Betsy DeVos (redux)

A word about my attitude regarding Betsy DeVos.

Our schools have been in a state of constant reform for over a century.  John Dewey published "The School and Society" in 1900.  Public education went on steroids with massive IV money infusions in 1957 with the Sputnik scare.  In 1968 the teachers organizations transmogrified from professional associations into trade unions.  And in 1983 the commission empanelled by President Reagan issued their report, "A Nation at Risk."

President Reagan's commission delivered at least two famous phrases:  the "rising tide of mediocrity" phrase and the "act of war" phrase.  I quote,

(a) The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people,
and
(2) If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

That was 1983.  Thirty-four years later, the public schools are in much worse condition.  At this point in our historical development, we can fairly say they have collapsed.

This collapse is not an "act of G-d".  It does not arise from drought or flood or earthquake.  There is no actual war or widespread starvation or social disruption.  And there is no mysterious "Invisible Hand" (pace, Adam Smith) that works against us.

Rather, our public schools are the necessary consequence of policies and practices that have been knowingly and intentionally implemented by individuals known to us, mainly the education schools professoriate ("The Ayatollahs of Education") and the leadership of the teachers unions, to whom I refer collectively as "The Education Mafia".  They have massive political power, they have been in charge of our schools for generations, and they are responsible.  It's all on them.

And, they cannot be persuaded.

Friends, there are only two possibilities left to us.  Either the Education Mafia remain in charge, and nothing happens until educational collapse leads to societal collapse, or we prise their death grip off the throat of public education.

The only important thing about Betsy DeVos is that she is not of the Education Mafia.  All the rest of what you read about her, in the NY Times and the Washington Post, is irrelevant shit.

Yeah, Whatever.

The NY Times does not like Betsy DeVos, President Trump's nominee for secretary of Education.  Yeah, whatever.

The president should close the U.S. Department of Education (or, as I like to call it, the Dept of Public Education, "DOPE"), which was Jimmy Carter's pay off to the teachers unions for their support in the 1976 elections.  There is no indication that Betsy DeVos, if confirmed, will do that, so meh.  On the principle that the alternative will probably be worse, however, DeVos should be confirmed.  A word on what "worse" means.

Let's not mince words, American public education has collapsed.  The numbers are grisly, and the underlying reality is much worse.  You must remember that most of the numbers we have, to weigh and measure public education, come from the Education Mafia themselves, and they have been cooking the books for three generations.

For example, any right thinking person will groan in despair when learning of the enormous gap in high school graduation rates, between White students and Black students.  At 47% graduating nationwide, an absolute majority of Black males will not graduate at all, giving rise to a nearly 30% gap from their White peers.  So, that's bad, but the reality is worse, and it is worse in at least two dimensions.

First, the average Black student who does graduate high school reads and calculates at the level of the average White 8th grader.  How and why this happens is your homework assignment, but it should be immediately obvious that, bad as the graduation rate is, reality is much worse.

Second, this terrible problem has existed for generations, so the Education Mafia is well aware.  And yet, knowing that many students, Black and White, fail to graduate or graduate with inadequate skills, they do nothing about it leaving these large numbers of students woefully unprepared for life.  Oh, the Education Mafia work really hard a remediation, but consider carefully what that means.

Remediation means they force students to remain in an endeavor for which they have amply demonstrated the lack of interest or aptitude or both, never mind that it patently does not work (we have been at it a while, you know).  Remediation is mainly a harbinger of educational failure.  What about something else?  Vocational training, anyone?  Nope.  Oh, there is some.  Not remotely enough.  Why?  Why not a lot more vocational training or something else, anything else, just not the same old, tired, failing program that has afflicted us all our lives?

The people who have been in charge of our schools for the past 60 to 100 years (depending on how you count), the architects of this disaster, the people whom I affectionately call the Education Mafia, are prisoners of their own ideology.  If you read their literature, which I have done as penance for my sins, there is not a hint of an alternative to the Existing Order.  To the contrary, they circle the wagons against any possibility of reform, hence their animus towards Betsy DeVos.  The Education Mafia are incapable of reform.  With the Education Mafia firmly in charge, the public schools are unreformable.

(BTW, I am talking about true reform.  It is easy to tell when you do not have it.  If any proposed reform ends up leaving the same people in charge, and the same people are doing the same things in the same ways, you have not achieved reform.  Contrariwise, when the Education Mafia scream like banshees, you know you are on to something different.)

So, if we are not going to close the DOPE, the next best thing is to bring in an outsider, somebody who has not drunk the Kool-aid of the schools of education, someone who is not a votary of the "ayatollahs of education", as I like to call the education school professoriate.  This person should bring in the experts, both the ed school ayatollahs and the serious critics of the ayatollahs, of which there are a few.

We need a person who is able to look at the problem with new eyes.  Let this person listen to the arguments on both sides.  Let him, or her, consider the track record of the Education Mafia, and let him proceed accordingly.

Is Betsy DeVos that person?  Probably not.  By all accounts, DeVos is, herself, slave to an old idea, charter schools, that has an uninspiring record nearly 30 yrs long.

So, if President Trump will not close down the DOPE and Betsy DeVos is not the reformer we so desperately need, then <<<YAWN>>> pardon me while I go get a cup of coffee and sort out my sock drawer or something.  Oh!  Will ya look at the time...

The Educational Circus Act

I once read about an army officer famous among his colleagues for battle plans that went into extraordinary detail.  In a scathing indictment, one fellow officer said, "Yes, he takes into account everything except the disposition of the enemy."  In the same way, the Education Mafia seem to have a lot on their minds, not including the education of children.

In other words, the Education Mafia, like the misguided army officer whose name I have long forgotten, are so consumed with tangential details they have lost the point.

When my son, who is half Asian, was in NYC public schools, not one time was I concerned about whether he was the darkest-skinned child in the class, or the lightest.  I was concerned ONLY that he was safe and that he was getting an education.

Safety and education, nothing else mattered to me.  Yet, I find my concerns nowhere in this NY Times article about the NYC public schools.  And, if it is true, as the article suggests, that many parents are also consumed by tangential issues, then it is no wonder the public schools have collapsed.

In 1954, when the SCOTUS decided Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, one could argue that integration was the only way to break the back of real institutional racism.  Astonishingly, that was not the argument.

Beginning with the amicus curiae brief by the Justice Dept (sic!), arguing that segregated schools hurt the American effort in The Cold War, the court considered cultural assimilation, states' rights, judicial activism, the psychological effects of segregation, and I don't know what else.  It seems they considered everything, not including the education of children.  And you could see that in the final decision,

"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. ...
"Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children."

"Upon the colored children."  Why not also upon the White children?  This was the beginning of the magical White child.  It seems that something magical happens to Black children when they sit beside White children.  And integration became a fetish.

Please understand, I am not against integration.  It's just that I care about education more.  Since the 1954 decision, however, rather than taking care of business, rather than grappling with the really difficult issues of teaching children, politicians and education theorists and  school administrators have succumbed to the toxic distraction of racial integration.  I would be all for integration, if the Education Mafia were taking care of business, but they dissipate their time and energy, and large sums of public funds, in this and other issues that have precious little to do with teaching and learning.

And it shows.