"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Duncan Promotes Resegregationist Policies in Topeka

Breathtaking hubris and moral bankruptcy
Arne Duncan is on another bus tour to promote the corporate education schemes that pit Wall Street hedge funders and the corporate foundations against the children, teachers, and parents of America.  Today Duncan made his most ironic stop yet, at Monroe School, Ground Zero for the fight against segregation in the early 1950s.

Duncan's speech did not explain or even mention how his support for the unimpeded spread of apartheid corporate charter schools has done more than any other administration in the past 60 years to increase, hasten, and intensify the resegregation of American school children.

He did not mention the 9-0 Supreme Court Decision in 1954 that declared that separate schools are inherently unequal. Duncan continued to mouth the exhausted and withered rhetoric that education is the civil rights issue of our time, while continuing to pretend that his "no excuses" policies and his phony teacher evaluation schemes and his national curriculum and testing plan can repair the crumbling infrastructure of urban and rural schools or the dwindling fortunes of working people without jobs, homes, hope.






1 comment:

  1. Duncan is right...education is the civil rights issue of our time...the only problem is that he's on the wrong side.

    And is that Dennis Van Roekel in the background of this picture? Is the CTU the only teachers union left in the country with any honesty and courage? I've been a NEA member since I started teaching in 1976...and continued my membership into retirement, but I'm ashamed of this man and our so-called leaders!

    I just hope that the CTU's action has given other people the courage to stand up to the corporate, DemRep war against public education.

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