If there is earth-shaking news on education, I’ll put out an EXTRA. Otherwise, check for a new post on January 4, 2016. Good wishes to you and yours! Enjoy your family’s traditions, some good food, great music, and a good book. It is OK to put off until 2016 the project of figuring out what the new ESSA will mean!
In Fire in the Ashes, a reflection on twenty-five years’ of writing about the challenges for families and schools in very poor communities, Jonathan Kozol considers the difference between charity and justice: “(C)harity has never been a substitute, not in any amplitude, for systematic justice and systematic equity in public education… (T)he public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well-prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give every child the feast of learning…. Charity and chance… are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy.” (p. 204)
Public education serves more than 50 million children in cities, towns, suburbs, and rural areas across the United States. Public schools are the quintessential institution of the 99 Percent. But these days, the policy that shapes our public schools is being increasingly driven by the focused investment of the wealthy philanthropists in the One Percent. Charity—by which wealthy donors choose their favorite worthy causes— has driven hedge fund money to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies in New York City, invested Gates Foundation money in Hillsborough County, Florida to experiment with merit pay for teachers based on econometric measures, and resulted in Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to charterize a large number of schools in Newark, New Jersey.
Charity can be disruptive and experimental—try something new, see whether it works. By its very definition, justice must be systemic, and it must embody the principles of adequate Zuckerbergs’ New Philanthropy Promotes Charity over Justice | janresseger:
