We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, September 26, 2010

What is Obama’s Education Agenda?

by Katie Quarles from Socialist Alternative

The answer according to this author is that it isn't much different than Bush's.
More and more, parents, teachers and civil rights activists are seeing Obama’s policies as a continuation of Bush’s NCLB. Obama, like Bush before him, likes to blame “bad” teachers and teachers’ unions for the poor state of education. This is an attempt by the bosses and their politicians, including Obama, to divert blame for the destruction of the young people’s futures - particularly the wholesale destruction of jobs - by their system. Everyone who has been in school knows that some teachers are more skilled than others. Nevertheless, the quality of schools is determined far more by the wealth of the community than the skills of teachers. By heaping blame on teachers, the bosses seek to divide us when we should be uniting to defend and improve public education.

Obama, like Bush and Clinton, likes to present charter schools as the answer to the problems of education. There are charter schools that perform well and those that don’t. But by removing many of the more motivated students and parents from the public schools, they are guaranteeing that the remaining public schools - especially in inner cities, where the charters proliferate - will go from bad to worse.
The article goes on to report activist campaigns in various parts of the country to fight back against cutbacks and school closures.