I don’t know a lot about car or bike racing, so I figure these are two things I should definitely weave into an analogy. Drafting: (not forcing people into military service or designing buildings) sticking close to the leader in order to better your own progress. Aerodynamics somehow work with windspeed and stuff to make you go faster by being next to and slightly behind someone, and stuff. This is not a physics lesson, though, fortunately for us both. This a look at following the money. First place sounds great and all, but in the realm of public education there is more than enough cheddar to go around. Second place is a winner, third place is a winner, and thirty eighth place is definitely still a winner. Let me put it this way, have you ever gotten a ketchup packet from Wendy’s and just stared at it? If you got the contract to make ketchup for Wendy’s, that would be a wrap. Bahamas, Bermuda, Swiss Alps, whatever. Similarly, The Florida Department of Education has over 20 miles de millones that they toss out to the hungry school districts. Somehow, that translates into superintendents raking in six figures and CEOs of education support companies bathing in the millions while our school consistently loses air conditioning on the hottest summer days and often lacks the water pressure to flush the toilet. You know darn well the DMV wouldn’t put up with that crap. The boa constrictor squeezes and the goat hemorrhages cash which is quickly picked up by, you guessed it, the vampire bats! I told you I wouldn’t forget.
Very smart, very hungry, very skilled vampire bats have attached themselves to the goat. They provide “support”. Who needs all that pesky blood flowing through their veins? Online ed is the current rage. Students knock out classes in a gaggle of weeks that take their terrestrial counterparts a year of classroom attendance to complete. Graduation rate is protected, and even goes up. Learning is an acceptable casualty. (I attended a training where I was told that in these online courses short answer questions and essays would be graded by a computer. When I inquired as to the specifics of this feat, I managed to ferret out that the program simply registered proper grammar and scanned for keywords. I have since been dying to put the virtual judge to the test. I wonder how many points I would get for “The American Revolution represented a rejection of monarchy and blue underwear. It showed that democracy was incapable of sustaining life on Mars according to both The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.” I hope I get the chance to share my knowledge with a digital detector!) I am quite confident that the brutally enterprising, private outfits will strip away the Department of Ed’s comparable programming. They are not limited by cumbersome regulations, more purely driven by profit, and my guess is that if you are a cutting edge, innovative technology creating educator, you don’t work for the state. Then again, I work for the state, so what does that say about me?
The vampire bats came in when they saw an overburdened system that is already slave to a greater predator. Testing may be on the verge of choking the life out of Florida’s remaining semblance of education, but it leaves plenty of room for accomplices. These support companies will continue to pile on and water down the quality of education as the apex predator has been doing for years. (A frog in a steadily heated pot and all that good stuff) There is no stop; there is no reform. The tentacles of this invasion stretch from the White House to the school house. Teachers are dangerously idealistic when they look to the future of education. They think that the government and corporations that have let us fall apart for decades are magically going to rally to the aid of children’s needs. This is yet another reason why teachers are suckers and are played as such.
So what do we do? If the system can’t change, if the destruction and atrophy cannot be reversed, what do we do? WE SACRIFICE THE GOAT! We end it all and bury public education in a shallow, unmarked grave with the Constitution as a coffin, thus guaranteeing it never rises again. No more education run by and mandated by the state government, with the federal government using the purse strings to play master puppeteer. It is time for a new way forward.
We have been told that without public education we will descend into a whirlpool of illiteracy and ignorance.
But I say that public education currently fosters something far worse than either illiteracy or ignorance: intellectual subservience and subversion of the will. There are a small number of correct answers that have been provided from on high. If I was part of an elite ruling class, I would not want our education system to change one bit.
But I’m not and I do. Stay tuned for a plan for the future.
Thank you for reading this tremulous trilogy. If you liked what you read, poke around for more. If you did not, don’t worry, someone will be along shortly to take you back to a safe space.