THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION ON BEHALF OF OUR NATION’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION ON BEHALF OF OUR NATION’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

I sent this note to Susan Ohanian today. I don’t know if she’ll get it or not, so I’m broadcasting it out loud. To me, at this point, there’s no reason to be stealthy.

RE: A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION ON BEHALF OF OUR NATION’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Dear Susan,

The time is ripe for all of us pro-public school people who are scattered across the country to organize together as ONE, and make ourselves much, much more visible on the national level.

The frustration has built up enough at this point and the moment has arrived for a powerful statement to be made to the nation. We're getting steamrolled to death by the billionaires and their ultimate plan.

Let's get a spokesperson (someone like you?) on 60 Minutes, The Daily Show, and Charlie Rose. Our views need much more public visibility.

Let's get Ravitch, Meier, Darling-Hammond, Rothstein, Klonsky, Jim Horn, some Bolder, Broader Approach folks, and whoever else is good, who would be willing to start showing up on TV talk shows, too. Let's make the nation listen!

Let's get a day of action going that will bring out devoted public school supporters in every major city. There are quite a lot. They could all be wearing the same t-shirts and buttons, carrying protest signs, and driving around in cars with pro-public, anti-school privatization-message bumper stickers. It needs to be a total campaign.

What about Horace Mann's upcoming 213th birthday, Monday, May 4th? (It's the day before the NEA's National Teacher Day). I'm not an education historian, so is there another more meaningful date?

If this idea was refined a bit more, then word would spread instantaneously via the internet, and local groups could start to make their plans. The mainstream media would be likely to pick the story up and put out some buzz about it, too. Enough is enough.

How about "A Pro-Public School Day of Action" or something like that? I'm not a professional organizer of national events, but I just know this could work. I can sense it is time.

You're a good person to bounce this idea off of because of your broad reach and appeal.

What do you think?

By the way, if you want to find out about me, here's my blog: http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/

Thanks,

Sharon

PS: Last weekend I mentioned this general sort of idea to Norm at EdNotes online, with the initial idea of basing the action in Chicago and doing it in October on John Dewey's 150th birthday. Chicago's been coping with a lot of school destruction. Also, it is such a symbolic city right now because of Duncan and Obama.

I'm just trying my best to turn up the heat and get something going.

5 comments:

The Perimeter Primate said...: I upgraded the service on my hit counter this morning. What a total surprise to find this!

Direct Hit
March 4, 2009 9:24 AM IP: 65.214.152.90 (mail.broadfoundation.org)

It looks like they're checking up on what I have to say. I hope they're learning something!!!; March 4, 2009 at 2:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Keep up the great work!!; March 4, 2009 at 4:15 PM
caroline said...: Then why isn't Eli accepting your lunch invitation, or at least politely declining? Has he no manners?

I helped run a volunteer research and information project on Edison Schools back when it was being hailed as the magical miracle insta-solution, and the website got hits from Edison Schools users. You do have to wonder if we're being written off as total kooks -- you haven't heard much about the miracle of Edison Schools lately, so I think I lost my kook credentials, though.; March 5, 2009 at 7:26 AM
ed notes online said...: We are agitating here in NYC but of course we also have to deal with the obstacle to real organizing - the UFT.

There are rallies going to occur at various closing schools, including one in Ocean-Hill Brownsville - I hope to video it. Yesterday at the rally we were giving out leaflets to promote out mar 28 conf to save public schools and teachers from a closing school in east ny came by.

We are trying to connect them to the school in Brownsville- really just about 2 miles away. It is amazing that ICE, NYCORE and Ed Notes has to do this while the UFT sits there.

I think we need to let this pressure build and take time to plan something.

In July I held an NYC ed activist party at my house and Leonie and NYC Educator actually met for the first time. PArent activist Lisa Donlon, Teachers Unite Sally Lee, Nycore and ICE people and people like Pissed off teacher and other bloggers were there. But we have to go beyond social interaction.

I met Susan O at the ACT Now conf in Birmingham Al in March 2003 where activists from around the nation gathered. A good model.

Let's do some building locally with a long view. Maybe the fall in Chicago is an idea. Some teachers are thinking of the next AFT or NEA conventions in July 2010 as a gathering point. But most of all, let's keep the conversation going.; March 6, 2009 at 7:20 AM
ed notes online said...: Oh, and I got a subscriber who works for the Sharpton Education Equality Project so EEPs are monitoring the blogs.; March 6, 2009 at 7:21 AM

Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION ON BEHALF OF OUR NATION’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

5 comments: