>Of
>course, public school and other public institutions have been
>pro-corporate-capitalist, but at the same time they wre PUBLIC - meaning
>having to adhere to public rules and regulations that at least in principle
>retain some semblance of equality and fairness. A private institution does
>not even have to adhere to those minimal standards - they can do what they
>want, exclude whom they want etc. without being publicly accountable for
>their actions.
This is simply not true. Anti-discrimination laws apply to private companies as well as to public schools, whatever the inadequacies of the statutes or the deficiencies of enforcement in either case.
and asks:
>More seriously, what makes you to believe that the mindless instituitional
>mimickry (following the leader, streamlining, implementing efficiency and
>all that bullshit of the management-babble) the market forces create will
>provide you with more choices than government patronage of minority rights
>and cultures against the tyranny of the majority?
You seem to assume that only private, for-profit school will receive the benefits of vouchers. There is no reason to assume that religious or other not-for-profit school will not seek students with voucher money to spend. And the vouchers are expenditures of tax money, they *are* government patronage. Minority rights and cultures, in the form of, e.g., Afro-centric schools, Vedic schools, you-name-it, could benefit from this.
Doug Henwood argues that
>Vouchers are a
>diversion from this fundamental issue <snip> more funding *is* needed
Surely it matters how the funding would be spent. Right now, some legislatures would probably come up with more money for more surveillance cameras in the schools. But if you want to work for increased school funding in a climate of dissatisfaction with the existing school system, especially by those worst served by it, doesn't it make sense to come up with some better ideas about spending that money than simply calling for more of the same old thing? Many Afro-Americans, Latinos and other low-income people like the idea of vouchers. Are they being misled by the like of Jeb! and George Dubyou?
kelley colleen says :
>i reject both vouchers and charters on principle, in the first instance, and
>on what little comparative evidence we have.
pointing to the likely outcome being
> the process whereby standardization will turn those schools into
>prison-like conveyer belts in ways far more insidious, i think, than they
>already are. and those indoctrination factories of the future will have a
>much more saavy p.r. team of spin doctors than the goofuses that run the
>show now.
and a little later says:
>and, historically, the force that has resisted state bureaucratic
>standardization has been teacher's with a sense of professional efficacy and
>a commitment to the profession. this has been systematically eroded in the
>k-12 system and is very much part of the reason why schools suck. it will
>be eroded even more when teachers are only seen as workers.
Well, if you reject both vouchers and charters and consider that the professionally-commited main resistance force to McDonaldization has already been eroded within the existing k-12 system, where do we look for a way forward? Especially as your comment about things being worse "when teachers are only seen as workers" would seem to rule out the unions as a likely agent? And what will keep the current goofuses (I assume you refer to the administrators) from being replaced within the current structures, where, as you say about private schools, " the tendency toward corporate bureaucratization in the name of efficiency and profit " could and is being enforced?
I'll look forward to hearing what more you pick up from your mentor or elsewhere.
K.M.
Oh, yeah, mbs was:
>surprized nobody else blew up at my remarks about
>parents. Guess few bothered to read.
I read, but didn't find the remarks remarkable. There are a lot of parents who don't get involved with schooling -- always have been.