> Here are some notes I wrote up for the teachers' union in Oakland, as a result of Rhee's visit. If any of you work in
> education, perhaps these thoughts/words might be useful.
>
> Joanna
> -------------------------------------------
> Rhee's Framing of the Debate on Education
>
> 4. She has no notion of anything greater than the self-interested individual. Education is something that happens
> as a result of a system of punishments and rewards for both teachers and students. The notion that children
> are naturally interested in learning, that teachers care about children, and that education depends
> upon relationships-- the relationship of student to teacher, and the relationship of teachers to one another-- has
> no place in her narrative.
Wow. I just tried to watch a clip of Rhee on Youtube, and found it seriously difficult to endure more than a few minutes of her lie-filled, union-busting, neolib bilgefest without wanting to throw a brick through a window. (It probably didn't help that she was on the panel with Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now her hubby -- oh yes, she married into the self-made fraction of the 1% -- and apparently also the Mayor of Sacramento, who spouted enough neolib bromides to drive one to ultra-Spartacism. Footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCcNzh7C_Tk).
After awhile, though, I started to wonder just why the heck I had that reaction. Sure, I've taught for 15 years, so I can't help but react very, very personally to attacks on education. But it's deeper than that. On one level, Rhee epitomizes everything which I detest about the neocon/neolib war on public education and its violence to children -- the braindead, Reagan-style anecdotes which repackage viciousness as common sense, the rebranding of cruelty as competitiveness. Maybe what was most revolting was the barely-concealed hatred of critical reflection and thinking. There wasn't one iota of a love of learning or ideas, or of that unquantifiable magic of teaching -- those moments when even the least prepared of our students surprise us and surpass us.
But then it finally hit me: what got to me wasn't just the anti-intellectualism. It was the menacing note, the identification with imperial power. It was this creepy feeling that this is exactly the tone US soldiers use while reporting to their superiors on the latest colonial raid on some Pashtun village. Deep in the Empire's repressive political unconscious, American children are nothing but rebellious Arabs.
-- DRR