A story to put all the education discussions in perspective

Since Obama talked about improving education, we are once again having education discussions. I imagine it will be a talking point off and on for the next year. And it is time for DUers to educate themselves and understand just how badly republicans want our public schools to fail. Just like so many other issues, the right wing has controlled the talking points. They started bashing our public schools over 25 years ago. They used false statistics and contrived data then and you know they are still twisting the truth about our schools today. So please read this and understand how truly evil these people are. Keep that in mind when you hear them say our schools are failing.

A true story about Bill Bennett

When I was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), I asked Bill Bennett to visit my office so that I could ask him for help in seeking legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. Eventually Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller, with the White House leadership of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, put that provision in the Telecommunications Law of 1996, and today nearly 90% of all classrooms and libraries do have such access. The schools covered were public and private. So far the federal funding (actually collected from everyone as part of the phone bill) has been matched more or less equally with school district funding to total about $20 billion over the last seven years. More than 90% of all teachers praise the impact of such technology on their work. At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education. Well, I thought, at least he's candid about his true views. The key Senate committee voted almost on party lines on the bill, all D's for and all R's against, except one -- Olympia Snowe. Her support provided the margin of victory. On the House side, Speaker Gingrich made sure the provision was not in the companion bill, but in conference again Senators Snowe and Rockefeller, with White House support, made the difference. The Internet has been the first technology made available to students in poorly funded schools at about the same time and in about the same way as to students in well funded schools.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/1/105329/697

Thanksgiving is coming, families gather, get it on! :thumbsup:

I first heard this story from Clinton's education secretary, who was giving a speech to a couple thousand teachers. The gasp in the room was unreal.

That was almost 10 years ago and it pains me to see that these evil people are still winning and our kids are in even worse shape now than they were before NCLB. Of course our schools are failing; it is all part of a well orchestrated plan. The bastards.

:kick:

We need to get this information out to the general public. I have been talking about this since Reagan was elected. This has been their plan all along.
Bush's education plan is to transfer money from the public purse to his cronies' bank accounts and that includes his brother Neil.

I am afraid the koolaid has done its job well.

I think that people know something is terribly wrong in the public schools. I think that they are not sure that the problem is the teachers. We all know teachers and how hard they work. So maybe there is something else that may be part of the problem. If we can get people thinking about what the problems might be then we have a chance to educate them.

It is possible that the neocons have screwed things up so badly that people will begin to doubt all of these ideas they have been force fed over the years. At least that is what I hope for.

Perhaps the neocons have run their course. Lord know they have screwed up pretty much everything they have touched. And my OP proves they intended to screw up education.

was the next phase of the "fail public education, then privatize it" plan.

The talking points? Who doesn't want to have high standards, and to be accountable? Yet we've allowed them to define "high standards," to define "accountability," to take over the whole system and, like 19th century one-size-fits all medicine, "leech" the vitality and health right out of public education.

Came out when a nation was NOT at risk. Bastards.

is STILL used to justify public-ed killing policies, all these many years later. :grr:

This is the root of the problem, I think. The standards are so ingrained that most people don't think to question those, and we ought to. The same with parenting.

I would so like to hear people discussing the root of the problem, rather than the symptoms. This one has flown under the radar way too long.

Our public education system produces future voters. Voters who will have been raised under mandated curriculum and instructional methodologies that discourage thinking, and encourage rote memorization of talking points and obedient bubbling.

Do we really want to privatize the education of all future voters, putting it under corporate control?

I long for the day when the kids come first once again instead of test scores. But I don't know that I will see that day come before I retire.

They want civil authority to be replaced by corporate authority.

That's all I need to see to know this is absolute BS.

damn politician (with a few rare exceptions) I've ever heard of, who votes party line instead of their gut. Gut is good, Bennett wasn't, unless you'd care to inform us?

"And on top of it all, too often the sound you hear is whining - the whining of America, what can be heard only as the enormous ingratitude of modern man toward our unprecedented prosperity and good fortune."