Obama Makes It Easier To Explain Decline In Public Schools

Two or three years ago, if I tried to tell people that the problems in the public schools should be blamed on the bosses at the top, that is, the Education Establishment, I might not get too far.

People would object, what about the unconcerned parents? The lazy kids? The unions? What about rock ‘n roll, drugs, the internet, cell phones, and teenage hormones? Surely, the elite educators mean well. They just get caught up in fads. You can’t suppose they let the schools get dumb on purpose. Well, that would mean a conspiracy; and that’s crazy.

All my research, however, was pointing in the direction of intention and conspiracy. The fascinating questions became: why did they do it and how did they get away with it for so long?

Throughout the last 100 years, the Education Establishment was (it seems to me) utterly brilliant at two things: A) creating an array of impressive-sounding methods that didn’t work very well; and B) creating an array of alibis, coverups and sophistries so that the top educators themselves are never blamed for poor performance. Never.

These people stand at the apex of a huge pyramid. But somehow they don’t actually have anything to do with the results. Odd. These top educators are surely one of history’s most successful PR machines. Teachers would rather blame themselves. Parents denigrate each other, and their own kids. Everybody is guilty EXCEPT the people making the decisions.

But all this is changing now. I simply say, imagine people exactly like Barack Obama and his 50 czars in charge of the public schools for the past century. What would you get??

Vastly inflated bureaucracies and budgets? Check. Political and ideological meddling in what should be strictly educational decisions? Check. A relentless fondness for leveling, indoctrination, and political correctness?...

“If we want to improve the public schools, we have to remove ideology from the system, and kick the ideologues from power. This should be one of the goals people are voting for in November.”

Well, here we go again...What evidence do we have that government schools are reformable in any meaningful way? Americans have been talking about school “reform” for generations, and the schools, generation after generation, continue to “define social, moral, spiritual, and academic deviancy downward”, to borrow Daniel Moynihan’s phrase.

Now we have generations of parents and grandparents who have been sufficiently corrupted by their own government school “educations” that they are supportive of the corrupt values and practices of the government school establishment.

The problem is ultimately structural. Why should we think that our single-payer government school system is any more reformable than Soviet agricultural collectives or the British (single-payer) National Health Service?

Moreover, what could it possibly mean to take “ideology” out of the system? Everyone has an ideology - a theory of how the world works and what is real and what is not - that he holds explicitly or implicitly. Do you really want to sound like Moliere’s bourgeois gentleman who was amazed to learn that he had been speaking prose all of his life?

Put another way, all education is inherently religious - discipling students in some worldview or other. What makes you think that the hard left, which has controlled the government school for nearly 100 years or possibly more, would every willingly surrender its ideological/worldview power over our culture that it exercises through the government school system? And if it were to happen through “reform” it would indeed have to happen willingly. After all, the roughly $600 to $800 billion in cashflow that our “highly trained education professionals” have at their disposal buys a lot of friends. This is why “reform” (other than pouring more money down the rathole of government schools) never happens. The system as it stands serves those who control it well. If you enjoy futile pursuits, why not become a Civil War re-enactor specializing in Pickett’s Charge? At least that does no harm. Unfortunately, continuing to suggest that government schools can be “reformaed” is far from harmless.

The model is the mistake. The Philistine temple must be pulled down. There is no other way.

The “temple” can be pulled down by doing three things: 1. Conservatives MUST refuse to render their children to Caesar, 2. school bond levies must be defeated everywhere, and 3. forsenic audits of k-12 spending using GAAP must be done on a state-by-state basis.

All of these measures will deprive the government school establishment of funds. Because stable to increasing cashflow is all that keeps the peace among the disparate elements of the government school coalition of special interests, a significant reduction in funding (say 20%, although reductions of far less have resulted in districts going into financial cardiac arrest)would likely result in a “war of all against all” among the government school special interests. In addition, removing children reduces the “mindshare of the government education left.

You plainly mean well, but government school reform is a chimera. It is past time to give it up.

Oh, bless you, you understand, you’re a teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!! Me too & I work in a district that is so oppressive that Mondays seem like a walk to the gas chamber. We are expected to perform miracles.......impossible miracles. Ghetto administrations will never be replaced, teachers can’t complain, they basically expect us to work w/ non parented, non functioning children & turn them into Harvard scholarship students.

Anyone who doesn’t have up close experience w/ education...... you have NO idea how bad it truly is! Only other teachers know we are not exaggerating about the conditions we work under. On the front page of my newspaper it says Obama wants to lengthen the school year. Yeah, that will really help.........

Sorry, I saw your post & felt like a drowning woman reaching for the liferaft of someone who understands! Thanks.......we can’t & should not have to be parents for children who aren’t parented & then get all the blame.

I used to think, when I was young and had more radical notions that the schools oppress students & needed to be reformed.......... After teaching for 22 years & counting I can honestly say that the system is broken. It cannot ever be fixed. It will certainly not be fixed under the corrupt gaze of Arne Duncan; whose “Race to the Top” is nothing more that a glorified catfight intended to pit administrations against their teachers & have absurd expectations that can only be met w/ cheating & backstabbing. I guess that gives him more time to drive his children to private school. ( I am not anti private school.... 17 years of my teaching career have been spent in private education, but when you are the Education Secretary..... public school, thank you!)

You’re smart and write well; and I don’t dare to argue with you.

But I will tell you something funny. On that other site, there is a very vocal guy named altruist and he hates everything I write but from the OTHER direction. That I dare to criticize the Education Establishment, and suggest they may be conspiring to dumb down the country, drives him to liberal agonies; he has called me absurd and insane.

So you can see I’m actually sort of in the middle with my Reaganesque optimism.

(As for attacking on the financial side, I have elsewhere said that this may be the silver lining of the recession. Not enough money? Gee, that’s too bad. Let’s fire a thousand administrators and superintendents. A good start. But the first step is to get lots of conservatives into Congress. If some agree more with you, and some agree more with me, no matter, things will improve.)

The only thing in the middle of the road is road kill ;-)

For those who care about America and liberty, there is exactly one right answer - education by government must end.

Liberals own our single-payer government education system, and they are programming dysfunction into generation after generation. Why don’t you call for the restoration of America’s original education tradition, which had no compulsory education laws, was virtually entirely private, and produced the most literate country in the world? Be bold! You know this subject well, and you have an audience.

If you haven’t read Sam Blumenfeld’s “Is Public Education Necessary?”, you should get a copy. I know you would find it fascinating. FYI: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3374989519&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3Dis%2Bpublic%2Beducation%2Bnecessary%253F%26x%3D0%26y%3D0

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.