"the guilty secret of those screaming, “It’s all about the kids!” is that the occupations which the majority of public school students are being trained for are dead end, low-paying, high-turnover jobs that require little or no education beyond high school. And if you think about it, this is congruent with the education that teachers are increasingly being forced to give them: authoritarian, repetitive, tedious, dull and closed to larger worlds and opportunities." - Michael Fiorillo
Michael Fiorillo of ICE and GEM nails the entire lie being perpetrated - by Obama, ed deformers and even our own union which has bought into the "education trumps poverty" and the "teacher quality/effectiveness is the most important facto---blah, blah, blah" arguments that serve as the basic myth of ed deform in part 1, The Fallacy of the Knowledge Economy, of his guest blog at NYC Educator.
So if most jobs - think clerks, salespersons, etc only need high school degrees - and the narrow test prep schooling they get prepares them perfectly for these jobs - then the ed deform emphasis on college - think how the the charter school shills calls all their kids "scholars" when they full well know what Michael is reporting - makes sense. NOT! according to Michael.
“So,” the self-proclaimed reformers will say, “that just proves the importance of a college degree!” Unfortunately, no: for even highly educated and skilled workers are seeing their prospects diminish as a result of outsourcing enabled by digital technologies. According to Sarash Kuruvilla of Cornell’s Institute of Industrial and Labor Relations, “…many highly-skilled US jobs such as financial industry equity research, data modeling and actuarial analysis are being outsourced to India.”
Kuruvilla also reports that other high-skill occupations being moved to Asia include “engineering services…particularly in aerospace and civil aviation, software research and development, and in animation…” The health industries will also not be spared, with “medical research jobs, including those in radiology, drug discovery and testing, and clinical trials… moving to India.”
The inference to be drawn is clear: whatever connections may have existed between post-secondary educational achievement and economic advancement have been broken, and to claim otherwise is false. This is significant for public school teachers, since they are being herded into a forced march, and having their living standards threatened, based on the constant repetition of these false premises.
In order to perpetrate the lie and shift the costs of education from teacher salaries into the corporate/hedge fund ed deformers, teachers have to become the target:
What’s the point of all this for teachers and supporters of public education? It’s that one of the major themes in the dominant narrative about education in the US, that (unionized) teachers (with due process and seniority rights, and pension and health benefits) are failing to prepare students for a future bright with unlimited prospects, prospects they would achieve if only their deadbeat teachers didn’t stand in the way, is straight-out false.
Why does this push for privatization of the public schools seem to happen only in the cities, and not the suburbs?
ReplyDeleteI'd appreciate any insight on this.
Thanks.