For the Covid-19 winter holidays, I have gathered some cartoons that poke fun at what transpires in homes, schools, and Santa’s place. Enjoy!
We experience vertigo in the uncanny valley because we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years fine-tuning our nervous systems to read and respond to the subtlest cues in real faces. We perceive when someone’s eyes squint into a smile, or how their face flushes from the cheeks to the forehead, and we also — at least subconsciously — perceive the absence of these organic barometers. Simulations make us feel like we’re engaged with the nonliving, and that’s creepy.
Have you tried schooling them at home during the pandemic? For most people, it hasn’t been as easy as they thought it would be. Never mind the fact that the only people who are helping their kids at home are those who can afford to stay home, or who can work from home, or who have been laid off so they’re home anyway. Many parents and caregivers have found that a well-trained teacher, who understands curriculum and child development is a luxury that we didn’t know we needed till it was gone.
Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
And it’s going to get worse no matter who the next U.S. Secretary of Education is because Indiana’s public school policy is determined by the Indiana legislature along with the Indiana State Board of Education…
The pandemic is causing teachers to flee the profession
Our public education system may be on the verge of collapse. Indeed, most families with children enrolled in public school find patchwork systems of in-person and virtual instruction underwhelming at best. Teachers are overwhelmed and unable to keep stitching it together. Something has to CONTINUE READING:
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone… | Live Long and Prosper
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we look at President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of Connecticut public schools commissioner Miguel Cardona as the next secretary of education, tapping a third Latinx person to join his Cabinet — the first time ever.
Cardona is a Puerto Rican, grew up in public housing, spoke Spanish only when he first entered public schools. He began his career in education as a fourth grade teacher, rose to be Connecticut’s youngest school principal at age 28, then assistant superintendent of a school district with just 9,000 students in his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut. He became the state’s top schools official just last August and its first Latinx person to hold the position.
During the pandemic, Cardona has advocated for the reopening of schools, though only about one-third of Connecticut’s public school students are currently able to attend in-person classes. He’s also pushed to use federal aid to buy personal protective equipment for teachers and classrooms. And his administration allocated federal funds to purchase laptops and internet access for students who remain at home.
If confirmed, Cardona will replace Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who urged career employees at the Education Department earlier this month to, quote, “be the resistance” when the Biden administration comes into power next month, according to a recording of her meeting obtained by Politico.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush. She’s a historian of education, best-selling author. Her most recent book is Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools. She blogs at DianeRavitch.net.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Diane Ravitch. We’re going to talk about DeVos’s record, but we want to start off by talking about the significance of what, for many, was a surprise pick to be the education secretary.
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, yes, it was a surprise pick, because Dr. Cardona is not known outside of Connecticut. And in the early discussions about who might be selected as commissioner, his name was not mentioned.
The good thing is, first of all, he’s not Betsy DeVos, and every educator in America, or almost every educator, will be thrilled about that. But, secondly, he’s a public school person. He went to public schools. His children go to public schools. He’s been in public schools throughout his career. And that’s a big plus for many people who have been watching the attacks on public education and on teachers for the past four and more years.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Diane Ravitch, I’m wondering — as you were saying, it was a surprise, the Miguel Cardona pick. Many, of course, progressives for years have been pushing for Democratic presidents to name Linda Darling-Hammond, the California educator, as secretary of education, but she was on the transition group that eventually, apparently, pushed for Cardona. And I believe — I believe Cardona may be — he’s not the first Latino to be named secretary of education. Back when you were in the White House administration, there was Lauro Cavazos, who was President H.W. Bush’s secretary of education. But I believe that Cardona may be the first Puerto Rican, person of Puerto Rican ancestry, ever to serve on a U.S. Cabinet, on a president’s Cabinet. So that is certainly a breakthrough in terms of Latino CONTINUE READING: Diane Ravitch: Biden’s Pick for Education Secretary Must Overturn DeVos’s Attack on Public Schools | Democracy Now!
During her tenure as secretary of education, Betsy DeVos repeatedly asked Congress to allocate billions of dollars for vouchers for religious and private schools. She was repeatedly rebuffed. Even Republican members of Congress were unwilling to use the federal education budget to pay for vouchers. After all, most of their constituents’ children attend public schools.
After the pandemic struck, DeVos tried again. Late last March, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which allocated $13.2 billion for K–12 education. Congress expected that the money would be shared, as federal education funds typically are, among the nation’s nearly 100,000 public and 7,000 charter schools, as well as private schools based on the number of low-income students they enroll. DeVos instead directed states to share the money allotted to public schools with private and religious schools that enrolled middle-income and affluent students. The NAACP and several states responded with lawsuits, arguing that her order was illegal. Three federal judges in different parts of the country ruled against DeVos, and she backed down.
But the Trump administration found another way to enrich charter and private schools. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), also part of the CARES Act, was supposed to rescue small businesses. Lobbyists for the charter industry, however, encouraged charter schools to apply as nonprofits, thus double-dipping into both the public school and PPP funds (public schools were ineligible for PPP funding). Private and religious schools also qualified for PPP funds as nonprofits. Therefore, through a bill supposed to aid small businesses at risk of bankruptcy, thousands of charter, private, and religious schools received an average of about $855,000 each, compared to about $134,500 per public school through CARES. Religious schools of every denomination, elite private schools, and more than one thousand charter schools received anywhere from $150,000 to $10 million each according to a database compiled by a website called COVID Stimulus Watch. Antelope Valley Learning Academy, a charter school in California, received $7.8 million. The for-profit Academia Corporation charter school chain won $28.6 million. Buckingham Browne & Nichols, an elite private school in CONTINUE READING: The Dark History of School Choice | by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books
