National Corporate Broadcasting
Rich Gibson puts a Merrow Report on education in San Diego in context, that is, rising inequality, the promise of perpetual war, deepening racism and nationalism, and a population still behaving as people usually behave in pacified areas, that is, as voluntary servants.The only thing Rich left out is that Eli Broad joined in the efforts to oust the honest school board member Francis Zimmerman, a courageous and persevering woman whose insight was key to maintaining a modicum of sanity in the system.
No, Eli Broad does not live in San Diego, but Eli Broad has his fingers in education throughout the country.
by Rich Gibson
PBS is running a three day Merrow Report on NCLB. Today, the second
day, the report focused on San Diego.
While it would take a book to
refute all the nonsense that Merrow tossed in (right in line with
Monday's report which used a muddled middle-school track and field
metaphor to investigate NCLB) , here are a few things that come right to mind.
One has to put this report, and what really is National Corporate
Broadcasting, in context, that is, rising inequality, the promise of
perpetual war, deepening racism and nationalism, and a population
still behaving as people usually behave in pacified areas, that is,
as voluntary servants. The context, then, is the emergence of
fascism. Sometimes I surprise myself with my own naivete, but I
expected more from PBS, and what I got was the same level of
disinformation that I get from the network on Iraq, which may be why
the competing Judge Judy is so much more widely watched.
To the program on San Diego:
The ex-superintendent so nicely presented by Merrow, Alan Bersin, is :
(a ) liberal Democrat of the Clinton stripe and very close
to the Clintons,
(b) married to a very wealthy woman who is the daughter of a
big local developer
(c) the former US Attorney here who took credit for
constructing the massive border fence and then went directly to
become SD schools boss
(d) the promoter of the Blueprint, his project that first
caused the dismissal of every classroom aide in SD, thus cutting the
only line of communication many teachers had with kids and parents
and, later, wiped out nearly everything from the curriculum but math
and reading, each topic rigidly structured with scripted formats
overseen by low level bosses with clipboards who lorded over
classroom teachers making sure the best of them left, and the others
were on script
(e) poured money into his corrupt out of town pals who made
millions from doing bogus training for SD educators, slime like Tony
Alvarado, a thief who initiated his work in NYC
(f) carried on a phony war with the SDEA teachers union
which rolled over and over for him while he carried on a real war
with honest school board member Francis Zimmerman, a courageous and
persevering woman whose insight was key to maintaining a modicum of
sanity in the system---Bersin helped organize a $`1/2 million dollar
campaign to drive her off the board (he lost)
(G) went on to become the Boss Of Education in CA, under the
Gropenfuhrer, and later quit to become part of the San Diego Airport
Board here which is designed to ram through a new airport on behalf
of developers, an airport the mass of citizens rejected in a recent
vote by about 2/1.
Alan Bersin is a fascist in every sense of the word. He made his
stake in creating borders between people based on nation, wealth,
race, and achieved it by heaping one lie on the next, while profiting
handsomely. And he is a very hard worker.
Carl Cohn, the new boss of the SD school system, chose not to
interview, but he is seen as a good fellow and the union likes him as
he opposes charters, talks to them cordially, etc. Cohn last school
year was behind a week long "Support Our Troops Surge" in the SD city
schools, holding demonstrations, parties, and forcing teachers to
have kids fill out support our troops cards, underwritten by war
profiteers. SD teachers delivered thousands of those cards---to my
house, somehow lost in the system. Cohn is the velvet glove over the
iron fist of fascism. He recently appointed a former Navy boss to run
the school system's accounting system, to oversee the lawns and
gardeners, to look after the busses---and run special ed.
It is true that Gompers School and Keiller School (now Keiller
Leadership Academy) were terrible schools. I visited them both,
often, during my time at SDSU (the provider of most teachers in the
area, really a mediocre community college as reflected in the
policies and programs where racism, ignorance, opportunism, and
cowardice guide the devotion of the university to market forces). I
met with a lot of teachers in both schools. In addition, I still know
people in those schools, and people who have subbed there as well.
One very experienced sub said to me, "Keiller is the worst school I
have ever entered and I will never go back." That was before the charter.
It is true that some teachers in those two schools were terrible
teachers, working just for the paycheck, racist to the core. It is
also true that their classes often had 40 plus kids in them, that
they schools were completely segregated, the kids living not in what
Teach For America calls "Under=resourced Areas," but in
super-exploited communities hit by racism and the birthright that
produces: no capital. It is true that books and supplies were
problems. It is correct to say that fights on the campus of Gompers
were routine, that each campus was incredibly overcrowded and kids
roamed, hoods up, in what looked like seething masses throughout the day.
Today, with the cooperation of many people in the community, parents,
and teachers, those schools are much more highly regimented, uniforms
are inspected, kids sometimes march between classes (typical in all
of CA's poor schools as far as I have seen), and order is maintained.
Test scores went up, a bit, but it is far too early to say, by the
measures of elites, that anything has happened at all regarding
pedagogy or substance---except that kids and parents are deeply
involved in creating their own oppression, and liking it--another
aspect of fascism. But Merrow says this is success.
It may be true that the younger teaching force at Gompers and Keiller
are more dedicated than their predecessors. We shall see about that
in, say, five years. Note that very few teachers in Gompers have
taught more than three years. As most of them would be untenured, it
would have been very hard, in my experience, for Merrow to find open
dissenters. Gompers remains completely segregated, 3 percent white.
You can get a good education in a completely segregated school? For what?
It is reasonable to say that the younger Gompers teaching force, many
of the SDSU or CSU grads, probably is much less prepared to know
their social context than their predecessors. After all, CSU liberal
studies grads never encounter a history class that takes them beyond
1912 unless they can afford the time and money to take electives.
Moreover, SDSU grads operated within a university system that is
racist to the core ("Aztecs?" ) and they move through the teacher ed
program in segregated blocks where, in the words of one block leader,
"we do not allow newcomers as they might interrupt the social norms
and trust of our group." The policies and programs of teacher ed look
like training for advanced slave overseers. Still, a few current
grads land on their feet, maintain some ideals, and try to teach.
Merrow then goes to the question of money and charters, demonstrating
that charters take money from "public," schools. But San Diego's
charters are public schools, and the public schools of San Diego,
while more orderly than Detroit's, are abject failures, even those in
rich Lajolla, simply the other side of the segregation coin. Racist
schools are terrible schools.
But schools which systematically teach lies to kids (we are all
together with common interests in this nation, for example), using
methods so obscure that the tactics of learning become impossible to
unravel, and hence kids learn not to like to learn, are the norm in
San Diego as well as in the US, and that is even worse.
I believe that some charters, like Susan Harmon's now shut down
Growing Children, could really do some vital work, but the left, what
of it there is, has failed to recognize this likely to be brief
opening. In any case, the dispute between San Diego Charters, and the
District, is simply a falling out among thieves.
What did Merrow really see at Gompers and Keiller? He saw ORDER.
Unless he is incredibly obtuse, he could not possibly suggest that
there is better teaching, that scores are up, that kids care more
about learning. What he saw was uniforms, an absence of unruliness,
less kids expelled or suspended from what are really missions for the
system of capital, factories for lies: order. That, he likes.
So, what Merrow saw as progress, for the most part, was the emergence
of fascism. What else should I expect from PBS?
On to a new school year, full of hope. No kidding.
— Rich Gibson
e-mail
2007-08-16
http://www.rougeforum.org
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
