THE PERIMETER PRIMATE

Monday, March 21, 2016

Thank you

Dear Readers,

Thank you for visiting The Perimeter Primate. This blog is being retired for the time being. Although I no longer post here, I do still share information and my perspectives on Twitter, including regular links to news about the Gülen Movement and its charter schools.

I launched The Perimeter Primate in February 2008 as a place to express my frustration and findings about the damaging corporate-type education reform being implemented here in Oakland and elsewhere. Los Angeles-based billionaire Eli Broad was having an outsized and negative impact on my daughters’ public school district, so I also created The Broad Report and posted there for a period of time.

During those early years I was thrilled to be able to connect with parents in other states who were experiencing the same type of public school system dismantling in their communities. Such is the power and tremendous potential of the internet. We eventually gathered in New York City to form Parents Across America in order to support other concerned parents who were experiencing the privatizers’ agenda, and to share with them what we knew.

It was around that time that I decided to do what I could to counter all the billionaire-funded charter school propaganda flooding the country. Knowing that charter schools were not all about goodness and light, I started Charter School Scandals (CSS) with the intention of it being a compilation of news reports about problems popping up at charter schools across the country, i.e. this one in Oakland.

Within a week or two of CSS’s launch in mid-May 2010, I encountered a set of articles about charter schools in Utah and Arizona that were believed to be linked to a mysterious Turkish religious community called the Gülen Movement.

At that point I’d never heard of the Gülen Movement and knew next to nothing about the Republic of Turkey. Then I realized a charter school with the same characteristics was operating in my town. This odd “coincidence” is what led me down the rabbit hole to the study of this secretive and controversial group’s involvement in the charter school sector. I’m especially proud to have contributed to KILLING ED, a new film about this situation.

Thanks to filmmaker Mark S. Hall, many more Americans are going to get up-to-speed on the Gülen Movement’s existence, its presence in the US, and its involvement in an enormous network of taxpayer-funded charter schools. You can watch the trailer below.

When I started The Perimeter Primate in early 2008, very little word was getting out to Americans about how US public education was in the midst of being privatized; those who suggested it were often labeled conspiracy theorists. Back then, the tip of the spear for exposing what was going on – as far as I knew – was Susan Ohanian, Gerald Bracey (d. 2009, what a tremendous loss!), and Jim Horn. Mainstream education writers would not touch the topic, and many still refuse to. At that point, Diane Ravitch had not yet published her first book, Anthony Cody hadn’t quite started blogging yet, and if Peter Green was, I wasn’t aware. So many wonderful activist/bloggers and valiant warriors are out there now, with a special h/t to Tim Furman.

I can’t close without mentioning one other major early influence on me: Naomi Klein’s book, Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Reading it was a visceral and life-changing experience. Although not about public education specifically, it opens with what was done to the public school system of New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina.

Make no mistake: US public education is in the midst of being privatized. I’m glad to have been able help my readers grasp that fact. More and more Americans are catching onto the agenda of the corporate powers, that one-tenth of the 1%. And although it might feel like it sometimes, resistance is definitely not futile.

Best,

Sharon Higgins

The Perimeter Primate

Trailer for KILLING ED from Visual Truth Projects on Vimeo.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

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.

Pages

Monday, March 21, 2016

Thank you