02-14-2017, 11:33 AM
(02-13-2017, 04:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: And this guy has a good handle on it:Excellent post, Eric. I've followed Henry Giroux for some time. He is far Left, but his comments square with my own--almost cynical--assessment of what neoliberal policy has wrought with respect to public education. These excerpted sentences from his response especially ring true, and largely explain why I left the teaching profession much earlier than I would have liked:
Henry Giroux
And yes, education is not a red or blue thingy. Obama and folks like him are not on the right track, according to Giroux.
AMY GOODMAN: So let me ask you about the issue of education.
HENRY GIROUX: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: The debate here is around school choice—
HENRY GIROUX: Right, right.
HENRY GIROUX: —of vouchers, charter schools. But you’ve been talking about schools for a long time. What is the role of schools and education in our society?
HENRY GIROUX: Schools should be democratic public spheres. They should be places that educate people to be informed, to learn how to govern rather than be governed, to take justice seriously, to spur the radical imagination, to give them the tools that they need to be able to both relate to themselves and others in the wider world, in a way in which they can imagine that world as a better place. I mean, it seems to me, at the heart of any education that matters, is a central question: How can you imagine a future much different than the present, and a future that basically grounds itself in questions of economic, political and social justice?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And so, how do you see, then—for instance, the Obama administration has been a big promoter of charter schools and these privatization efforts as a school choice model.
HENRY GIROUX: Yeah. The Obama administration is a disgrace on education. The Obama administration basically is an administration that has bought the neoliberal line. It drinks the orange juice. I mean, it doesn’t see schools as a public good. It doesn’t see schools as places where basically we can educate students in a way to take democracy seriously and to be able to fight for it. It sees them as basically kids who should be part of the global workforce. But it does more, because not understanding schools as democratic public spheres means that the only place you can really go is either to acknowledge and not do anything about the fact that many of them are now modeled after prisons, or, secondly, they become places that kill the radical imagination. Teaching for the test is a way to kill the radical imagination. It’s a way to make kids boring, you know? It’s a way to make them ignorant. It’s a way to shut them off from the world in a way in which they can recognize that their agency matters. It matters. You can’t be in an environment and take education seriously, when your education is under—when your agency is under assault. Can’t do it.
https://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/..._result_of
Teaching for the test is a way to kill the radical imagination. It’s a way to make kids boring, you know? It’s a way to make them ignorant. It’s a way to shut them off from the world in a way in which they can recognize that their agency matters. It matters. You can’t be in an environment and take education seriously, when your education is under—when your agency is under assault. Can’t do it.
The standardized testing regime and the federal laws--No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core--that undergird it have undermined critical thinking in our public schools. I can personally attest to that. Couple that with the privatization movement, and someday our society will "reap the whirlwind."
[url=https://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/is_trumps_rise_a_result_of][/url]