The attacks on public employees, particularly teachers, that is occurring across the nation, but in mid-west most strikingly is not about the size of government or budgets. It’s about laying the groundwork for privatization and the elimination of taxation—the wholesale liquidation of public tax-payer funded services in order that corporations can assume control of these services for profit eliminating the need for the services’ revenue sources.
While I can only offer circumstantial proof of this, consider the following ‘mock’ plan and see if it doesn’t ring true:
1) There has been a concerted effort to lower taxes over last 30+ years. Whether taxes were lowered or not, the message has been that taxes are bad, in any form and people are buying it. They are buying the message that your money is being used for things you don’t need—like schools when you have no children.
2) Funding for education has been incrementally reduced over time as costs of educating children has gone up. Trust me, I know a number of teachers who are no spending their own money on supplies for class – like construction paper, stickers, markers, etc.
3) Inner city schools were completely neglected for years until media and liberal politicians made their plight an issue.
4) Evaluation measures of teacher success have been rendered useless with programs such as No Child Left Behind and other systems.
5) Curriculum has been repeated attacked from the re-writing of history and other texts books in Texas, to the first to teach Bible studies (er…creationism) in the classroom, and forced recitation of the Pledge Allegiance with the phrase “One nation under God” firmly in place by acts of state government.
6) Any system teachers may have had to fight against the above mentioned items has been stripped away and any voice against such measures is quickly pink slipped—particularly now with no union protection such as is happening in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
While I am not one to go for conspiracy theories, but companies that stand to profit from the privatization of education most likely have a longer term road map of things that need to take place before they can assume control. That’s just good business practice--plan for and work toward increased profits. So, consider if another group that hates the notion of paying taxes and both groups were connected to a powerful legislative think tank (ALEC). Said think tank might be strategizing and lobbying on behalf of such groups—what might these lobbying efforts look like, how might the plan unfold?
First, you have to convince the lion-share of the population that taxes are bad—In any form they are simply bad. While not all Americans are anti-tax, most voters react negatively the idea of higher taxes. It’s a message that has been repeated beat into us over time.
Second you have to enact policies and measures that remove the abilities of schools to properly educate our children, which in turn brings into question the efficacy of the public education model—these diminishing actions began in inner city schools and have slowly radiated outward.
Add to this attacks on the content and cultural impacts public education has on children—such as the separation of church and state, attacks on curriculum that promotes understanding and acceptance of a diverse population and even further darken the shine of the a key public institution.
Top all this off by taking away educators’ rights to fight against these actions in any form, with decreases in pay, raises, benefits, or anything else that helps offset an already low wage and you all but ensure only the desperate will become teachers save a few who genuinely love teaching. There can only be one impact of more and more people walking away from public teaching positions which are then filled with less qualified candidates—less educated children.
Now again, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but a less educated population is the perfect population to work in mega-businesses factories and warehouses, which are currently operated overseas where education opportunities are not what they are here—just food for thought.
The real question coming out of all of this is whether, like many have suggested on a bigger picture regarding the right’s attacks on America, is there a concerted effort to systematically implement policies that weaken our schools and childrens’ academic excellence while indoctrinating the population with notions of the inefficacy of public education? And to what end could such as operation be aimed.
I would venture to guess the aim is two-fold. Privatize (profitize) K-12 education and eliminate a large part of the population’s tax burden—because ya know those teachers have it too good consider how dumb our kids are and I hate taxes. Two birds—one stone.