The Education Wars: It's Gonna Get Much Worse for Teachers

The worst thing of all is that a "Democratic" president is trying to implement the ideas the right wing have been pushing for years, which is a privatization of public education and thus a war against democracy itself:

The take away from that night is that the American political duopoly supports the privatization of public education. They honestly believe that injecting the profit motive into education is the way to make sure that all American children get a decent education. That is a major policy shift that is so harmonious with the corporate policy tune that no news operations expressed any surprise or outrage.

But, of course, it is an outrage. The privatization of schools is sold as "ingenuity" and as a way of "leveling the field" by offering that cornerstone of free market fundamentalist mythology, "choice". Give parents choice and all problems go away. Because education is like used cars.


Forget that there is exactly zero evidence that charter schools work. Forget that vouchers take as an assumption that children from more difficult backgrounds should be allowed to fail. Forget that the history of American education demonstrates that expansion of public schools and professionalization of the teaching profession--and civil service, collective bargaining protection for teachers--tracks perfectly to the improvement of American education.

Why are we making teachers the sole enemy? And why are we suddenly comfortable with the idea that less democracy is a good thing?

It's because our know-nothing politicians, including "Democrat" Barack Obama, are on the take.