Chris Hedges has an excellent essay on the state of our public education system.
Corporatism Is About The Cult Of The Self
Hedges primarily relies on a teacher in New York City to reveal the moral bankruptcy of the standardized testing mania. The teacher chose to be anonymous, fearing retribution.
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The corporate media has been creating the "conventional wisdom" that teaching can be done by anyone who follows "the formula" for a few years now.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
The teacher from NYC shares the depressing realization of modern education.
“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job."
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The corporatist agenda in education attempts to induce fear and rivalry among teachers.
"The real purposes of merit pay are to divide teachers against themselves as they scramble for the brighter and more motivated students and to further institutionalize the idiot notion of standardized tests. There is a certain diabolical intelligence at work in both of these.”
...."your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie".
“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”
I urge to read the whole essay. Chris Hedges has been around the block a few times, Bosnia, Lebanon. He is one of our leaders, just by his simple eloquence and moral clarity.