W.H. Auden speaks to us, about his time, about our time:
W. H. Auden – 1907-1973
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge CONTINUE READING: “A Low Dishonest Decade”–W.H. Auden | Diane Ravitch's blog
Perhaps no other word is more central to charter school discourse than the word “choice.” “Choice” is not only a central concept in charter school discourse but a persistent source of disinformation. Disinformation refers to the deliberate hiding of the real context and relations of things so as to disorient people and cause them to act against their own interests while making them think that they are acting in their own interests. It is a form of false consciousness or anti-consciousness, and we all pay a heavy price for it.
Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools that siphon billions of dollars a year from public schools have long valorized “choice” and used the rhetoric of “choice” to distort thinking, mislead the public, and promote the private interests of owners of capital. Under the veneer of high ideals, “choice” has consistently been used by school-choice advocates and corporate school reformers to eliminate a modern conception of government, education, rights, and social responsibility, and to promote the outdated idea and practice of an education marketplace where education is seen as nothing more than a commodity and parents and students are treated as consumers, not humans or citizens with rights that belong to them by virtue of their being.
Confounding Two Different Notions of “Choice”
“Choice” in the most basic and straightforward sense of the word is simply the act of selecting something from a list of alternatives. It is something people CONTINUE READING: Charter School Disinformation About "Choice" | Dissident Voice
As of this writing (11 AM ET, Nov 4, 2020), the 2020 election is not completely over. Ballots are still being counted in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. The Democrats have likely flipped two Senate seats (Colorado and Arizona), but lost one (Alabama). Other Republican Senate races are not called but are likely to remain the same. So with a net gain of one seat, the Senate will remain under the control of Mitch McConnell.
HEALING WILL TAKE TIME
The Racist Genie is Out of the Bottle (again)
This post by Russ Walsh was originally published on November 11, 2016. Even if Joe Biden eventually gains enough electoral votes to become president, the rise of white supremacy during the last four years is not likely to disappear quickly.
Read the whole post. Not much has changed since 2016.
This morning the New York Times published an editorial asking that the President-elect directly and immediately denounce the hate and let his CONTINUE READING:
2020 Medley #24: No More Political Ads Issue | Live Long and Prosper
Jeff Bryant reports here that too many school districts failed to prepare teachers how to teach remotely, leaving them to improvise.
He begins:
Michael Barbour, a professor at Touro University California and an expert on K-12 online learning, believes that more than half of the nation’s school superintendents “should be fired.”
Improving remote learning would have meant creating spaces for teachers to collaborate and share models of effective online instruction and lesson planning.
His blistering criticism stems from the fact that, deep into the 2020-2021 school year, many schools are still struggling with virtual learning during the pandemic.
Stories of school districts’ online learning systems crashing are widespread. Teachers complain about not being included in decisions about online curriculum and pedagogy. Alarming numbers of students are not engaged or not showing up, especially in low-income areas and among communities of color.
The chaos is especially concerning given that 76% of CONTINUE READING: Jeff Bryant: How Bad Leadership Created a Crisis for Public Schools During the Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog
It’s early Wednesday afternoon and, despite President Trump’s authoritarian declaration of victory, the final results of our Presidential election are still in doubt.
Earlier this week, I published Ideas & Resources About What & How To Teach The Day After The Election – Please Share Your Own Advice & Plans, which shared a variety of suggestions of how we teachers could handle this and other election scenarios in the classroom.
Today’s post is NOT a repeat of those strategies.
Instead, I want to talk about what I think we teachers, our unions, and others should consider as broader policy actions in response to this election, no matter what its final outcome.
This election shows us is that nearly half of the voters in our country support a man who has implemented almost countless racist policies, relentlessly attacked the rights of workers, and devastated environmental protections. He has worked to undermine public education and, of course, led a disastrous policy responding CONTINUE READING: What Might The Results Of This Presidential Election Suggest That Teachers (& Others) Should Do Going Forward? | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Trump can view a neo-nazi rally and declare there are good people on both sides. America says, "Yes sure, there's good in everyone." He can continue to insist on the guilt of the Central Park Five, even after they've been demonstrated to be innocent. America says, "Well, maybe that DNA evidence was false. After all, Biden might listen to scientists instead of the voices in Donald Trump's head, and we all know what that means."
Trump can get up from his television at 2:30 AM and declare that he's won, though there's absolutely no evidence to support his contention. He can tell us he wants to halt counting in states where he's ahead and continue it in states where he's behind. He can say he's going to his hand-picked Supreme Court to make sure that happens. America says, "Yeah, let's allow the court to decide. After all, they have those black robes so they must know what's right."
Trump can discount foreign meddling in US elections. He can blame it on his opponents. He can express admiration for vicious dictators in North Korea and Russia. He can look the CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Who Are We?