Happy New Year! Gird Your Loins!
Happy New Year! I hope 2017 brings you health, happiness, and good times with family and friends.
2017 will be a dangerous time for our nation.
Somehow, a man was elected as president who has no experience or qualifications or knowledge. He is not a “populist,” the term adopted by the media. He is a white nationalist and a plutocrat who said whatever he needed to say to get elected. He has chosen as his Secretary of Education a woman who is a zealot for religious education and private providers. She is not an educator. She has never worked in education. She did not got to public schools, nor did her children. She does not like public schools. She is contemptuous of our public schools. She likes charter schools, cyber charters, vouchers, and anything other than public schools. She is a billionaire who has spread millions to elect other zealots for school choice, despite the fact that it is no solution to the problems of public education, and despite the fact that every dollar that goes to a charter school or voucher school is taken away from a public school. She seeks the destruction of public education.
We will stand strong in support of the commons. We will not let this pampered billionaire destroy what belongs to us. We will fight her in the states and in the districts. We will reach out to our elected officials, local and state and Congressional. We will remind them that the public schools are an essential part of our democracy. We will ask Republicans and Democrats alike to defend our public schools against the Trump administration’s determination to privatize them.
Join the fight. Stand with your allies. Join the Network for Public Education. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a worthy one. It is a fight for democracy against autocracy. We are citizens first, not consumers. We will fight to maintain separation between church and state. We will fight for our democratic legacy. We will fight for democratically controlled community schools that accept ALL children, no matter when they show up, no matter whether they can speak English or whether they have disabilities.
This is the challenge for the next four years. It begins in a few weeks.
Do not be afraid. We have numbers. We must fight to sustain our democracy and our public schools. We will and we hope you will join us.Happy New Year! Gird Your Loins! | Diane Ravitch's blog: