WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti

“Worse, Clinton’s “boarding school” socialization and structure idea sounds more like assimilation than education. Shocking and scarily reminiscent of other U.S. ventures in segregating classes of “other” people. Native Americans were also thought to be in need of “education” to work differently in groups and to be in need of structure.”— Daun Kauffman

WikiLeaks released the Hillary Clinton Email Archive mid-March 2016. Many users were searching for terms like hedge fund manager, Goldman Sachs, or, as the example in the WikiLeaks boolean tutorial: "syria libya will show results…" I decided to search for familiar phases of the neoliberal corporate education reform camp. I struck pay-dirt on my first try with "charter schools." Note my excitement on the day of discovery

Imperialist #HillaryClinton schemed to inflict a colonial charter school regime on the people of Haiti https://t.co/G6pT7fAG4C #WhichHillary

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) March 31, 2016

In one thread Clinton and her cabal talk about a colonial project to remake earthquake stricken Haiti's education system using disaster capitalism, much in the way author Naomi Klein describes what happened in New Orleans:

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Before getting to the content of the email, it's important to contextualize the Clinton's relationship with the island nation. When not facilitating the orchestration of coups in Latin America, bombing the Near East and Africa into the stone age, or providing full-throated support for apartheid states, Clinton is meddling in Haiti. Lots of good pieces on the Clintons and Haiti in publications like Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report, but this excerpt from an essay by Shadowproof's Roqayah Chamseddine is an excellent summary:

In 2010, Hillary Clinton visited Haiti as part of a public relations stunt that allowed her to see firsthand the devastation wrought by the earthquake that killed at least 100,000. This performance was primarily meant to demonstrate solidarity and show the international community that the United States would be there to help in reconstruction efforts. Yet, her visit came less than a year after the U.S. State Department, then led by Clinton, had pressured the government of Haiti into denying laborers a wage increase of $0.62.

Dan Caughlin and Kim Ives of Haïti Liberté reported the U.S. Embassy in Haiti aggressively pressured “factory owners [in Haiti] contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest paid in the hemisphere.” In statements reminiscent of the Clinton campaign’s recent charges against Sanders, Deputy Chief of Mission David E. Lindwall called the proposed $5 minimum wage for Haitian assembly zone workers one which “did not take economic reality into account” but that was meant to appeal to the “unemployed and underpaid masses.”

Haiti has long been a kind of pet project for the Clintons, and they’ve often spoken of “falling in love with Haiti” during their honeymoon. But the love isn’t mutual by any means, and Haitians across the U.S. have made this increasingly clear by way of protests spotlighting the catastrophe the Clintons have left behind. Dahoud Andre, a radio host who has organized protests in New York, is quoted by the New York Times as saying that “a vote for Hillary Clinton means further corruption, further death and destruction for our people.”

Since the email I'll be discussing is accessible here, and is somewhat long, I will not reproduce it in its entirety. Rather, I'll draw excerpts from sections and discuss them. Secretary Clinton forwarded the email in question to one of her assistants, Lauren Jiloty. It was written by neoliberal corporate education reform cheerleader David Domenici in response to Clinton's wanting suggestions on how to capitalize on the Haitian disaster. Charter school profiteer Domenici has no background in pedagogy, has never worked at a public school, "worked in finance", and is a Senior Fellow for the right-wing think-tank Center for American Progress. His biography reads like those of most of his ilk: "He felt that an understanding of the law coupled with his understanding of the financial world would help frame his sense of how best to generate positive social change." It is with this profound ignorance of education and pedagogy that Domenici crafted the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. That former Secretary Clinton relied on a venture capitalist for education policy advice speaks volumes, and foreshadows some very frightening prospects should she capture the Presidency.

---

From: Hillary Clinton
To: Lauren Jiloty
Date: 2010-01-18 19:23
Subject: HOPE YOU ARE WELL, WHERE EVER YOU GET THIS - - BELOW ARE IDEAS RE: EDUCATION CORPS FOR HAITI THAT YOU ASKED FOR

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6

From: H hrod17@clintonemail.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:23 AM
To: 'JilotyLC@state.gov'
Subject: Fw: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

From: David Domenici
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 7:55 PM
To: 'Mills, Cheryl D'; 'Cheryl Mills'
Subject: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
Hey Cheryl,

It's important to establish who was sending what to who.

Here are some quick thoughts on re-building school infrastructure in Port-au-Prince. Feel free to share with whomever you'd like.

I have little idea of the larger context here — how many schools/kids are we looking at, but one thing we've learned in the US in the last 5 years is that good teachers are the #1 lever of change in education. If we got 1,000 really great teachers into Port-au-Prince (w/ even a modicum of support and materials), they'd make a big difference and touch the lives of 30,000-60,000 kids.

Here Domenici perpetuates the most common falsehood from the reformers' talking point list, that good/great teachers are the number one factor affecting students. He's dead wrong, and this misrepresentation of fact needs correction.

It's not that teaching isn't important—quite the contrary, but teaching is a minority factor in group of factors impacting students. Even more so in the abject conditions of post-earthquake Haiti, which was already an impoverished nation due to U.S. economic imperialism. It's doubtful that Domenici or Clinton have actually read about this outside their small insular world of edreform, where policy papers are passed off as research. However, depending on which study we rely on, teachers at most comprise 10 to 20 percent of factors for achievement outcomes. The distinguished Dr. Paul L. Thomas has written on this, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has funded major studies, edreform darling Eric A. Hanushek has documented it, as have many others. Some selected sources:

Di Carlo: But in the big picture, roughly 60 percent of achievement outcomes is explained by student and family background characteristics (most are unobserved, but likely pertain to income/poverty). Observable and unobservable schooling factors explain roughly 20 percent, most of this (10-15 percent) being teacher effects. The rest of the variation (about 20 percent) is unexplained (error). In other words, though precise estimates vary, the preponderance of evidence shows that achievement differences between students are overwhelmingly attributable to factors outside of schools and classrooms (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).

Rothstein: The 2/3 — 1/3 breakdown between family background and school influences  was the core finding of the 1966 federal study, the “Coleman Report.”  But this interpretation of the report overstates its finding about the  influence of schools, because Coleman and his colleagues considered the  influence of a child’s schoolmates (“peer effects”) to be a school  factor, not an out-of-school factor. (Coleman, James S., and Ernest Q.  Campbell, Carol J. Hobson, James McPartland, Alexander M. Mood, Frederic  D. Weinfeld, and Rober L. York, Equality of Educational Opportunity,  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,  Government Printing Office, 1966.) Yet the only way to affect the  composition of peers in the neighborhood schools he studied would be to  change the composition of neighborhoods, with housing integration  policies, for example. Of the in-school influences, the Coleman Report  identified teacher quality (defined by teacher characteristics such as  their educational attainment and experience) to be most important.

In the context of post-earthquake Haiti, understanding that we cannot rely on teachers alone to make up for the crushing poverty, multiple traumas, and lack of infrastructure, is critical. While we certainly want all children in Haiti to have access to education, the idea that we can ignore the rest of the issues they're facing reeks of colonialism and callousness.

I think this is totally doable, in short-order, in a magnificent way that could set the foundation for a well-educated generation of Haitians who could lead the country out of poverty, to self-sustainability, self-governance and openness.

Never mind that Haitian poverty is a result of U.S. transnational corporations depressing wages (cf Secretary Clinton's intervention in Haiti's attempt to raise minimum wage discussed supra). Pay no attention to the blatantly racist and colonialist notion that but for U.S. intervention, there would never be a "well-educated generation of Haitians". Ignore the fact that every attempt by Haitians to create self-sustainability and self-governance has been thwarted by U.S. interventions. Corporate education reform will correct all these things in "short-order" under the new Clinton Education Corps plan.

There were four goals listed for the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. Domenici enumerates them as:

• Goal 1: Human Capital
• Goal 2: Build a robust curriculum and teacher instruction program
• Goal 3: Build high quality, durable schools that entice families, children into education
• Goal 4: Create family, community impetus for all school age children to be in school

Goal 1: Human Capital:

Create Haiti Teacher Corps. Model loosely off of Peace Corps/Teach for America, CityYear Teacher corps (US): Recruit, train, and place 500-1000 teachers from US this spring and summer. We can do this.

* * *

o Language/culture training: TDB — find the best folks out there to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture, current socio-political situation — 50% of the training program.

o Academic training: We'll work w/ TFA and others and develop 8 week intensive teacher training program for other 50% of program.

Being a business-finance type, Domenici is quite at home writing about how to make other people do work. This is the longest section of his piece, so only small portion will be addressed here. The most frightening thing is that he pushes the Teach for America (TFA) model, which at best is a paternalistic, colonial model. Clinton's advisor then outlines his program for "training" that is eight weeks long. At first blush, this is a vast improvement over TFA's woefully deficient standard five week model. That is until we take into account that they want these recruits "to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture" simultaneously. While the self-congratulatory reformsters all consider themselves "elite", it's somewhat absurd that eight weeks is all that's allotted for all this content. To contextualize, at its shortest point, clown college was eight weeks. In essence, Clinton's cabal feel that the best Haitian students deserve is people with no more training than clowns.

Haiti-based: Less clear what the teacher-leader pipeline is like...but we can figure out and get whoever we can.

Clinton's advisor Domenici consistently speaks of the Haitian people as somewhat of an afterthought. They are someone you do "for" or "to", but never "with". That this wealthy, white male consistently leaves the agency of Haitians out of the equation is completely in line with the white supremacist lens that both he and Hillary Clinton see the world through.

Much of the rest of this section deals with how cheaply they'd like to see all the labor paid. Interestingly, this is in line with how Clinton's State Department kept Haitian wages low in order to sate corporate capital. Domenici asserts that there's plenty of young charter school types that are willing to make the sacrifices that neither he, nor any of his peers would ever make. The finance capitalist then turns his attentions to the next goal.

I am not a curriculum expert, but I think this is really doable, as well, so long as we get the right team […]

Clinton's fellow corporate reformer is refreshingly honest here. Not only is he not a "curriculum expert", he's not even a novice. When we look at his notions of "Backwards Mapping" and "clusters and in modules that can be swapped in and out", it's clear that Domenici is pushing what Paulo Freire termed "the banking model of pedagogy", that is, that students are vessels into which corporate reformers pour knowlege into. This model works well for maintaining oppression, and would serve to perpetuate the United States' existing historical relationship with Haiti.

Reading this section reminds one of just how profoundly ignorant neoliberal corporate eduction reform types are. This may be the one individual less knowledgeable than Arne Duncan or John King on education issues, which would likely mean a potential Clinton administration would tap him to head the Education Department. If Domenici is one thing, he's buzzword compliant. Every phrase and term for the reformy canon is on display in his missive to the Wall Street funded Presidential candidate who spent many years on Walmart's board of directors.

Consider technology and technology infrastructure as a part of the initial construction plan so it's not add-on later.

Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills' education "expert" would be remiss if he wasn't providing profit vectors for Reed Hastings, Bill Gates, and Pearson, PLC. The rest of his section for goal three is quite reminiscent of the Naomi Klein quote supra, where she discusses destroyed infrastructure being ignored in favor of school privatization happening with "speed and precision". Domenici does disaster capitalism with the best of them.

The corporatist's final section suggests wrap-around services, something that those of us in the social justice camp are certainly in favor of. However, Clinton's confidant can't seem to keep his paternalism in check. He asserts that if his plan is followed, that it will "be a catalyst for socio-political change". We discussed above how Haiti's problems are due to U.S. economic imperialism, and seemingly endless interventionism in the country's affairs. To suggest that their problems stem from a lack of education is that special kind of victim blaming that corporate reformers are so adept at. It also smacks of how neoliberal Democrats, as Thomas Frank so succinctly puts it, "see every economic problem as an educational problem".

Domenici is an elitist from the finance capital sector, and had been asked by a Secretary of State whose Wall Street ties are like no other to advise her on educational policy for Haiti. So it's no small wonder that he ends his email with:

Gotta run. See you shortly.

xo,

dd

It's no surprise that the woman who refers to children of color as "super-predators", insisting that "we have to bring them to heel", would search out such a racist education plan to inflict on a Haitian population decimated as much by the Clintons' free-trade deals as by natural disasters. Like the distinguished Professor Michelle Alexander says, Hillary Clinton uses "racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals." While Haiti was spared this horrific, colonial charter school plan hatched by Clinton and her corporate advisors, we can expect more of the same if she somehow comes to power again. We need to organize and prepare to fight against her racist penchant for neoliberal corporate education reform.

---

While not Hillary Clinton specific, Jesse Hagopian has an excellent piece entitled: Shock-Doctrine Schooling in Haiti: Neoliberalism Off the Richter Scale

Expressing a Patriotic Core

The intention of this post is to examine the brief "persuasive," personal narrative (fiction) and promotional piece in The Atlantic Monthly titled "How Self-Expression Damaged My Students" by Robert Pondiscio.  Of course, it's hardly worth doing as it carries nothing but assertion and anecdote, exactly the sort of thing one ought to be opposed to when discussing how to analyse writing as an informational conveyance with very rigid rules for construction.

And as Pondiscio seems only able to compose marketing copy we can dismiss his "content" as serving an economic and ideological "interest."  But we can think a little bit about how his words mean to "work."  Before that, let's look as briefly as possible at his place of business, The Core Knowledge Foundation, before we glance at his "bio" and his extremely weak piece of writing.  If this writing is good enough for such a once-venerable publication then perhaps the Common Core can offer nothing of use to our impoverished (and learning disabled) majority and our poorly-served (and learning disabled) urban minorities perhaps this in itself is a clue to the value of this new nationalism: the learners, that is, the nation, not being so bright, not being so healthy, wealthy or wise (yes, I brought Benjy into play), but rather the opposite and "disabled" by design it seems, ought to be more easily managed and inculcated in our glorious ways than they have been in the past.  The Republic and the "natural order" depend upon it, methinks.

***

“African-American students at a Richmond community college could read just as well as University of Virginia students when the topic was roommates or car traffic, but they could not read passages about Lee’s surrender to Grant,” Dr. Hirsch recalled. “They had not been taught the various things that they needed to know to understand ordinary texts addressed to a general audience. The results were shocking. What had the schools been doing? I decided to devote myself to helping right the wrong that is being done to such students,” he said. 

Electrified by the insight gleaned from this research, Dr. Hirsch developed his groundbreaking concept of cultural literacy—the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. In 1986, he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation, and a year later, published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know. A surprise publishing phenomenon, the book remained at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for more than six months. 

For nearly three decades, in books, articles and lectures, Dr. Hirsch has passionately argued that schools should teach a highly specific curriculum that would allow children to understand things writers and speakers take for granted, and to fully participate in democratic life. “We will achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared knowledge to communicate effectively with everyone else,” Dr. Hirsch concludes.

--From the bio of E. D. Hirsch Jr., Chairman and Founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation

By gum, there's enough in there to keep the school psychologist busy for quite a while.  But let's focus on the "community" assumptions made by the Great White Hope.  Apparently African-Americans can read about things that might matter to them in their lives but not about things that matter to Hirsch (or his conception of "core" knowledge) and "everyone else" who are "writers and speakers (huh?)" concerned with "democratic" life.  I love that his example is "Lee's surrender" in the context of his "African-American students."  What is it he is communicating here--what does he want us all to communicate with each other?

Here's an idea: one aspect of teaching an educator might tackle, outside of applying the metaphysic that oligarchically-approved nationalism is an unalloyed good, would be to SHOW students WHY specific content could matter to them.  Then one might expect that those arguments will fall on deaf ears due to the fact that the White Man's Burden argument has proven ineffectual not to mention condescending to those actually "burdened" by White Men.

You see, "educating" the inferiors has always been the provenance of the bag-men employed by leaders.

But doesn't all this beg the question: What exactly did David Coleman do in all this?  Doesn't it seem like he too is just a "front."

***

When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on.  While I was at it he asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out.  I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way. 

"Well, guess," he says.
"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?"
"But you can guess, can't you?  It's just as easy."
"WHICH candle?"  I says.
"Why, any candle," he says.
"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"
"Why, he was in the DARK!  That's where he was!"
"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"
"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?

(Huck Finn)

***

Q: How many xenophobes does it take to write nationalist curriculum?
A: One

Q: How many followers does it take to implement that curriculum?
A: All of us, less the 47% who are parasites.

***

Chairman and Founder

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues including the best-seller Cultural Literacy. With his subsequent books The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, The Knowledge Deficit, and The Making of Americans, Dr. Hirsch solidified his reputation as one of the most influential education reformers of our time.

A highly regarded English professor and literary critic earlier in his career, Dr. Hirsch describes being “shocked into education reform” while doing research on written composition. Conducting research at a pair of colleges in Virginia, he discovered that while the relative readability of a text was an important factor in determining a student’s ability to comprehend a passage, an even more important factor was the student’s background knowledge.

Is it me or is there an echo fo the Rumsfeldian in the titles of Hirsch's books: something about failing in our illegal wars due to the military we have which is not the one we need.

And the President of said "Foundation:"

Linda Bevilacqua is the president of the Core Knowledge Foundation. She is the co-author, with E. D. Hirsch, Jr. of three publications, What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Read-Alouds to Get Ready for Kindergarten and What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Activity Books 1 and 2. She developed the Core Knowledge preschool program and is actively involved in the development of the Core Knowledge Language Arts program, which has been successfully piloted in ten New York City public schools. She has served as a consultant regarding national curricular and educational policies, most recently in the development of the Common Core State Standards, as well as for Head Start, the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Albert Shanker Institute. She earned her BS and M.Ed from the University of Virginia and has taught and supervised programs for children with learning disabilities.

I don't know how many of these folks apparently "made their bones" in special education programs but it seems like an odd preponderance.  But look at all that work she's done for both federally funded "education" programs and those funded by "philanthropists."  (Did we discuss here that philanthropists care about their version of the species--that is they "love man" as it reflects themselves as an abstraction and dislike actual, individual "men" who can never be like them.)

Oh and by the way--here's the first paragraph of a policy paper out of the Albert Shanker Institute (where Bevilacqua "consulted") that supports this motto: Let us reform it before they do!  This is akin to Obama deciding to be more of a Murderer-in-Chief than W. or any future GOP president.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL SYSTEMS, as they are presently constituted, are simply not led in ways that enable them to respond to the increasing demands they face under standards-based reform. Further, if schools, school systems, and their leaders respond to standards-based reforms the way they have responded to other attempts at broad scale reform of public education over the past century, they will fail massively and visibly, with an attendant loss of public confidence and serious consequences for public education.  The way out of this problem is through the large scale improvement of instruction, something public education has been unable to do to date, but which is possible with dramatic changes in the way public schools define and practice leadership. 

Do you also find it interesting (revealing) how much the "democratic" speech of this party realpolitik seems committed to the Cult of the Leader.

But finally we arrive at Pondiscio, messaging arm of the Corps, er, Core.

Robert Pondiscio, Director of Communications
Robert brings over 25 years of media, communications and classroom experience to his role as the Foundation’s Communications Director. Robert launched the popular Core Knowledge Blog in December 2007; he also writes and edits Common Knowledge, the Foundation’s weekly online newsletter. Prior to joining the Foundation, Robert taught 5th grade in the South Bronx for several years under the aegis of the New York City Teaching Fellows. It was there, he notes, “I learned first-hand how badly the lack of Core Knowledge impacted even my most capable students.” Prior to becoming a teacher, Robert was the Communications Director for BusinessWeek magazine. He also served for many years as the Public Affairs Director for TIME. The author of several non-fiction books for young readers, he lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Here's one of those non-fiction books: Get on the Net:: Everything You Need To Know About The Internet, Including The World Wide Web And Addresses For Hundreds Of Fun And Useful Sites (1999)

The marketing pap for the book calls Pondiscio an "Internet expert" and  "a career journalist and professional in the field of public relations, is the co-author of three previous books for kids about computers, all published by Avon."  

Also, Robby was a teacher for "several" (3, to fit our minimum understanding of the term?) "under the aegis of the New York City Teaching Fellows."  That's an "Oddfellows" without the unionizing aspect, eh?  Anyway, what does that group, run out of the NYC Dept of Education, do: 

Once Fellows have successfully completed pre-service training, they are eligible to be hired as a full-time teacher in a New York City public school with the same starting salary and benefits as other beginning teachers. Fellows also receive additional financial benefits, including a stipend during pre-service training. Fellows may also be eligible to receive an AmeriCorps Education Awards.

Also, what does it mean to be "under" an "aegis?"  That sure sounds important!

1. Classical Mythology: the shield or breastplate of Zeus or Athena, bearing at its center the head of the Gorgon.
2. protection; support: under the imperial aegis.
3. sponsorship; auspices

Ah, imperial protection.  Nice if you can get it, yes?  I smell a "writer" turned "teacher" to a purpose and that purpose is upon us.


In any case, I'll ask you to hit the link if you want to read it all, it's pretty short.  I just want to pull out the "persuasive" bits.  I would note that, as I read it, his tone is primarily one of mockery.

How Self-Expression Damaged My Students, By Robert Pondiscio, the corporate commercial blah blah blah AND a former 5th grade teacher.

A former South Bronx teacher recalls how his own idealism kept his class from learning how to write.

Every decent human impulse we have as teachers shouts in favor of not imposing rules and discipline on students, but liberating them to discover the power of their voice by sharing their stories. Of course children will be become better writers if they write personal narratives instead of book reports. Obviously children will be more engaged and motivated if they can write from the heart about what they know best, rather that trudge through turgid English essays and research papers. 

First, the barely "teacher" but really corporate message man makes his voice "ours" by the simple act of  saying "we...as teachers."  Lesson One, yes?  But who is in favor of not imposing rules?  Let me give you what I'd consider a somewhat "liberal" translation: teachers who feel institutions are dominating powers are often seeking to find places where children can not so easily be crushed and molded into a  "machined" product.  Oh and there's the mockery right out of the gate (if you can't quite hear this maybe look at his picture).

Grammar? Mechanics? Correcting errors? Please. Great writing is discovery. It is the intoxicating power of words and our own stories, writing for an audience and making things happen in the world. We know this works. We all saw the movie Freedom Writers, didn't we?

Again, who says this?  Nice jab at a movie though...is this ideological tit for tat with that unseen "choice" movie that's out?

Like so many of our earnest and most deeply humane ideas about educating children in general, and poor, urban children in particular, this impulse toward authenticity is profoundly idealistic, seductive, and wrong. I should know. I used to damage children for a living with that idealism.

I too am a killer!  But let's consider this, Pondiscio just said that earnest and humane ideas about educating the poor and "urban" (um...everyone "of color" but Asians, the other "white" peeps) are wrong as is "authenticity."  This was my point about Coleman's gaf.  It is a truth (and Robby here repeats it) that the "po' colored folks" (cf. Hirsch above) don't live lives that are "essentially" authentic to a "national" understanding of the "Core" citizen.

Every day, for two hours a day, I led my young students through Reader's and Writer's Workshop. I was trained not to address my kids as "students" or "class" but as "authors" and "readers." We gathered "seed ideas" in our Writer's Notebooks. We crafted "small moment" stories, personal narratives, and memoirs. We peer edited. We "shared out." Gathered with them on the rug, I explained to my 10-year-olds that "good writers find ideas from things that happened in their lives." That stories have "big ideas." That good writers "add detail," "stretch their words," and "spell the best they can."

Let me ask why Robby, who was "under the aegis" of an institution and "fellowship" seemingly committed to "right" the wrongs of "teacher training" and public education, apparently WASN'T doing the work that Peg Tyre proselytizes in her promo piece for New Visions and it's Center for Educational Leadership?  And while Robby has mockingly hit all the "workshop" highlights regarding terminology he fails to mention that it's nearly impossible to talk about writing without a "structural" vocabulary and that all English teachers I have ever met and worked with teach grammar.

Teach grammar, sentence structure, and mechanics? I barely even taught. I "modeled" the habits of good readers and "coached" my students. What I called "teaching," my staff developer from Teacher's College dismissed as merely "giving directions." My job was to demonstrate what good readers and writers do and encourage my students to imitate and adopt those behaviors.

These Atlantic pieces sure are heavy-handed.  Here we dis Teacher's College (while in the Tyre piece it was Paulo Freire) and push the meme that it is the "leftists" among us who have ruined this great country by letting the servants think that they shouldn't be given directions.  The Pinkos and Abolitionists ruined it all!

Then, even more amazingly, but right in line with the "Lee surrenders to Grant" line, Robby compares the urban inner-city poor to those foolish, "irrational savages," deemed a "cargo cult," whose idea of "science" (predictive assertions of reality) is really magical thinking.  Hmm, I wonder what color the skin is of those folks who the White man labels "Cargo Cult?"

And so it is, all too often, for struggling writers in low-performing schools. They're missing something essential, because we model and coach and they still can't write. But good writers don't just do stuff. They know stuff. They have knowledge of the world that enlivens their prose and provides the ability to create examples and analogies. They have big vocabularies and solid command of the conventions of language and grammar. And if this is not explicitly taught, it will rarely develop by osmosis among children who do not grow up in language-rich homes.

And there it is once more...the urban poor who are "color-disabled" (let's do ourselves the service of honesty) just don't know any shit worth knowing.  Sure, man, I don't "get" rap music either.  Of course, I don't dig on opera much, and, as long as this is really an anecdotal, personal narrative, I just can't understand what I would call the Bon Iver "cult."  That guy is ridiculously maudlin.  (Uh oh, did I reveal my whiteness with my vocabulary?  Well, maybe that's good cuz I know stuff worth knowing!)

"When our students resist writing, it is usually because writing has been treated as little more than a place to expose all they do not know about spelling, penmanship and grammar," observes Lucy Calkins, probably the workshop model's premier guru. She is almost certainly correct.

This may be my favorite from Robby--flipping the bird to good ol' Lucy Calkins.  It's funny though that I just bought a book by Lucy Calkins (co-author) called Pathways to the Common Core.  Calkins, a career educator (not a marketing PR hack) has of course seen the writing on the professional wall and has decided to make the best of it.  And in case you hadn't sussed it out with your Tom Sawyer skills, she is the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, or, as Robby P. might say, the Leader of the Center for Educational Cargo Cults.

Earlier this year, David Coleman, the principal architect of the widely adopted Common Core Standards, infamously told a group of educators, "As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don't give a shit about what you feel or what you think." His bluntness made me wince, but his impulse is correct. We have overvalued personal expression. The unlived life is not worth examining. The pendulum has swung too far.

I know, I've reiterated this multiple times, but c'mon!, you can't beat honesty and when you see it you should shout it.  I think that what the folks at Core Knowledge are saying is that we have overvalued some personal expression; that we value highly some personal expression; that we aim to "manage" the way the underclass uses words by training them in "style" and narrowing their content parameters.  It's as if the plantation owners, after discovering that Frederick Douglass was human and could read and write far better than they could, decided that Douglass was too ignorant to know WHAT he should be writing about, and so they set about a'trainin' him.  Though I am pretty sure Douglass was aware of Lee's surrender.

Far from imposing a cultural norm or orthodoxy--silencing their stories and compromising their authentic voice--teaching disadvantaged children the mechanics of writing, and emphasizing evidence over anecdote, is liberating not constraining. Teaching grammar, vocabulary. and mechanics to low-income black and Hispanic students is giving them access to what Lisa Delpit, an African-American educator and a critic of progressive education methods, famously called the "culture of power."

Again, this is a truth that isn't quite the one Pondiscio means to declare.  The "culture of power" is indeed embedded in our use of language as much as it is in our real estate "borders" and our policing policies and drug laws.  This is finally the ultimate ANSWER on offer by Common Core.  This is the ANSWER set opposed to the Community of Learning on offer by folks like Paulo Freire.  It is the WHAT that must be controlled--the national content that proclaims the greatness of our leaders, the greatness of our past, the greatness and beneficence of the White Wealthy Owners.  All of this MUST be embedded and drilled in endless "forms" and "lessons" from birth on (see Educare) in the the guise of structure and vocabulary of writing mechanics and "common" knowledge. 

[The title of my post is a play on the book by Edmund Wilson about the literature of the Civil War era, Patriotic Gore.]