Category Archives: schools

The Bullying Society

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Diane Ravitch has this up.

As I said in my comment there, bullying from children is just a reflection of the adults and culture around them.  We have shows like “Survivor” that encourage groups to pick apart others and zero in on a target.  My Boomer generation didn’t have violent video games which desensitizes one to violence.

I think these all feed into the bullying mentality. Pick on those that are different or weaker. Keep at it until they disappear–either through suicide or crushing their soul until their light goes out…the effect is still the same.

It has even broader implications than “just” bullying–creativity comes from thinking differently.  Bullying will crush the ones that think differently, limiting the greater impact they might have had on the world.

I don’t think the solutions are campaigns telling kids to stop bullying.  It’s too complicated a problem.  And it’s not the kids fault as much as it is society’s.

Detroit, Broke City

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(I didn’t get much sleep last night, and my ADD is always worse when I’m tired, so forgive any faux pas.)

I’m flipping through the channels this morning and land on CNBC with Dan Gilbert, the grand pooh bah wizard of rejuvenating Detroit.  I only caught the last part of his schpiel, but what I was hearing made me sick.  He spoke of bringing in “interns”.  Interns? Yep, he’s bringing in young minds that can be manipulated into believing what they’re doing is innovative and exciting and the right thing to do….

…I find it more than mildly curious that 50-somethings are by appearances being ignored.

And it’s disturbing how the article below reads that the sharks are circling to see how much they can get away with–everyone is watching to see who wins the “tug of war” between the unions and the moneyed interests.

From the NYTimes article:

….Detroit officials have proposed paying off small fractions of what the city owes, they have indicated they intend to treat investors holding general obligation bonds as having no higher priority for payment than, for instance, city workers — a notion that conflicts with the conventions of the market…

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An obligation is an obligation.  I don’t know why the city would be any less obligated to the workers who labored and were made a promise than to bond holders who were also made promises but did nothing to earn that but sit on their butts?  In my view, EVERYBODY should be made to give a little.  Everybody loses a little bit for the good of the whole.

Now I know folks will be saying that “investors won’t invest if they aren’t getting top dollar…”  I don’t believe that if they are still making money for doing nothing that they are going to pass on that opportunity.  Investing is a risk….why shouldn’t the investors share in the losses as well as the gains?

(Ironically, or not, I’m playing David Crosby’s “Hero”  )

My other blogs on Detroit here and here . Note the link to Dan Gilbert profiteering off of the carcass of Detroit.

Background on the “Emergency Manager”

 

A post script

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A post script to this blog…what I meant when I referred to Katrina is that I told them I thought the George W. Bush administrations’ slow response to the emergency was racist.  It was September, 2005, so it was only a month after the storm hit, but it was apparent to me.  What really shocked me was how only the one black woman agreed with me, again, subtly, but she saw it, too.    This why I probably began to think that Daniels was dismantling or weakening the Civil Rights Commission and blurted that out.

When I think about that interview and how I missed such a fabulous opportunity–a  life changer- because it would have been a career I would have enjoyed with its daily change, using the creative along with the analytical, and fighting for the underdog—and all the misery that mercury has caused me, I want to cry in despair.   This poison has taken so much more than can be neasured…

I give myself 24 hours to feel sorry for myself, and then move on…

Bill Gates hasn’t destroyed public education yet….

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…but damn,he sure is trying with everything he’s got.

<sigh>  I was all ready to rip into Gates once again… but I’m halfway through the article of Chronicles of Higher Education….and this one sentence that Gates “just wants to get more people through the system with college degrees so that it will lift them out of poverty…”

bwahahahaha.  That’s rich.

Then, further down, they disclose that Gates Foundation is supporting the Chronicles of Higher Education financially.  I think I’ve already read that somewhere, but alas, the brain didn’t bring it up…the article is clearly a promo by Gates…so yeah….

So…I’ll have to refer to previous blogs on Gates…

Here.

Here. Silencing teachers.

Here. Supporting Brookings Institute that dismissed Diane Ravitch

Here. Not content with just controlling education, but the food supply, as well.

Here.

Indianapolis schools target for charter takeover

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Diane Ravitch has this up on the continuing guttering of public schools….now with Indianapolis in its sights.

This sentence pretty much tells you they’re up to no good:

Kloth’s been loath to share the NEO Plan with taxpayers through Indy’s media. He especially didn’t want this columnist to have a copy.

Keep out the press so that we can do our dirty work in the dark before the public knows we’ve taken their key to a better life away from them and given them junk instead.

And then there’s this:

Since African-American researchers were forbidden to participate in NEO, I did my own research.

And this:

African-American students have a greater higher risk of attending a low performing school in Indianapolis/Marion County than whites and Hispanics.

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Black folks should be all over this.  A clever way to get Separate but Equal schools.

Obama and the Education Fiasco?

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One of the commenters on Diane Ravitch’s site has this link up .  An excellent timeline on what has been going on behind the scenes with *cough* education reform.

I really, really, hope that Barack Obama has changed his mind regarding this–as Diane Ravitch did when she came to realize that education reform was actually turning schools into for-profit centers.

From the link:

“When teachers are given powerful opportunities for career advancement, ongoing professional growth and recognition for outstanding achievement, we see increased student achievement in TAP schools,” Lowell Milken said in a December 2008 press release. “Chicago TAP schools are off to a strong start in continuing efforts to achieve these goals.”

Milken, unmentioned in most accounts, has a vested financial interest in school reform efforts and “fixing failing schools.”

That’s because Milken is a major investor in K12 Inc., a corporation traded on Wall Street that sells online schooling and curriculum to state and local governments. Milken invested $10 million in K12 Inc. in 2000, a stake that is now worth over $125 million, according to a July 2008 article in Forbes.

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Milken is full of it, to put it bluntly.  Nobody who knows anything about teachers and education would ever make such an idiotic statement.  Most teachers are in the profession because they want to see children learn, NOT because they want “career advancement”.  Their professional growth comes with experience….there is no substitute for that and no amount of money can magically *poof* experience.

Truly, to say that a student’s achievement is the teacher’s achievement is, in my view, taking away from the student’s hard work.  A good teacher is only part of the student-parent-teacher equation.  ALL of them play an important role in how well the student does.

When I first went to college, I wanted to be a teacher.  When I discussed this with my college advisor, she discouraged me from going that route–she said the jobs wouldn’t be there.  I wonder what she knew and when she knew it??  Anyway, I decided to go into Communications so that I could make documentaries and still somewhat “teach”.

However, when I was on what was supposed to be a progressive jobs website, there was Teach for America.  I applied, writing in my application how I had helped my daughter overcome dyslexia and learn to read.  I wanted to teach in inner city schools, I told them, so I could help the little ones with such learning hurdles.

I was turned down flat.  Not even an interview.

Knowing what I know now, it is obvious they were never interested in educating kids.  They didn’t want folks who were passionate and truly wanted to help kids learn.

When you couple this with the military in schools, it’s truly scary, indeed, on what is happening to our schools.  God help us.

More on Fort Wayne Vouchers

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Karen Francisco, of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, made a comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog that was outstanding.

It pretty much outlines what these creeps are getting away with–robbing the public schools of funds while laughing all the way to the bank:

Bakke’s company to operate two underperforming schools. In addition, an out-of-state real estate investment trust — EPT Properties — will continue to collect about $1 million a year for the charter school lease.

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Indiana Charters: Show me the money

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Diane Ravitch has a blog up on the Indiana Charter schools playing the shell game of accountability.  Now you see it, now you don’t…well, you never really did see accountability…

The financial profits aspect turns my stomach to no end…

And Gates Foundation being involved….well, there’s a red flag if there ever were a red flag.  My blogs on Gates here and here and here and here, on the Gates Foundation and Brookings Institute that tossed Diane Ravitch aside when she began to question what was happening to public education.

 

Bradley Foundation

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PRWatch has this up on the behind-the-scenes work of the Bradley Foundation.

From the article:

In advance of the 2012 elections, Bradley was revealed as the secret funder that had bankrolled giant billboard ads, exclusively in neighborhoods of color, stating “Voter Fraud is a Felony” during a period when voter ID was on hold in Wisconsin and many were confused as to its status. It funded groups that employed James O’Keefe, whose heavily-edited undercover videos hyped voter fraud allegations and helped take down ACORN, which had helped millions of low-income people register to vote. It also funded the legal advocacy group that represented O’Keefe.

Both Bradley and Searle have funded the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promoted voter ID laws in states across the country. And in the wake of Shelby County, ALEC-inspired voter ID bills and other restrictions will likely take effect across the South. As many as eleven percent of registered voters don’t have government-issued photo ID and would be unable to vote under the laws, with those percentages even higher among communities of color and students.

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(In case you missed it, James O’Keefe has crawled out from the rock he was under (after pleading guilty to misrepresenting himself as a telephone employee at Mary Landrieu’s office)  and is now proclaiming to be a journalist who was victimized. Bwahahahahahahaha….seriously….bwahahahahaha.   Let’s hope that his *cough* journalism efforts land him in jail for a looong time this go around…)

Be sure to click on the link explaining the Bradley foundation and its links to none other than….the Kochs and the John Birch Society.  Also, the link for  “group that brought both challenges”  is very informative.  Truly, their motives are to go back to “separate but equal” status of education.   Yeah, we all know how that worked out.   And the Searle connection…you know, one has to consider all the possibilities of drug companies that are behind racist overtures.  Kind of scary, isn’t it?

Good God,  these people  are control freaks.  And evil.

More on ALEC

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From the last post, Center for Media and Democracy has this up on filing suit for Ethics investigation of unreported gifts.

I really wanted to get access to the Financial Times article that includes John Kerry’s dirty fingers in the pie, but I don’t have a subscription….can Kerry get any farther from the Vietnam protester that he once was?  What the hell happened to him?

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Here is a group fighting back against the privatization of public interests.  What bothers me about this is that I don’t see language here that expressly denies privatization, but rather, it seeks to make more stringent rules.  Making rules is good, don’t get me wrong, but to me, privatization should be illegal when taxpayers have already foot the bill for building roads (and keeping them maintained with paving and such); when taxpayers paid for parking meters; when taxpayers built huge water reservoirs, when taxpayers paid for library books that are now being dumped and then sold by so-called ‘friends of the library”…and on….

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