I’m
sure you’ve heard for years—even decades—that the public schools are failing;
that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for
this so-called failure.
The
solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor
unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who
only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the
Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock
and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires.
Let’s
see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of
history to the present. It won’t take long—a few facts and a conclusion.
We’ll
start with Thomas Jefferson in 1779, because he thought the US should have two
education systems: one for the wealthy and one for everyone else. As
Jefferson said, we’ll “rake a few geniuses from the rubbish.”
The
first public high school opened in Boston in 1820, and by the 1830s in the
southern slave states laws were passed making it illegal to teach slaves to
read.
In
1851, Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law.
In 1870, 2% of the US population graduated from high
school.
In
1896, the Southern States pass laws requiring racial segregation in the public
schools. They can’t stop blacks and other minorities from attending public
schools so they make sure these children attend separate schools and have less
funding.
By 1900, the high school graduation rate reaches
6.4% and 6.2% of whites were illiterate compared to 44.5% of blacks and other
minorities.
By
1918, all states have passed school attendance legislation, although until the
1930s, many were unsuccessful in enforcing their compulsory schooling laws.
However, as the population increased, and as the demand for well-trained labor
grew, the bureaucratic machinery for enforcement was created.
In
1938, for the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for
children are regulated by federal law.
By 1940, the graduation rate reaches 50.8% and only
2% of whites are illiterate compared to 11.5% of blacks and other minorities.
In
1945, at the end of World War 2, the G.I. Bill of Rights gives thousands of
working class men college scholarships for the first time in U.S. history. In
fact, I went to college on the Vietnam G.I. Bill.
By
1954, The Supreme Court unanimously agrees in Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” and must be abolished.
Forty years later, segregation is back and getting worse.
In
1955, Milton Friedman, the father of neo-liberal economics, envisions a school
voucher system to slowly privatize public schools. His followers have never
given up.
During the 1970s and 80s,
public education evolves from the regimented Prussian model to focus on
critical thinking and problem solving skills. But this will be reversed when
President G. W. Bush enacts his “No Child Left Behind Act” and then under
President Obama’s “Race to the Top” the process will speed up.
In 1979, 0.4% of whites are illiterate compared to 1.6%
of blacks and other minorities.
After
Ronald Reagan is elected president in 1980, his secretary of education William
Bennett began an all-out war on teachers, teachers unions and public school
districts. He calls democratically elected school boards and school districts
“the blob.”
Reagan also vetoed the Fairness Doctrine that for thirty-eight
years required the media to offer the public an honest balanced reporting of
important issues, and soon after the Fairness Doctrine was abolished
conservative talk radio exploded across the country using cherry-picked facts
to present biased opinions without balanced reporting.
In 1990, the high school dropout rate is 12 percent.
In 2007, 80.7% of Asians graduate from high school;
76.6% of Whites; 55.5% Hispanic/Latino; 53.7% of Black and 50.7% of American
Indians.
In
2011, neoliberal President Obama with support from Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock
(and other billionaires that include the Walton family and the Koch brothers)
implement Common Core standards that leads to testing in 2014 that is designed
to fail teachers and schools so the public schools may be legally labeled
failures, closed, all teachers fired, and then corporations will take over
teaching our children—taking all power away from parents and the democratic
process, and these new private schools supported by the taxpayer will not be
accountable to the people.
By 2011, the high school drop our rate has fallen to
7%—an improvement of 5% since 1990.
In 2012, for the first time in US history, a third
of the nation’s 25 to 29 year olds have earned at least a bachelor’s degree,
and by age 24, 90% of Americans have earned a high school degree or its
equivalent.
In the fall of 2013, a record 21.8 million students
were expected to attend American colleges and universities, an increase of
about 6.5 million since fall of 2000.
But
even with all this success, in recent years, the Walton family has spent more
than $1 billion toward efforts to “infuse competitive pressure into America’s
K-12 education system.” Never mind that this money is mostly in states where no
Walton family members live or have children in school.
In addition, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bill Gates has
spent $5 billion in his attempt to destroy public education with the same
goal—the Walton’s and the other billionaires have—to fire public school
teachers and close public schools.
In
conclusion, the Common Core standards teach students what to think, not how to
think. The Common Core is a return to the Prussian method of teaching children
(see the 1st video) and there will be a double standard in education. There
will be the underfunded public schools that end up teaching the most difficult,
at risk children, as Jefferson said, “the rubbish”, and the private sector
corporate schools will take students who are all on their way to college.
The
billionaires listed in the first paragraph are pushing hard to achieve
Jefferson’s vision. For instance, Bill Gates has spent billions selling
the lie of Common Core testing to Americans while other billionaires are
pushing hard to close the transparent, democratically run public schools that
are accountable to everyone and replace them with an elite, opaque private
schools system that doesn’t answer to anyone but a CEO—all paid for by
taxpayers.
Answer
this question: Now that you know the brief but successful history of public
education and the threats against it, tell me how the public schools are failing
and prove it with more than an opinion.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam
Veteran, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005). His third book is Crazy
is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir.
