The Secret Everyone Knows but No One Talks About
apple.news/AttYbsjcHQCeSBbcVu44gjA
Anyone who reads this blog will not be surprised with the big picture on this issue… but I was astonished at how wide the disparity is. In a plutocracy money matters most.
According to Politicians and Pundits, the Road to Riches is the Road to Fulfillment
Yesterday’s NYTimes featured an Upshot article by Kevin Carey titled “Can Data Ward Off College Debt? New Strategy Focuses on Results”. Unsurprisingly given the avariciousness of the current POTUS, the pro-privatization tilt of his Secretary of State, the GOP, and the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party, and the unfailing faith in Capitalism on the part of many voters, the EARNINGS are the “results” the “new strategy” intends to measure. Need evidence of this assertion? Here are two paragraphs from Mr. Carey’s essay, describing the “new accountability system” proposed by Senator Lamar Alexander:
Mr. Alexander proposed a “new accountability system” based on loan repayment rates for individual programs within colleges. This, said Mr. Alexander, “should provide colleges with an incentive to lower tuition and help their students finish their degrees and find jobs so they can repay their loans.”
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Alexander, despite their strong criticism of President Obama on education, are following in the footsteps of his regulatory crackdown on for-profit colleges and short-term certificate programs. Rather than evaluate sprawling educational conglomerates based on the average results of hundreds of programs, the Obama rules disqualified specific programs whose graduates didn’t earn enough money to pay back their loans.
In earlier blog posts I railed against President Obama’s metrics because, like those of Mr. Alexander and the POTUS, they assumed that the purpose of college was to land a job that pays enough to allow the student to pay back loans for college. In effect, college exists to make certain banks collect enough interest to remain profitable.
Mr. Trump and Ms. DeVos know the facts about debt… and presumably Mr. Carey does as well. While only 6% of college students in NYS attended for-profit schools, 41% of those who defaulted came from those schools. Discussions that link earnings to majors sidestep this issue. The founder of Trump University, his Secretary of Education, and the many legislators who receive donations from profiteers who want less regulation are banding together to divert our collective attention away from the real problem and, at the same time, reinforcing the idea that college is about getting a high paying job and not “guiding people toward more enlightened, fulfilling lives.”
And here’s the bottom line: the policies promulgated by our legislators and pundits, assume our lives can only be fulfilled if we make a lot of money… and the more we earn the more we will be fulfilled.
Bernie Sanders Is Bringing Back the Most Underrated Education Policy
Over the past two decades, education reform has been a major topic of debate and policymaking, from President Bush’s No Child Left Behind bill to President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative. Reforms have generally followed the pattern of adapting mechanisms from the for-profit business world to “fix” supposedly broken aspects of the public education system: weakening teacher
— Read on www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/21/bernie-sanders-bringing-back-most-underrated-education-policy
Last week it was standing up against for profit charter schools. This week it’s standing up for the benefits of integrated schools. The silence of other candidates on both of these issues is deafening. Yet I read that Bernie Sanders got a chilly reception at an event sponsored by “She the People” a group that looks to push more women of color to the polls, in SC while Joe Biden was applauded. Maybe Bernie Sanders’ positions will become clearer in the months ahead… and maybe some folks will look more closely at Joe Biden’s record.
Another Assault on Free Speech: Banning Books on Injustice in Prisons
AP writer Terry Tang recently reported that the ACLU is appealing a decision by the AZ Department of Corrections to ban the book “Chokehold: Policing Black Men.” Written by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, Ms. Tang describes the book as one that “…examines law enforcement and mass incarceration through its treatment of African American men.” And she indicates that the author is at a loss to understand why his book is being banned:
Butler, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University, said his publisher was notified by email in March that his book had “unauthorized content.” The notice did not specify what led to the decision but warned that some aspect of the 2017 book was “detrimental to the safe, secure, and orderly operation of the facility.”
Butler said he is mystified as to what raised alarm bells. He uses the title, which is a maneuver police have used to restrain a suspect by the neck, throughout the book as a metaphor for how society and law subjugate black men. Nowhere does Butler advocate violent or retaliatory behavior.
“I disavow violence because first, I think it’s immoral, and second, because it wouldn’t work,” Butler said. “I’ve received letters from several inmates who have read ‘Chokehold’ while they are serving time. No one has indicated that reading ‘Chokehold’ has caused any problems in prison.”
I find it hard to believe that a book that the author states does not advocate “violent or retaliatory behavior” could be “detrimental to the safe, secure, and orderly operation of the facility.” But I DO understand how a book dealing with the treatment of African American men might provoke some unsettling questions in prisons that currently house them in disproportionate numbers.
It strikes me that one of the major purposes of schooling is to raise unsettling questions and promote open-minded dialogue. In prison, though, I have the sense that compliance and conformity in behavior and thinking are more important. I would like to believe that outside of prison things are different… but as long as students are being trained to pass examinations with one-right-answer I might be deluded.
Bible Bills Proliferate… Can Bills Mandating Christianity as a State Religion Be Far Behind?
Washington Post writer Julie Zausmer reports that several states are considering laws that would mandate that high schools offer courses on the Bible, using a law recently passed by Kentucky as the model. From Ms. Zausner’s article it is evident that “Project Blitz”, a nationwide effort by “activists on the religious right” is using an ALEC-like model to promote these bills.
I usually try to avoid “slippery slope” arguments, but the recent abortion laws adopted by at least eight states make me think that “Project Blitz” is an effort to slip the nose of the camel under a tent, and the camel in this case is an effort to make Christianity a State religion. It is noteworthy that only BIBLE instruction is mandated, in effect ensuring that public schools offer only Bible instruction in the same way madrases in the Middle East offer exclusive instruction in the Koran.
I found Ms. Zauzmer’s report chilling. I was unsettled to reading about students who analogized Bible reading to shooting hoops in the gym, who read the Bible from cover to cover, who believe that the Bible is “…more important than any other book I could be reading”, and who feel comforted that the schools are offering the creation story as opposed to “evolution and the big bang”. I recall that when I was a teenager in the early 1960s our teachers— and even our minister— encouraged us to question things for by questioning we would expand our knowledge and shore up our understanding.
The wall between church and state is a mental construct, one that can be erased by zealous legislators or legislators who fear being displaced by candidates whose beliefs and convictions are stronger and more passionate. We need to keep that figurative wall in place if we hope to retain our democracy.
Vote even if you think it doesn’t matter…. and be grateful you still can!
