The New Existential Threat by Paul Moore

When this humble teacher advised that the global economy was over a few months ago it was greeted with mild amusement by most I'm sure, if it registered at all. After all who am I? The end of the global economy was, of course, not my original idea. It belongs to the "peak oil" pioneers. People who saw that the planet's supply of oil would peak and then decline. And that an economy built on a fantasy, that oil would serve as a perpetual and cheap source of energy, would fail.

The failing has begun and much smarter people than me have begun to talk about it. For instance, NPR's Morning Edition spoke with Canadian economist Jeff Rubin about his new book 'Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller' Take a listen here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104466911&m=104517033

For more about the book go here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104466911

Why discuss this matter on a site that seeks to defend the principle of universal public education across the US? Because this transition will have a profound effect on public education and what's left of American democracy.

For instance the biggest threats to public education in the age of globalization, the Business Roundtable, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the wife and spawn of Sam Walton, and Mayor "Little Ceasar" Bloomberg are going to go into decline. The Green Dot's, the KIPP, the TFA's, and Eva Moskowitz' Harlem crusade are soon over. The $18 billion Gates lost this year is just the first measure of his fall. He's gonna live like us soon! Of course I exaggerate, Gates would fake his own death before he'd work for a living. But the point is a realigned capitalist economy will deal these folks out.

The US economy is going to be run out of the banks, out of Goldman Sachs' offices. That's why the US treasury is being transferred there now. And the social order, if it can be maintained behind massive joblessness and the end of pensions and health care, will be the responsibility of the military. The public schools face a new existential threat, fascism, the last refuge of capitalism from an economic system that actually works for humanity.

Paul A. Moore

More from Moore on NCLB

Paul Moore Comment on WaPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121401924.html

NCLB is the evil spawn of the globalization of our economy. That process is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates were so instrumental in getting this absurd and perverse legislation passed. The CEO's wanted a profit making private school system. In the new economy there would be Wal Mart and security guard jobs or the military for the kids that used to go to public schools.

These Reagan revolutionaries had a good run, in fact their campaign appeared ready to bear its bitter fruit. They had public school system wreckers like Michelle Rhee in place. Just then their rationale for being, their precious global economy, crashed! Why in just the past month they have had to do $326 billion CPR on Citigroup and scrambled to rescue the Big Three. Their pride and joy is on fire. It was supposed to be immutable. It was eternal! Now that attitude's all
gone. There's only panic now.

Any talk of NCLB is prayer said over a corpse.

The great transition is coming!

Paul Moore (and More) on Rhee in DC

Miami teacher Paul Moore lays one into Rhee in DC. But before you get to Paul, connect to this on the AFT - and I'll use the term very loosely - "support for the DC teachers union by providing counseling to teachers threatened with firing.

From the Washington Post
The teachers union is gearing up to respond. In a letter to members earlier this month, WTU President George Parker said the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will join the Washington local to "provide support and strategies" to instructors designated for the 90-day plan.

I posted the full article at Norms Notes

What? Legal strategies? That's it? The AFT should be ringing a permanent picket line around Rhee headquarters. But Randi Weingarten in charge will perpetuate the "carry a twig, squeak like a mouse" strategy which hands victory to the Joel Kleins and Michelle Rhees of this world.

Is it all about the AFT/UFT cutting their losses and grabbing whatever bucks are out there to grab? Or is there maybe a hint of underlying support for the neo-liberal agenda? [ie. Read our review - Ruthless Neoncon - of Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" - link in the sidebar.]

Globalization Spits Up Michelle Rhee

by Paul Moore


D.C. students, their parents, teachers and public school workers need only hold on. When you have Alan Greenspan disowning Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand in congressional testimony it is a sign great change is on the way. One of those changes will be the end of the tyranny of Bill Gates' and Eli Broad's attack dog Michelle Rhee.


Lacking any discernible qualifications, her shocking appointment, can be understood only when you realize that Rhee was brought in to inflict maximum damage on the district's public schools. And as a cultist (Teach For America, New Teacher Project) and true believer she came at a bargain basement salary. Real superintendents were courted (Fenty visited Miami with several members of the D.C. commission to interview Dr. Rudolph Crew) but those candidates could not be counted on to mindlessly take a club to D.C.'s public schools. The havoc and disruption that Rhee has caused was no accident. It was the plan!


But Michelle Rhee appeared in your lives because and when the "global economy" was riding herd on this planet. Globalization was at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume their version of education. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates were interested in public education at all. The CEO's wanted a profit
making private school system and Gates wanted visas for Indian and Taiwanese tech workers he could pay lower wages to.


An economic earthquake has now cracked the foundation of the model that spits up a Michelle Rhee. The superstructure will collapse in time. The global economy is history.


Soon it will be every private school and charter school investor for himself. Private school students are being moved to the public schools by their debt ridden parents in significant numbers already. In the scramble to survive the privatizers will throw their tool Ms. Rhee to the wolves. Stripped of her powerful patrons, Michelle Rhee will stand alone as a petty, vindictive, insecure bureaucrat who had no business pretending to care about children. And she will leave. Hold on!

Data Driven Destruction

by Paul A. Moore

Teacher, Miami Carol City Senior High School

One of the corporate wrecking balls brought down recently on America’s public schools is “data driven” education. The charade is a creation of the Business Roundtable and other forces that dream of a privatized school system that serves only their global profit making schemes.

Because their sinister intentions must be kept on the down low, data driven education is packaged and sold as economical but revolutionary pedagogy come to the classroom. Absurdity is the inevitable result. And so it is that our system of universal public education is now trapped in a scene from Woody Allen’s farce Bananas. The new leader has decreed that, “From this day on the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16-years-old are now…16-years-old!”

Promoting insanity in the classroom has proven to be quite an effective weapon of public school destruction. Teachers are being broken down and driven away at an unprecedented rate. One in five new teachers will not make it through their first year. Half of them will be gone inside of five years.

In still sane sectors of our society data is collected on a rational basis. The U.S. Census Bureau gathers data on population, infant mortality, life expectancy, health insurance and the distribution of wealth for the sake of a more effective government. In a sector of our society targeted for demoralization and destruction, data is collected for data’s sake. There is no earthly reason for most of the information teachers are now being ordered to collect and analyze through incessant testing of students. If the Census Bureau was put on the same footing they would be checking people’s underwear every half hour.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is a high ranking leader of the corporate assault on public schools, right up there with Michael R. Bloomberg, Eli Broad, and the Walton (Wal-Mart) Family. Jeb Bush is not just a friend of big business; he is a big business! One of his wholly-owned subsidiaries is his brother Neil Bush and Ignite! Learning. Ignite is a software company that “helps” students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) with “portable learning centers” at $3,000 per kid. The business has contracts in 13 Florida school districts and rakes in millions.

During Jeb Bush’s final year in office there is strong evidence to suggest that FCAT scores were manipulated and artificially inflated. The “education governor” was apparently going to barnstorm with the “education mayor” Mr. Bloomberg as a prelude to a run for the White House. Big brother has poisoned that well for the time being but in those days there was speculation over another possible career path for Jeb.

Imagine if Jeb Bush had been tapped by National Football League owners rather than Roger Goodell as the league’s commissioner. The new commissioner could have applied his education philosophy to the NFL. Certainly the players would be more effective if they spent less time on the practice field and in the weight room and more time being tested daily in the 40-yard dash, shuttle run, vertical leap and bench press. Less time practicing football plays and more time being tested on the playbook. Or imagine the new policy if President Bush had named his brother to the Cabinet? As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Jeb Bush would surely have ordered the nation’s livestock weighed every few hours because even if it did cut into their feeding time it would certainly result in fatter cows.