I'm making a movie see. The movie is called
The Schools Are Failing. You can see parts of the movie almost everyday in your newspapers, on your televisions, and on your internets. The movie is made and produced by individuals who do not believe in democracy: they are both neoconservative and neoliberal, and they believe in market or religious fundamentalism...sometimes both.
They do not want a population that thinks or questions, as this would challenge their hegemony. If you want to stop a population from thinking critically you raise its children to produce and consume without question.
Fill-in-the-blank test tomorrow.
What's funny, not ha-ha funny mind you, is that these people want you to believe schools aren't working so they can take them over when in reality...wait for it...schools are working for many Americans. I know...you want proof.
How many of us went to public schools? 89% if we follow the national average, but since Kossacks are all above average, I'd say we are closer to 95%. Take the poll, after you give the screenplay a once-over...
The Setting
The year is 2006, and U.S. citizens have much to fear. The country's Homeland Security Advisory SystemTM has been in place for over 1,700 days, not one of which has seen the threat-level drop below "elevated." As terrorists seek new ways of destroying the United States, officials counter by banning liquids and gels from airplanes. "All Americans should continue to be vigilant," advises the Department of Homeland Security, "and report suspicious items or activities to local authorities immediately." While global warming threatens coastal cities, creating "climate-refuges," pandemic-bird-flu spreads slowly across the planet, poised to kill those who survive SARS and the country's obesity epidemic.
Set in a larger cultural context of crises, death, and destruction, filming for The Schools Are Failing takes place within America's "failing" public school system. As the camera zooms in on a typical suburban high school, Newt Gingrich's testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation sets the mood. The second greatest threat to America, he warns the audience, is U.S. public education; "only the threat of a weapon of mass destruction in an American city [is] a greater danger." Cut to mushroom cloud for effect.
In order to make publics more amenable to their policy solutions, neoconservative and neoliberal think tanks, institutes, and foundations provide a number of narratives depicting public schools in various states of crises or danger, harming children, communities, and the country. Blaming various entities for the failing public school system, these organizations invoke government power, i.e. No Child Left Behind to "save" children.
According to neoconservatives and neoliberals, crises and dangers inside U.S. public schools include, but are not limited to:
* A drop out crisis with boys, who are hurt by feminized public school classrooms.
* The terrorist organization known as the NEA.
* Threats from unions in general, who don't have children's interests in mind because they are only interested in protecting jobs, limiting accountability and safeguarding their privileges, all of which move public education in an "unsustainable" direction.
* Lazy teachers, who are more interested in job security than performance and who are generally the wrong type of people for the job in the first place.
* Pinko-commie teachers, whose dedication to social justice harms children living in poverty.
* Anti-Judeo, anti-Christian, Paganist teachers who, in addition to sexually corrupting children, regularly work to turn children into spies against their parents. See Joel Turtel, Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children (New York: Liberty Books, 2004-2005), Chapter 2.
* Colleges of education, which ignore the nation's most pressing problems, primarily because "rigorous training in math, science and literacy takes a backseat to theories about victimization and inequality."
* Wasteful inefficiency, a result of schools extracting as much as possible from taxpayers despite having more money than ever before.
* Rampant, underreported school violence.
* A virulent, anti-American, multicultural curriculum that threatens to break up the cohesiveness of the country.
* A crisis in math.
* A crisis in science.
* A crisis in world history.
* A crisis in social studies.}
* [http://www.edexcellence.net/... Failing middle schools, "where academic achievement goes to die" as a result of a focus on emotional and social development.
* Obsolete high schools, which, in addition to being broken and flawed, cannot teach children, "even when working properly."
* Activist judges.
Narratives that serve to scare citizens into accepting various reforms are part of what Frank Furedi calls a politics of fear. "The term `politics of fear,'" explains Furedi, "contains the implication that politicians self-consciously manipulate people's anxieties in order to realize their objectives." As Furedi notes, however, it is not just politicians who engage in a politics of fear, as "political elites, public figures, sections of the media and campaigners are directly culpable for using fear to promote their agenda."
These figures are necessary, explains Corey Robin, because most people "make decisions about what to fear and how [they] respond to fear with the help of trusted intimates and advisors." Such advisors include parents, friends, and teachers, as well as "more distant mentors" such as the think tank-housed experts who use media to forward any of the above story lines.
In the case of neoconservative and neoliberal educational reformers, fear serves both as a means of frightening citizens into accepting legislation that they might otherwise not accept, or for that matter care about, and as a unifying element for coalition building, connecting individuals and groups who might otherwise not work together.
For example, in their efforts to end public education neoconservatives who favor strict control of illegal drugs, a merging of church and state, and banning abortion work with neoliberals who often oppose all three. "Provoking a common reaction to a perceived threat," explains Furedi, "can also provide a focus for gaining consensus and unity." This consensus and unity occurs amongst the policy groups manufacturing the fear, as well as their target audiences, as concerned parents, citizens, and media personalities adopt language and ideas created in think tanks, institutes, and foundations.
The main effect of the politics of fear concludes Furedi, "is to enforce the idea that there is no alternative." Given all that is wrong with public education, both neoconservatives and neoliberals argue that there is no alternative to various educational crises except for accountability and choice, the two mantras repeated with religious intensity by the actors in The Schools Are Failing.
The Actors
The actors in The Schools Are Failing use think tank, institute, and foundation support and research to forward multiple story lines in order to manipulate publics, privates, and governmental organizations. Both Maxine Green and Paulo Freire suggest that understanding and naming obstacles is key to overcoming them. Central to any progressive response to the neoliberal and neoconservative assault on public education then is understanding and naming the political actors who forward the meme "our schools are failing."
Raja Halwani defines a public intellectual as anyone who devotes time to address the public on issues of both public and personal concern. In some ways the political actors in The Schools Are Failing are public intellectuals, as they speak publicly, and privately, to shape opinion on issues of both public and private concern. Public intellectuals, however, have traditionally been defined as those who serve people in the face of corporate or federal power.
Noam Chomsky, voted the top public intellectual in a 2005 global poll, asserts that, "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." Moreover, and important to remember as elites within the U.S. government use terror to justify discarding everything from international human rights agreements to the U.S. Constitution, Chomsky argues that "intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions."
Extending beyond Chomsky, Edward Said further explains the term, noting that the role of the public intellectual
has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely swept under the rug.
Think tank-housed, corporate-funded intellectuals do quite the opposite, as they use power and fear to forward neoliberal and neoconservative orthodoxy and dogma. Therefore, the actors in The Schools Are Failing might best be understood as neointellectuals, individuals who turn the term public intellectual on its head.
In The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey argues that U.S. citizens would never allow themselves to be governed by an intellectual class. "It could be made to work," he wrote, "only if the intellectuals became the willing tools of big economic interests." This has undoubtedly occurred, as big economic interests support a number of researchers, scholars, and intellectuals, housing them in think tanks, institutes, and foundations in order to 1) support their work and 2) keep them at their beck and call. While public intellectuals serve people in the face of corporate or federal power, keeping elites in check, neointellectuals serve power in the face of people, producing research to justify all sorts of policy and behavior.
Chris Mooney does not use the term neointellectual, but he certainly describes them in his book The Republican War on Science. He argues that neointellectuals engage in political science abuse to manipulate, lie, deceive, and otherwise mislead voters and policy makers. In the movie The Schools Are Failing, I call political science abuse "special effects."
According to Mooney, individuals engage in political science abuse by:
* Undermining science itself--such as when creationists call evolution "just a theory" or when neointellectuals attack multiculturalism, a theory and product of social science, calling it dangerous and partisan.
* Suppression--quashing scientific reports that don't support political philosophies, as was the case with a 2004 Department of Education report critical of charter schools.
* Targeting individual scientists--either discrediting scientists or attempting to silence them, as with David Horowitz's list of dangerous college professors and social scientists. Yarg, I'd sooner snort barbed wire than link to that scallywags page...Similar targeting occurred when Massachusetts state officials refused to let Alfie Kohn speak at a conference on standardized tests.
* Rigging the process--controlling the input of data in a policy debate by either packing a panel with scientists who are like-minded or by airing one side of the story, as was the case with Krista Kaffer's testimony before the House Budget Committee concerning educational reform.
* Hiding errors and misrepresentations--making false claims or distorting data, as is the case when neoliberals and neoconservatives claim all schools are failing or claim there has been no increase in test scores despite doubling the amount of money spent on public schools. (For a lengthy treatment of misrepresented data and public education see Gerald W. Bracey, Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U.S., 2nd ed. (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2004) and Gerald W. Bracey, Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered(Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006).)
* Magnifying uncertainty--hyping scientific uncertainty to prevent one type of action or to allow another, such as when members of the ASM claim there is no scientific evidence supporting teacher certification. (See, for example, Frederick M. Hess, "The Predictable, But Unpredictably Personal, Politics of Teacher Licensure," Journal of Teacher Education 56 no. 3 (May/June 2005): 192-198.)
* Relying on the fringe--when politicians handpick experts whose views match what they want to hear, as was the case when John Boehner (R-OH), used one of Jay P. Greene's "working papers" to support NCLB, arguing there was irrefutable proof that NCLB was a success.
* Ginning up contrary science--generating science in order to manufacture uncertainty or consent, as is the case when neoconservative think tanks, institutes, and foundations manufacture report after report in order to build consensus for accountability based reform and choice initiatives.
* Dressing up values in scientific clothing--claiming scientific justification for purely political moves, such as when market fundamentalists claim competition works, despite having no research to prove it or basing their claims on research with one of the above flaws.
In addition to the moral hyperbole used to create the setting for The Schools Are Failing, neointellectuals engage in any number of the above to "prove" public schools harm children. The only alternative is hyper-regulation or privatization.
The Plot
The plot for The Schools are Failing is simple and straightforward. U.S. public schools are failing due to low expectations, poor teaching, obsolete schools, teacher unions, teacher colleges, a pagan teaching force, etc. The federally mandated NCLB, which regulates and disciplines schools with the intent of opening them up to competition via vouchers and charters, is going to save them.
Once the neointellectuals save children from the failing schools, the United States will resume its dominant position in the global marketplace which, according to neoconservative and neoliberal elites, will be made safer by the spread of democracy. Neointellectuals generate research to ensure this particular ending, using the media, local, state, and federal political connections and appointments to make their policy reality. Jay P. Greene for example, has spent much of 2006 frantically hyping a dropout crisis, which he already has solved.
In one particular scene then, unresponsive schools and teachers are the villains, and Greene is the hero, saving children and the country from economic ruin with research purporting choice to be the only alternative. In reality, citizens lose democratic control of what might in fact be the last public sphere, ceding control of their children's consciousness to corporate America
An Alternate Ending
If neoconservative and neoliberal think tanks continue their efforts at scaring citizens of the United States out of a public school system sans critique, they may succeed in "saving" children from the terror, crises, danger, and disaster that they attribute to public education. Despite their relentless efforts at ending public education, it is not a forgone conclusion, provided individuals and organizations who believe that children, and the country, deserve more than corporate-sanctioned schooling stand up in united opposition.
Given such a stance, I offer an alternate edition of The Schools Are Failing, one where the "bad guys" are the neointellectuals attempting to end public education, while the "good guys" consist of a broad coalition of diverse individuals brought together by necessity.
One of the hallmarks of the Hollywood disaster movie is the coalition forced into existence by devastating climate change or various creatures wreaking havoc across the country. Consider here the lanky, Jewish scientist teamed up with a tough, Black marine to save the world from aliens, or the aquaphobic, small-town cop working with an Ivory-league scientist to kill a man-eating shark, or, perhaps more unlikely, the poststructural-feminist working with a Marxist, five members of the netroots, and a local PTA leader to resist neoconservative and neoliberal educational reform.
NO THAT IS NOT THE BEGINNING OF A JOKE...
Should the educational Left, if there is a body deserving that title, prove capable of forming such a coalition, it must engage publicly and politically to end neoconservative and neoliberal fear mongering. This requires rejecting the politics of fear, as danger, disaster, crises, and terror offer little for "beginning, renewing, or restoring a robust republic of energetic virtue and galvanizing purpose." In place of a politics of fear might be what Giroux calls a "politics of hope," one offering a renewed vision of participatory democracy as a social system capable of meeting the various demands of life in the 21st century.
While such a project may sound utopian and idealistic, I wish to remind the reader that utopian ideals have led to the formation of several unlikely coalitions and successes. Arguably, without utopian idealism, without a politics of hope, there would be no United States of America, no women's suffrage, no ongoing movement for equal rights.
The alternate ending to The Schools Are Failing, the ending with a robust democratic social order created and maintained through public education, might begin with a voice-over much different than Newt Gingrich's, one that celebrates the accomplishments of a school system that incorporates and educates millions of diverse children every year, despite constant attack, under-funding, and federal legislation which exacerbates existing issues.
Informing that voice-over might be scholarly reports that debunk think-tank research such as that forwarded by the Fordham Foundation, The Reason Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the Manhattan Institute; independent or progressive institutes which refute neointellectual propaganda such as Jay P. Greene's dropout crisis; the work of unions such as the AFT's point-by-point critique of John Stossel's "Stupid in America;" and the work of testing reform advocates such as the organization Fairtest.
The main issue for individuals and organizations opposed to the neoliberal and neoconservative movement against public schools is, arguably, the failure to recognize that we share a common threat and have much to benefit from working together. While neoconservatives and neoliberals clearly recognize a monster to slay, Marxists, post-structural feminists, progressives, teachers, students, parents, and concerned citizens remain isolated, often unaware or unconcerned that public education 1) faces the threat of existence in the first place and 2) has the potential to become a space where diverse individuals engage in democratic revival and is therefore a space worth saving.
Do you want a United States of America whose citizens demand accountability from their leaders?
Then we'll have to co-create schools that teach them to do so.