Education's Death Knell
the culmination of years of right-wing attacks
I love education---real education. Real education requires real teaching, the kind Bell Hooks describes in Teaching to Transgress (1994), “…teaching that enables transgressions---a movement against and beyond boundaries.” Hooks describes education as a “…practice of freedom.” What passes for public education in America today is not that. Our current education system is a mash-up of corporatized, politicized, unionized, privatized, standardized, centralized, legalized, underfunded, misapplied, misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misunderstood education gobbledygook. It is ostensibly public with dubious capitalistic overlays; and I don’t love that. American public education is not about teaching and learning anymore. And it’s not student-focused. I wish it were.
Our nation’s education crisis exists to be sure, but it is not a result of bad teaching practices, bad teacher preparation, or bad students as some would have us believe. And it is not a failure of educational administrators to run quality schools. The crisis is our collective misinterpretation of what education really is, and it is a result of bad education policies, driven as they have been by corporate agendas ever since the roll-out of A Nation at Risk (Risk) in 1983, accompanied by relentless media misinformation. Risk used false propaganda and fear---“herd poisoning” as Aldous Huxley called it---to create an artificial crisis enabling corporation-driven government intervention. And that intervention, behind the smokescreen of reform and improvement, is what created our current real crisis in education.
Teaching and learning should never be scripted, not if we are interested in deep learning and critical thought. There should never be an absolute agenda governing teaching processes and practices. Teachers are individual human beings, as are our students; both should be active participants in the process, not passive consumers. If we are interested---and I am---in an education that values the individual critical-thinking human mind then we must commit to progressive pedagogy and scrap the current business and industry-driven model. What we are doing currently in the name of education is complete bull shit!
Hell I’m an educator folks. I’m the son of educators, the spouse of an educator, and the father of educators. I believe in the power of education to transform societies and the world---but that’s not what the current powers-that-be are interested in now is it? Our current (public education) model has been systematically corporatized to perpetuate domination and to provide American capitalism with an underclass of surplus labor. The radical right now has the power to hammer in the last (education accountability) nail.
I know it’s a risk now, speaking out about the current fascist coup in Washington, but we who believe in individual freedoms and real education, have no choice. Silencing the media, engendering fear in the minds of citizens who dare to criticize, and kidnapping education so that it becomes a propaganda tool for indoctrinating youth to the Reich’s agenda, are all fundamental to the fascist playbook.
Freedom of speech? Academic freedom? Right! Freedom in this country? Really? Ha! Here’s a news flash: freedom is an illusion folks. We are free as long as we do not buck the system too much; as long as we do not challenge the ruling class or disrupt its agendas or profit streams, or have the wrong skin color, a non-European name, or tattoo (except if its a white nationalist tattoo, i.e. the unqualified boy scout cosplay Secretary of Defense). The rule-of-law is dead! The LameStream media is now a lapdog rather than a Watchdog! The Constitution is being trampled under the jackboots of tRump’s thugs!
I want to make it very clear to regular folks that there is a whole lot of really good stuff going on in America’s public schools; stuff that needs to be talked about, but isn’t, because it is not good news that sells, but bad. Also, talking too much about the good stuff removes the fabricated need for reform and improvement, which then hurts corporate profits reliant upon perpetuating the lie that American education needs reform; which it does, but not for the reasons that you think.
We need reform from the reforms, and freedom from the corporate reformers. The corporatized system, with its bought-and-paid-for politicians, is the problem, not educators, their skills, or their training. The problem is that educated citizens capable of critical thought are a threat to authoritarian regimes. Don’t think (“Don’t Look Up!), just parrot the party line, keep running on the hamster wheel, and vote like we tell you to. It’s the story of every fascist takeover in history.
We educators (I’m retired now, after three decades in the trenches) have a tendency to play things close to the chest. I’ve done that for years; trying to be a politically correct, as much as is possible for me. I’m sick to death of whiney-ass administrators and department of education officials who are afraid to tell the truth; to take on the forces that are attacking our profession, and by default, our kids. I have zero patience for educators who don’t educate themselves and vote for their profession. I’ve screamed into the void for years, that educators cannot vote for Republicans. I’ve tried to explain that the long-game agenda for the radical right, has been to infiltrate Education with corporate/capitalistic mechanisms until they can finally privatize the system completely.
That time is here. The current regime in Washington, with the psychotic despot, uneducated, illiterate criminal-in-chief at the helm, has now rung the death Knell. They are abolishing the Department of Education, doing immeasurable harm to programs that help lesser served populations. They are attempting to re-write history and erase our sins as a nation; sins we have never admitted fully, but have made strides to correct; until now. Apparently slavery never happened. Native American genocide never happened. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are now essentially illegal. No person of color ever did a damn thing positive for our nation, and if you say they did, or try to give a leg up for under-served individuals, we’ll remove your federal funding, or like Oklahoma, threaten to take away your teaching credentials. Oh, and you will teach the Bible in K-12 classrooms, but you had better not talk about civil rights!
I’m not asking for permission to write these things—-my permission is granted by education, personal experience, age, and the First Amendment. Granted, The First Amendment has been trampled upon by the current Fascist regime in Washington, D.C., clandestine governmental agencies, Nazi billionaires, an abject corrupt Supreme Court, pathetic sycophants in Congress, and some state legislatures, but if telling the truth is illegal, then hell I’m a willing criminal.
My Native American blood gives me all the permission I need to teach about the history of atrocities and genocide at the hands of our government. My loyalty to the truth gives me all the permission I need to teach about our horrendous history of slavery and racism in America. I find is terribly ironic that in Germany, learning about Hitler’s reign of terror in that country, is required in German schools. Rather than try to ignore or justify the atrocities, they teach future generations about it so that history doesn’t repeat itself. Yet in our current run-up to fascism, the regime in power is following the playbook, and actually celebrating it.
My proclivity for teaching and saying real facts and truth during my career; my penchant, as an administrator, for challenging agenda-driven school boards, led to early retirement (62 1/2) within a year and a half of returning to Oklahoma. We came back to be near our ailing parents, our adult children, and our passel of grandchildren. I’m grateful to be near family, but the move effectively ended my education career; I did not fit in this assbackward state and its awful education system. I’m still certified, and I’m still open to the right opportunity, but not under this so-called leadership. And leaving the US to actually educate youth in another country is something we (my wife is an elementary teacher) are considering.
As for the fascist Nazis in D.C. and all their sycophants, these ghouls can fuck straight off! We will not comply! We will not submit! We will defeat fascism in the country we love.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag or the United States of America and to the republic for which it [once stood], one nation under [the christian god], [divided by an authoritarian regime], with Liberty and justice for [some].
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