Earlier this year Matt Damon defended teachers in an interview with right-wing Libertarian's "Reason T.V." He became frustrated with a cameraman's attack on teachers and in other footage Damon expressed that he's fed up with the ongoing war on teachers.
The right-wing's attack on teachers and public education is nothing new. Graduate of Stanford University and Professor at ASU, David C. Berliner's research published in 1997 entitled: "Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right: different views of children, schooling, teaching, and learning" tells of the extremist churches with a right-wing agenda handing out kits, which explain ways to dismantle the public education system. The article also revealed ties between extremist church leaders and right-wing politicians. The kit teaches how to cancel book orders at the last minute - leaving teachers and students without textbooks, how to become elected to school boards, and how to take a number of other actions to cripple the system. One could only wonder of the extent this contribution has made to the public's view of the organization level and integrity of public education.
The late Fredrick Von Hayek, good friend of the billionaire Koch brothers' father promoted the privatization of public education through the voucher system and the Koch brothers have invested millions in their own right-wing agenda for privatization through their group called Americans For Prosperity. Americans For Prosperity has funded and helped their own to become elected to the school board of Wake County, North Carolina. Wake County community members, parents, and students became outraged when they discovered the members funded by Americans For Prosperity were resegregating schools. The NAACP filed a civil rights complaint, a complaint with the accreditation agency, and many protested the Kochs' policies.
At a Koch brother's seminar Republican Governor Chris Christie declared his next mission will be to dismantle the teachers' union. Other seminar attendees included Republican Governor and current Presidential candidate Rick Perry, and Republican Governor Rick Scott.
Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell explains the history of education very well in his book A History of Western Philosophy. Periods in Western history when most people could not afford an education point out a relationship between money and learning. Education was for the very few in the ruling class who could afford private tutors. The rest didn't have the means to pay for an education.
Professor Berliner's 2005 research entitled: Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform compares statistical data between industrialized nations with an emphasis on economic systems. His data show the American public education system has been misrepresented - and why else than for political and economic gains. The worse the system is made out to be, the more support for an agenda to privatize. The research finds that data on those who live in poor neighborhoods - people living in poverty - clearly skew the nation's data as drastically lower performing than if the data were looked at with the poorest demographical data excluded. With it excluded, the US is among the top few highest performing in every graph variation. The data also compares US poverty with the poverty of other industrialized nations and finds that it's much more difficult for individuals to escape poverty in the US than in other countries, this helps explain the skewed data. A solution to solve the problem of poverty has been ignored, while attacks on public education continue.
Drill exams that force teachers to "teach to the test" such as those built into the No Child Left Behind Act, instead of helping public-education, Berliner points out, provide a map of where the failing schools are with the demographics of who attends. Information, he writes, we've already known for a half a century.
Funding and appropriations for public education have decreased over the years. Americans For Prosperity's Michele Bachmann would like to further decrease funding for public education if elected to the presidency. In 2011, the school board in the city of Memphis, Tennessee said they would not be opening their public-schools on time this year due to problems with funding. Roughly six-thousand teachers have been laid-off in San Diego, California alone. The arts, physical education, and music have been cut. Money for supplies such as paper and ink has decreased. Teachers are constantly unaware whether they'll be able to continue teaching, pay off school loans, and use the graduate degree they studied for. Many teachers spend their summers searching for work unaware when and if they'll receive the call or email notifying them that they'll be able to teach again for another year or semester.
The right-wing's attack on teachers and public education is nothing new. Graduate of Stanford University and Professor at ASU, David C. Berliner's research published in 1997 entitled: "Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right: different views of children, schooling, teaching, and learning" tells of the extremist churches with a right-wing agenda handing out kits, which explain ways to dismantle the public education system. The article also revealed ties between extremist church leaders and right-wing politicians. The kit teaches how to cancel book orders at the last minute - leaving teachers and students without textbooks, how to become elected to school boards, and how to take a number of other actions to cripple the system. One could only wonder of the extent this contribution has made to the public's view of the organization level and integrity of public education.
The late Fredrick Von Hayek, good friend of the billionaire Koch brothers' father promoted the privatization of public education through the voucher system and the Koch brothers have invested millions in their own right-wing agenda for privatization through their group called Americans For Prosperity. Americans For Prosperity has funded and helped their own to become elected to the school board of Wake County, North Carolina. Wake County community members, parents, and students became outraged when they discovered the members funded by Americans For Prosperity were resegregating schools. The NAACP filed a civil rights complaint, a complaint with the accreditation agency, and many protested the Kochs' policies.
At a Koch brother's seminar Republican Governor Chris Christie declared his next mission will be to dismantle the teachers' union. Other seminar attendees included Republican Governor and current Presidential candidate Rick Perry, and Republican Governor Rick Scott.
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Professor Berliner's 2005 research entitled: Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform compares statistical data between industrialized nations with an emphasis on economic systems. His data show the American public education system has been misrepresented - and why else than for political and economic gains. The worse the system is made out to be, the more support for an agenda to privatize. The research finds that data on those who live in poor neighborhoods - people living in poverty - clearly skew the nation's data as drastically lower performing than if the data were looked at with the poorest demographical data excluded. With it excluded, the US is among the top few highest performing in every graph variation. The data also compares US poverty with the poverty of other industrialized nations and finds that it's much more difficult for individuals to escape poverty in the US than in other countries, this helps explain the skewed data. A solution to solve the problem of poverty has been ignored, while attacks on public education continue.
Drill exams that force teachers to "teach to the test" such as those built into the No Child Left Behind Act, instead of helping public-education, Berliner points out, provide a map of where the failing schools are with the demographics of who attends. Information, he writes, we've already known for a half a century.
Funding and appropriations for public education have decreased over the years. Americans For Prosperity's Michele Bachmann would like to further decrease funding for public education if elected to the presidency. In 2011, the school board in the city of Memphis, Tennessee said they would not be opening their public-schools on time this year due to problems with funding. Roughly six-thousand teachers have been laid-off in San Diego, California alone. The arts, physical education, and music have been cut. Money for supplies such as paper and ink has decreased. Teachers are constantly unaware whether they'll be able to continue teaching, pay off school loans, and use the graduate degree they studied for. Many teachers spend their summers searching for work unaware when and if they'll receive the call or email notifying them that they'll be able to teach again for another year or semester.
