Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Dismantling Schools to Privatize Education

by Eco.Soul.Intellectual
After the United States was founded, there were three institutions that were forged into the country's development in order to progress the new nation and disseminate the democratization process in quickening speed.

The institutions were the Post Office, the Free Press, and Education.

Soon free education was a national debate. Should it be the responsiblity of the US to fund education? The overwhelming answer was yes, and women were included. As a result, it was discovered that a more literate and educated society would be exponentially creative, productive, and engaging citizens.

Now of course, this discourse occurred within the realms of whites who at the time were the only ones who could be US citizens. Nevertheless, once enslaved black people were Emancipated, the resurrection of schools throughout the South for former slaves paralleled an economic growth in the country.

Just like after the Revolutionary War, those who were educated began to invent technologies that afforded easier functionings of society. Great thinkers were developed and re-constructed the flaws of social order. Women, yes women, and people of color, provided an essential perspective in the meaning of citizenship.

The United States grew, and flourished.

Literacy, hence, education provides you the option of garnering more options. And education has the potential of building intellectually saavy populations.

But since the mass Americanization of European immigrants and the mass exodus of whites out of inner cities to the suburbs across the US, public education has slowly disolved into a vaguely operational entity.

It is a blah more than an institution.

Suburban education provided these spaces of development, but they also cloned a sheltered an socially-ignorant middle and upper middle class that could not think farther than their local parks.

However, dads and mommies (but mostly daddies) would leave the suburbs every morning and drive to the cities to make money off a community in which their taxes were not privy of receiving.

Mary McCleod Bethune sold pies to create what is now Bethune Cookman College. Most of y'all would not sell a bean pie if your life depended on it.
And those who aspired to be a teacher from backgrounds that were not historically included in teaching at institutions discovered very early in their careers that Plymouth landed right on inner city school districts, squashing much of the growth; especially women and men of color and of low-wealth communities who grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s who had people in their family who could not read or go to school were duped.

At one time, to be a teacher was a calling like a prophet in the black and brown communities.

But somehow, the educational resources of the cities and those that were never developed in poor rural communities fled to the suburbs, and those aspiring teachers were left with two broken pencils, old books, overcrowded classrooms and under-reported pedophiles.

Teachers became exhausted, then fake teachers entered the arena. Fake teachers were those who could not find a job in their industry and just said "fuck it" I'll teach.

A working class parent could no longer trust the instruction and guidance of a teacher; and teachers became hostile enemies of parents.

In the midst of the division and chaos, degradation of public schools eroded like acid dripping from a toxic waste barrel.

Today, the teachers union is filled with fake teachers, and largely led by fake ass teachers who should've just been crooked politicians.

Now public education has become the target of a failed America. Teachers, with their $30K pay unlivable wages and shitty retirement packages are the face of losers.

How in the fuck did this happen?

How did we turn against our teachers? Especially in the black community where black teachers were akin to Jesus; and in particular, when blacks were killed during enslavement when it was discovered they were literate, and uppity Negroes who flexed some sort of intellectual swagger were hung.

I gasp at this hatred and apathy for the lifeline of cognitive development.

But as I look at groups like Choice Point I understand clearly the agenga. Choice Point and Green Dot are organizations that front as advocates for great education, but are really investors in privatizing education. They go to school districts in trouble and mobolize the parents to make their schools chartered.

The catch words for the last 10 years have been "Charter Schools" however, studies are showing that these schools do not enhance the performance of low-performing schools. They merely kick out the bad apples and keep the creme de la creme to show off enhanced testing results.

Locke High School in Watts, California was taken over as a charter school by Green Dot and the school is still underperforming and full of issues that are carried over from community issues like poverty, gangs, police profiling.
On the other hand, results have shown poor performing students generally do not get better grades in Charter Schools. They are simply flunkees with nice uniforms.

And where do the bad seeds go, or should I say stay? Public school.

With a 50% drop out rate amongst black men in the New York schools system, it is narrow-minded to deduce the issue to a problem with schools and parents. It is a social disease.

Nevertheless, a charter school near you is creeping in your town.


wibiya widget


Related Posts with Thumbnails