Education

House Republican Proposals Hurt Children, Students, and Borrowers, and Undermine Education (8/11/2023)

Why do Republicans hate higher education? Here’s the sinister reason (2/23/2024)

Charter Schools Will Desert And Violate Thousands In 2024 (1/9/2024)

Moms for Liberty is a far-right extremist group

Armed campus police do not prevent school shootings, research shows (6/1/2022)

How Right-Wing Women Are Using the Pandemic to Peddle School Privatization (2/11/2022)

Republicans hate education
As far as the education of children is concerned, I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money: not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know. Natalia Ginzberg quoted in Rob Riemen's book 'To Fight Against This Age'
The goal of democracy is therefore education, intellectual development, and nobility of spirit, and nobility of spirit is the most important weapon against the degeneration of democracy into mass democracy, whereby demagogues, stupidity, propaganda. claptrap, vulgarity, and the lowest of human instincts increase their dominance until they give birth to the bastard child of democracy, fascism. To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism by Rob Riemen
We need to invest very heavily in education, particularly education of young children, because that’s seminal in determining how well they do. Otherwise, we risk creating—and increasingly we are creating—a hereditary underclass and a hereditary superclass as we become more oligarchic as societies. That has to be prevented. Martin Wolf
Over the past year, more than 36 States have introduced extreme classroom censorship laws banning books and outlawing conversations about race and gender in public education and pulling books from school library shelves. America's Censored Classrooms (8/17/2022)
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” Maximillen Robespierre
Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt By Umberto Eco
I have to agree with a common perception that knowledge and critical thinking are obstacles to the GOP's agenda. The Republican Party depends on a base that rejects the science behind evolution, denies clear evidence of anthropogenic climate change, readily blames minorities for unrelated problems, succumbs to demagogic alarms of phantom crises, understands little of history's clearest lessons, and cannot tell the difference between fake and objective information. Education at any level — primary through Ph.D. — is inimical to Republican ends, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos perfectly epitomizes the Republican effort to minimize education. Glenn Cheney (9/7/2018)
Charlie Savage writes (in his book Takeover) "In August 2004, Education Department researchers released a surprising study of test scores showing that students at charter schools were performing worse than comparable students at regular public schools. The findings were a disappointment for those in the Bush-Cheney administration who favored charter school funding. Less than two weeks later, Education Department decided to sharply cut back on the information collected about charter schools." (This pattern of suppression of ideologically unfavorable information was frequently seen in the Bush administration and Savage details some of it.)
It is astounding to me that attaining a quality higher education is becoming a red or blue state issue Dr Liz Leininger
"The central American myth is that democracy is the American way of life. Democracy, however, requires an educated public. The sad reality we face is that the prospect of a public educated to issues and alternatives is perceived as threatening to the privileges of the minority that hold most of our wealth and power, so virtually all of our institutions work to disarm this threat. Operating with an effective confusion of "information" with propaganda, our media, our schools, our corporations, and our government support information technology and produce an increasing flood of its product. Through what I call "the strategic use of trivia," members of the public are under the illusion that the "information" they receive is educating them on subjects that matter. In fact they are by and large being fed what the institutions that perpetuate the power of corporate America wish to feed them." Myth America: Democracy Vs. Capitalism By William H. Boyer

To change our future, we should change how we teach history to children (10/18/2022) Yuval Noah Harari in the Guardian

If we were an equal opportunity society, we would also fully, publicly fund higher education for qualified students. Scandinavian countries do this and, not surprisingly, their educational outcomes are the best. The US ranks near or at the bottom. See UNICEF report, The Children Left Behind.
"In Finland, for instance, citizens are entitled to state funded educational, medical, and welfare services, literally from the cradle to the grave. Finns pay nothing, ever, for education, including both infant and child care as well as medical and law school_ to say nothing of their monthly stipend for expenses. And they produce perhaps the best educational test results in the world. (This is true even though they don't go in for standardized tests.) According to 2003 OECD surveys, Finland ranks no 1 in student reading ability, no 1 in student science ability, no 2 in student problem-solving ability, and no 2 in student mathematics ability. The United States, by contrast, ranks no 12, no 19, no 26, and no 24 respectively. See the OECD report. (From Eric Alterman's book: Why We're Liberals.)

The truth has a liberal bias.

Kids going off to college learn about mathematics which has enabled science to reveal the vast reaches of space and time. From the big bang to congealing of stars, to the formation of the solar system, earth, geological movement, the slow evolution of life, humans, agriculture, industrial revolution. I doubt deep history is taught in any public school.

It contradicts religious teaching, so cannot get into the curriculum.

Most history is taught based on nationality, so the focus is on great leaders wars for empire, which should be a warning lesson about right wing government. The earth's fragile life support and its destruction probably not discussed much, Kids in the next decades will see the damage.

When they come home from college with an understanding of science, they may reject their parents religion causing polarization.

Science is our most reliable method of revealing truth. We are in a race to recognize it before we destroy ourselves. Our carbon budget is almost used up, so the planet will be uninhabitable and we’ll be gone in a brief geological moment.

Most likely, our politics can not save us.

How Covid Closures Became Today’s Curriculum Wars (11/10/2022)

Americans Used To Understand Public Schools and the Commons (9/22/2022)

GOP vs Dem Education

How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift (9/8/2021) NYT

Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher in each U.S. state

Censorship Is the Refuge of the Weak (9/10/2022)

‘A War for the Minds of Our Children’ (5/4/2022)

Critical Race Theory Panic Is a Chip Off the Old Block (6/18/2021)

Culture War in the K-12 Classroom (6/12/2021)

The mirage of 'school choice' masks the hard work sorely needed in education (2/1/2021)

State Ranking by Education (11/30/2020)

School Choice Was the Main Policy Mentioned at Monday’s RNC. Why? (8/25/2020)

America Drank Away Its Children's Future (7/13/2020)

Distance Learning Is Better (5/5/2020)

Why Corruption Matters (11/28/2016)

Thomas Mann claimed that education is the heart of democracy. To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism by Rob Riemen

Republicans are determined to privatize the public schools. They call it school choice and they will tell you that charter schools perform better than public schools. Except they don't. When confronted with the evidence, the Bush administration decided to stop collecting the data.

Compare other privatized sectors: find oligarchy, expensive services,  downsizing, corruption, off-shoring where possible, ...

American healthcare, for example, is the most expensive in the world, doesn't work well, and doesn't even cover everyone. Republicans reject even the most minimal reforms.

Vote Republican and lose public schools.

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Note from Elizabeth Warren 9/15/2014

Back in June, the Senate had its first vote on our Bank on Students bill to let people refinance their older student loans to today's lower rates. We got a majority – every Democrat, every Independent, and even three Republicans voted for the bill to proceed. But we were two votes short of the 60 we needed to move forward.
Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans need to drop their filibuster and give us a vote.

It's time to get to work. Call your senators – either from the state you live in, or the state you (or your kids or grandkids) go/went to school in. It only takes a minute: Call, tell the person that answers your name, where you're from or where you go/went to school, and that you support the Bank on Students Act to refinance student loans.

Please call your Senator.

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There are some things that may become better as a result of the pandemic.

Every student needs internet access and a computer and the skills to be comfortable with them. Distance learning is improving with greater use.

Textbooks can be freely available because many are open-source and downloadable. No more carrying around heavy paper-bound books. Other instructional documents can be conveniently downloaded.

Linux and other free software are being adopted worldwide and have advantages that proprietary software does not.

"Free software does not refer to price; it doesn't mean that you get it for free. (You may have paid for a copy, or gotten a copy gratis.) It means that you have freedom as a user. The crucial thing is that you are free to run the program, free to study what it does, free to change it to suit your needs, free to redistribute the copies to others and free to publish improved, extended versions. This is what free software means. If you are using a non-free program, you have lost crucial freedom, so don't ever do that." Richard Stallman

You would think that if something is free, that demand for it would be high to unlimited. Free software is not only more open, it is in many ways superior to the commercial alternatives. It has been getting easier to use and there are now distributions that are friendly enough for most consumers.

Why is it better? Aside from the fact that it is cost free, it is faster, and it will have a longer life expectancy. For example, older versions of documents stored as Microsoft word files are no longer supported and you may no longer be able to read them. Since the format is encumbered by patents, you are pretty much bound to the whim of the MS developments. Standardized formats that are open are necessary for long-term accessibility. Government (and everybody else) should insist on open formats for their long-term IT documents.

Software is a lot like math, so it should be an integral part of the math and science curriculum. There are well developed FS programs for graphics, music, games, development. Free software is better for schools because students can examine the inner workings or even improve code that they use. They can take it home, share it, install it, study how it works, modify it, and make it better. Proprietary software does not allow that, and may be providing unwanted services like unauthorized tracking. (See the Mad Dog video.)

Open standards assure that files can have long lives and that changed software cannot render them unreadable. Over time, free software has visibly improved so that it is now easy to use, versatile, mature, and, unlike proprietary software, well developed programs can be combined to build even better ones.

Commercial software appears to the consumer as a black box. You do not know what is inside it. Eban Moglan spoke to the Free Software Foundation: "This is really about who is going to have the keys to the home next decade. ...At what point do you want to admit onto your network ... computers which run software you can't see, can't understand, can't control and which reports to other people what is going on your network without your ability to interrupt or do anything? What point do you want to bring a box like that home and put it down on the desk that your child needs to do his homework? ...Those boxes, general purpose computers, running software you can't see, can't control, ...are called intruders. Do you want to have an intruder in every room of your house in ten years or don't you... ?"

Free Software is a better choice not only for schools but also for towns, offices, government, and even newspapers. It could save substantial taxpayer dollars...and improve results.

I happen to think that the privatization of American education and the abandonment of public education is a blow at the very idea of democracy. It favors the rich. And the fact that there is so little opposition to it, particularly among the privileged, is frightening to me. Not surprisingly, the favorite charity of the “1 per cent” against whom Occupy Wall Street tried to protest is the funding of alternatives to ordinary public schools. That’s the idea that every hedge fund owner loves: the privatization of the American school.
What Does It Mean to Educate Citizens?
More equal access to education and well-paying jobs is key to addressing the stagnating or sluggish income growth rates of the poorest half of the population. World Inequality Report 2018

How the Federal Charter Schools Program results in Pileup of Fraud and Waste (12/6/2019)

Reading Scores on National Exam Decline in Half the States (10/30/2019)

Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids (10/22/2019)

Trump administration accused of obstructing congressional probe of Education Department (5/30/2019)

The Myth of Meritocracy (4/9/2019)

Koch Network Pushes Deceitful Textbook on Cash-Strapped Schools (2/22/2019)

Are Civics Lessons a Constitutional Right? These Students Are Suing for Them (11/29/2018)

“I’m Tired of America Wasting Our Blood and Treasure”: The Strange Ascent of Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince (9/6/2018)

10 reasons why Finland's education system is the best in the world (9/9/2018)

Tell Betsy DeVos: Stop trying to weaponize schools (8/27/2018)

Private schools' curriculum downplays slavery, says humans and dinosaurs lived together (6/1/2018)

Striking Teachers Beat Back Neoliberalism's War on Public Schools (5/23/2018)

The Betsy DeVos Disaster (3/13/2018)

New DeVos Loan Forgiveness Plan: Another Assault on Students and Gift to Predatory Schools (1/6/2018)

Attorneys general from 17 states sue DeVos over delay of for-profit college rules (10/17/2017)

DeVos Dystopia: What Trashing For-Profit College Rules Means for Students (8/23/2017)

The Demolition of American Education (6/7/2017)

DeVos Undoes Obama Student Loan Protections (4/11/2017)

Trumps education secretary wants to limit costs at a time when more than 1 million Americans are annually defaulting.

Democratic state attorneys general decry student loan rework by Republicans (3/24/2017)

Milton Friedman, Betsy DeVos, and the Privatization of Public Education (1/17/2017)

Trump’s education nominee and her family members are major donors to the senators who will vote on her confirmation (1/7/2017)

Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools (12/14/2016)

DeVos' Michigan schools experiment gets poor grades (12/9/2016)

"Want to Borrow Money From the Government ? Don't be a Student. Be A Bank." Elizabeth Warren
"Right now as I speak the federal government offers far lower interest rates for loans every single day. They just don’t do it for everyone. Right now the Big Bank can get a loan through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate of about three quarters of one percent. but this summer a student who’s trying to get a loan to go to college will pay almost seven percent. In other words, the fed gov is going to charge interest rates nine times higher than the rate they charge the biggest banks. The same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke the economy. That isn’t right. And that’s why I’m introducing legislation today to give students the same deal that we give the banks." Elizabeth Warren
about 30 years ago, corporate interests began their highly organized, well-funded effort to privatize public education, you wouldn't have read or heard about it. They didn't want to trigger the debate that such a radical change in an important institution warranted. Truthout
"The Waltons (owners of Wal-Mart) have long supported efforts to privatize education through the Walton Family Foundation as well as individual political donations to local candidates. Since 2005, the Waltons have given more than $1 billion to organizations and candidates who support privatization. They’ve channeled the funds to the pro-charter and pro-voucher Milton Friedman Foundation for Education Choice, Michelle Rhee’s pro-privatization and high-stakes testing organization Students First, and the pro-voucher Alliance for School Choice, where Walton family member Carrie Walton Penner sits on the board. In addition to funding these corporate-style education reform organizations, since 2000 the Waltons have also spent more than $24 million bankrolling politicians, political action committees, and ballot issues in California and elsewhere at the state and local level which undermine public education and literally shortchange students." Bill Moyers
"We are living in an era when the very idea of public education is under attack, as are teachers' unions and the teaching profession. Let's be clear: these attacks and the power amassed behind them are unprecedented in American history. Sure, there have always been critics of public schools, of teachers, and of unions. But never before has there been a serious and sustained effort to defund public education, to turn public money over to unaccountable private hands, and to weaken and eliminate collective bargaining wherever it still exists. And this effort is not only well-coordinated but funded by billionaires who have grown wealthy in a free market and can't see any need for regulation or unions or public schools." Diane Ravitch (7/2/2014)
"The idea that inequality is justified as a reflection of differences in merit cannot reasonably be applied to children. Few would deny that children’s early circumstances are beyond their own control. Or that those early circumstances have a profound effect on their present lives and future prospects. Or that growing up in poverty incurs a substantially higher risk of lower standards of health, of reduced cognitive development, of underachievement at school, of lower skills and aspirations, and eventually of lower adult earnings, so helping to perpetuate disadvantage from one generation to the next. None of this is the fault of the child." (From the UNICEF report)
What we are witnessing today is the Walmartization of American education, an effort to uproot neighborhood schools and Main Street businesses and outsource their management to chain schools and chain stores run by anonymous corporations. If they do not make their bottom line, they may pull up their stakes and abandon the community, leaving it bereft, as many chain stores and charter chains have already done. Conservatives protect their community and its institutions. There is nothing conservative about the chain-store mentality that is now being introduced into the control of schooling." Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error pg 321
It is interesting - you find in the United States, there is a kind of anti-education hostility. It's the sort of Sarah Palin constituency which does seem to actually be hostile to the New York, Boston, San Francisco educated elite. You know, 'We good plain folks from the middle of the country are just as good as you pointy-headed intellectuals.' Richard Dawkins

About Betsy DeVos, Trump's pick for the next Secretary of Education.

Betsy DeVos, Trump's Big-Donor Education Secretary (11/27/2016)

Elizabeth Warren Clarifies The Charter Schools Debate (9/29/2016)

This Guardian Piece Touting Bill Gates’ Education Investment Brought to You by Bill Gates (9/4/2016)

John OLiver on Charter Schools (8/21/2016) Video

How School Vouchers Promote Religious Schools And Hurt Education

Kids’ Questions on a Lockdown Planet (12/22/2015)

Education Reform’s Very Bad, God-Awful Week (10/30/2015)

Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State (9/14/2015)

The GOP's War on College Students (9/9/2015)

The Secret Group That Wants to Take Over Your School (5/27/2015)

To Balance Budgets, Governors Seek Higher Education Cuts (3/27/2015)

U.S. student debt could undermine economic growth (3/23/2015)

Nine Billionaires Are About to Remake New York's Public Schools (3/21/2015)

Reagan speeches are required reading in Oklahoma bill to replace AP U.S. History (2/18/2015)

5 Devastating Facts About Charter Schools You Won't Hear from the 'National School Choice Week' Propaganda Campaign (1/27/2015)

Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty (1/16/2015)

Republicans Expose Obama’s College Plan as Plot to Make People Smarter (1/9/2015)

Why the Arguments for Privatizing Public Schools Fall Flat (12/9/2014)

Charter School Group Rocked By Two More Top-Level Departures (6/27/2014)

The Results Are In: America Is Dumb and on the Road to Getting Dumber (6/4/2014)

Education's Gold Rush is On (4/21/2014)

The Truth About Charter Schools: Padded cells, poor instruction and corporate management (3/11/2014)

The Problem With School Choice (2/7/2014)

What Could Be Wrong With 'School Choice' ?

Map of Publicly Funded Schools That Teach Creationism (1/26/2014)

When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto (8/13/2013)

A Civics Lesson From America's Education Debate

Cashing in on Kids: 139 ALEC Bills in 2013 Promote a Private, For-Profit Education Model (7/16/2013)

The Billionaire's War Against Public Education (7/8/2013)

How the Religious Right Is Helping de-educate American Youth (2/22/2013)

Return of the Zombie Film: "Won't Back Down" (2/17/2013)

'Won't Back Down' Pushes ALECs Right-Wing Education Agenda (9/24/2012)

EducaTion "Reform" A Trojan Horse For Privatization (10/10/2012)

The Soul of Student Debt

Mitt Romney's Blueprint For Privatizing Education (6/12/2012)

The gop war on public education (5/2011)

The Commencement Address That Won't be given (5/19/2012)

Republicans Pick Wealthy Tax Dodgers over Students (5/8/2012)

Welcome to the 2012 Hunger Games (5/1/2012)

Chomsky: How the Young are indoctrinated to obey (4/4/2012)

The Assault On Public Education (4/4/2012)

Ignorance is Strength (3/9/2012)

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools (2011)

Selling Schools Out (11/17/2011)

What Does Rupert Murdoch Want With American Schools (9/23/2011)

Fox in the School house: Rupert Murdoch Wants to Teach Your KIds !

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful ? (9/2011)

Student Loan Debt Could Cause The Next Financial Crisis (8/12/2011)

Open Educational Resources

Harvard Open Learning

Free Software

Kahn Academy not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone,anywhere.

Kids Today Need A License to Tinker

Texas Textbook Massacre

How To Brainwash Your Child.

Jon Stewart Takes on the Texas School Board (3/18/2010)

Student Loans: The Right's Hidden Agenda (3/23/2010)

The Bush Education deception.

The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff (12/08/2008)

Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind

Americans fed up with Politicized Education (2006)

Why is Bush's little brother Neil getting educational funding ?

Jonathan Kozol

National Education Association (curriculum standards)

The Online Learning Guidebook

See this also

Video

The War on Kids: The Definitive Documentary on the Failure of the Public Education System

Bibliography

Consilience: The Unity of All Knowledge, E O Wilson (free on-line.)

The Unity of Knowledge, Neils Bohr

Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe Rooks

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland ? By Pasi Sahlberg

The Smartest Kids in the World: Amanda Ripley See this review.

Child Neglect in Rich Societies: Silvia Ann Hewlett

Democracy and Education Noam Chomsky (1994)

Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (pdf)

Generation Debt: Why Now Is A Terrible Time To Be Young: Anya Kamenetz

Reign Of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools: Diane Ravitch

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland ? By Pasi Sahlberg

Education and Equality, Danielle Allen

The Race Between Technology and Education, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F Katz

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis: Robert Putnam

Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing — But You Don’t Have to Be: Anya Kamenetz

America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth: by Henry A. Giroux (5/2013)

The Race Between Education and Technology:  Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F Katz

The Death and Life of the Great American School System' by Diane Ravitch

Lies My Teacher Told Me: James W. Loewen

Jonathan Kozol