This comment from a Puget Sound parent hits the nail on the head about both the strategy and goal of corporate reform. First, create dissatisfaction, then turn us into shoppers, choosing a school while destroying our attachment to our community schools. In time, we discover that it is the school that chooses, not the shopper.
One of the objectives of the privatizers is to reinforce the “Mall Mentality” that so many of us just act on, unconsciously. The entire goal is to get us to see education as a “product” to “choose”—like we would with a new pair of sandals at a giant retailer.
What’s MY “return on investment” for MY kid? How come I’m paying for YOU, “teacher”, and I can’t just “can you, like my boss can can ME, anytime, for any reason?”. What am I getting for MY money?”
And the reason that the privatizers are trying to drill this into us with words like “choice” and “investment” and “accountability” is that they realize that community, cooperation and mutual support are CRITICAL if a public school is to survive, let alone thrive.
Privatizers WANT people to be suspicious of the people running their schools and ultra-competitive with each other. They want people looking for advantage and focused exclusively on self-interest, resulting in an obsession with “MY KID!”—and implicitly “NOT YOUR KID!”
Privatizers live for the image of parents bickering, breaking into factions, and running for the exits after they maliciously pay someone to yell “FIRE!” in the equivalent of a very crowded theatre.
Like the crowd during the bank run in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, will we panic and sell out to Potter, “for at least HALF of MY MONEY” or will we stick together, realizing that our strength comes from standing WITH one another, united for ALL of “OUR KIDS”?
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
Turning Us into Consumers, Not Citizens
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