“Gaslighting & Turnaround Schools” by Peggy Robertson from Peg With Pen
“Gaslighting & Turnaround Schools” by Peggy Robertson from Peg With Pen
By Peggy Robertson| Originally posted 12/28/2015 on Peg With Pen
I am currently working in a turnaround school. A turnaround school is a public school that has been deemed “failing” by policy makers. The policy makers inflict draconian, fascist measures on such schools in an effort to turn them around – aka – increase test scores. If they don’t increase test scores they bring the hammer down harder by firing teachers, handing the school over to a charter, or closing the school, and so on.
Turnaround schools are not failing. Rather, the truth is that the policies are the failures. The racist, classist, sexist policies are based on lies and false realities meant to create compliant worker bees who do as they are told to increase test scores, while ultimately allowing the corporate reformers to push forward other measures which increase profit, increase the privatization of our public schools, and finally, increase the power of the privileged. That’s it in a nutshell.
However, the factual process of turnaround in no way reveals to the public how this brutal takeover goes down. How to articulate the process has been at the forefront of my mind for the last five months as I found myself thrown head first into this madness. And indeed, it is a madness like no other – a combination of insane asylum and prison. As I tried to articulate it to a dear friend of mine, she said, “Peggy, you are being gaslighted.” I had never heard the term gaslighting. I immediately began to read about it. I owe much gratitude to this friend who has given me a framework I can use to explain this process.
My point in writing this blog is to expose the turnaround process for what it can be (not all turnarounds are necessarily as I describe), and allow those in the midst of this to figure out how to move forward. This is not a feel good blog with a happy ending. Ultimately, I don’t know how it will end for me, but I believe that the only way we will end the bigger picture of corporate education reform is through educating the public and educating ourselves so that together, we can form a plan of action to fight back. Gaslighting is designed to keep you in fight/flight mode – so it’s important to step back, understand it, and think it through, in order to determine your next step.
Gaslighting is such an insane reality to live in that it becomes incredibly difficult to focus on anything else except the ability to get through the day- it is designed intentionally so.
So let’s try to take a look at what’s really happening.
The first stage of Gaslighting is described as disbelief. Strange events, behaviors, and actions by others begin to occur. Perhaps you are told something that doesn’t seem true to you or simply just sounds bizarre. Perhaps someone you "Gaslighting & Turnaround Schools" by Peggy Robertson from Peg With Pen - Garn Press:
