It's National School Choice week, as you will have heard from every right-winged organization out there, including Congress and the White House. But why?
As Truthout reporters Alyssa Bowen, Ansev Demirhan, and Lisa Graves, laid out in a recent article about National School Choice Week, this "school privatization PR stunt is a pet project" of some uber-rich folks like the Gleason and Koch families. It's a fine gig; Gleason heir Tracy Gleasons pays herself over half a million bucks in salary just to run the foundation that runs this single week.
Donald Trump supported the week and the school choice shtick in his first go-round, and he's at it again. And if you've ever wondered why, exactly, folks on the far right are so pro-choice when it comes to education, Trump has done you the favor of providing an illuminating context. Because it's that context that explains much of the "why" behind "school choice."
The MAGA/Heritage Foundation vision of government is simple. Government should protect private property (from threats domestic and foreign) and it should support private enterprise and the free market (except when powerful private enterprises demand to be protected from the free market). Government should not be in the business of helping people or trying to make their lives better-- they should take care of that themselves. It very especially should not be in the business of trying to lift people above their proper station in life, particularly people who aren't straight christianist white men. Mind you, they have no objection to those people getting to a better place if they do it the Right Way (by their own bootstraps and following the rules laid out by the people at the top of the ladder).
Much of what the Trump regime is whining about points directly to their guiding principles. When they say that it's okay for immigrants to get to this country as long as they do it the right way, they're also explaining their rules for social mobility and a social safety net. It's okay for Those People to get food and health care and a house and supplemental income when they're thrown out of work--as long as they do it the right way. DEI is, for these folks, just another open border, allowing all sorts of people to get into spaces where they don't belong and have no legitimate right to be. People who are Right should get to make the rules, and people who are Wrong should not get to interfere with those who are Right.
In that context, is it any wonder that the same people who want to end social safety net programs and slam the door on DEI and stop the government from performing any sorts of functions outside of protecting property and enterprise--is it any wonder that these folks also want to dismantle public education? Since the days of Milton Friedman, it has been a far right dream to get government out of education.
Dismantle the system. Make everyone get their own kids an education, based on what best fits their proper place in society and what they are able to prove they deserve.
Except that people like the system, and "I don't want to pay to educate Those Peoples' Children" is not a winning political message.
So don't call it dismantling. Call it freedom! Yes, your public school is falling down, but here's a voucher that you can use (at any school that will let you use it). If you'd like to send your kid to a really nice, expensive school, well, you shouldn't decide to be poor.
The Trumpian/Heritage vision of government seems to be a modern riff on feudalism, where the rich and powerful make the rules and clear away the Deep State, which seems best defined as folks who are inclined to follow the rule of law rather than the rule of what I say goes, and where all the lower clases are forced to contribute to the church. A public education system aimed at providing a good education for all students, no matter the background, has no place in a feudal system.
Now granted-- school choice has collected an assortment of supporters, including people who really believe the free market will make schools better and even people who see choice as one tool to make the larger education system better. Plus, of course, opportunists who see a good chance to make a buck as well as christianists who really like the idea of making taxpayers help fund the church (which is what Those People would be doing if they weren't Wrong). But none of those people are driving the school choice bus.
The dismantlers have a whole long list, which we're seeing rolled out via executive order. Public education just happens to be on it, and "school choice" is the fig leaf they place over the dynamite they want to load around the public school's foundation.
No comments:
Post a Comment