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

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Happy Early Birthday, Arne Duncan, on Your 52nd Birthday


I know, I know, you just turned 49 on November 6, but since I missed your birthday (sorry), I thought I would get ahead of the game and wish you the best on the one birthday that all of America's teachers and parents will celebrate, just days before your departure from the U. S. Department of Education in 2016.

And yes, I know, some other corporate shill will take your place at ED, but it won't be the same.

No one can come close to your false innocence, your feigned interest, your formulaic and robotic responses, your gift for platitudes and redundant superlatives, your "Rosa Parks moment" at the star-studded screening of Waiting for Superman, your long-bodied bowing to the corporate foundations, the old-boyish malevolence of your "No Excuses" cultural sterilization schools, your intuitive and absolute obeisance to the principles of corporate welfare and false efficiency, your startling disregard for the damaging effects of the miseducative, antidemocratic policies that you rubber stamp, your utter ignorance of the professional realm you mismanage, your self-imposed blindness to the racism and classism that you loyally cultivate, your alarming quiescence at the demise of learning and thought in public schools, your steady, empty gaze at the resegregation you enabled and "incented," your utter silence on the impending world environmental cataclysm that you and your department ignored.

You, Arne Duncan, will be remembered.  I wish you the best, as you follow your predecessors and mentors, Margaret Spellings and Rod Paige, into new opportunities for which your unique brand of incompetence makes you particularly qualified.

Happy Birthday.

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