Tag Archives: politics

Liberal Media, PBS, Ravitch, Rhee

Et tu, Liberal Media?

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The erosion of support for the Commons is most distinct in the failure of foundational support for universal public education in favor of the more powerful interests of corporate America. Just as public schools and teachers have no political party, the so-called liberal media have also abandoned public education and America’s workers, teachers.

Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert have fallen into the corporate education reform trap by buying into and thus selling the “bad” teacher myth, the charter school scam, the Michelle Rhee self-promotion tour, and the Teach for America masquerade. NBC and MSNBC, along with CNN, have long been marginalized by the Right as shining examples of the liberal media, but all have fallen in line with the corporate education reform agenda through programming such as Education Nation—corporate reform propaganda pretending to be investigative media.

This week, PBS (certainly the gold-standard of liberal media, if we believe public perception) ran an episode of Frontline examining once again Michelle Rhee: “The Education of Michelle Rhee.”

Teachers, scholars, and education activists—including education historian Diane Ravitch—held onto the slimmest glimmer of hope that the unmasking of Rhee would finally come in the form of genuinely democratic media, free of corporate agendas.

However, the program with the tagline “FRONTLINE examines the legacy of one of America’s most admired & reviled school reformers” left educators and public school advocates saying, “Et tu, liberal media?”

On balance, PBS provided Rhee yet more media coverage, satisfying her self-promotion, but leaving a tremendous vacuum of things unsaid as well as truly accurate and confrontational responses to Rhee on the cutting room floor.

John Merrow and American journalism have once again failed the democratic purposes of public media and the promise of universal public education.

Merrow, however, has chosen to run a much more detailed and enlightening piece online, in writing, about Adelle Cothorne, leading many to wonder: Why offer the larger and more powerful TV audience Rhee propaganda-lite and bury something closer to Rhee confrontation in an online blog?

The answer is ugly.

The Commons in the form of journalism and education have been consumed by the consumer culture that feeds the Corporate Greed pooling America’s resources in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Public education, its students, and its teachers have no political party and have no media to fight for the truths that must be revealed if democracy, and not corporate interests, is our goal.

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Equity, Meritocracy

Unmasking the Meritocracy Myth

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Political leadership, corporate leaders, and the media share a fascination with the meritocracy myth, primarily in the perpetuation of the claim that meritocracy already exists. Somehow the U.S. has risen above racism, sexism, and classism, resulting in a society where all success is a reflection of high character and all failure is the result of laziness and flawed character.

As long as the claim of a meritocracy remains, “no excuses” rhetoric continues to be both effective and corrosive. Ironically, those most enamored with the meritocracy myth are also those most resistent to any policies or actions that would in fact produce a level playing field for children. “No excuses” ideologies are the environment within which children from disadvantage are told to work harder to catch up with their privileged peers.

In reality, however, the U.S. is not a meritocracy, and as long as we claim that it is and resist taking action that could make it a reality, inequity will not only exist but also thrive and widen.

Choice advocates are comfortable with an invisible hand somehow creating that equity of opportunity, ignoring that the market allows privilege to beget privilege and inequity to beget inequity. A true meritocracy would not come about by the invisible hand, but by taking steps that the privileged will never embrace because it would end generational privilege. A true meritocracy would put to the test who deserves what, instead of the accident of any child’s birth determining that child’s life.

The market fetish of the U.S.—resistent as we are to taking any real action toward equity of opportunity because of our lingering deficit views of people in poverty, people of color, and women—has produced one fact that cannot be denied:

Destiny is determined by the coincidences of any child’s birth.

“Demography & Destiny: College Readiness in New York,” Norm Fruchter

“AISR’s findings were grim. The city’s high school graduates’ college readiness rates were overwhelmingly correlated with their neighborhoods’ racial composition, income and related socio-economic factors. For example, the higher the mothers’ level of education in any city neighborhood, the higher the college readiness rates of the students residing in that neighborhood. Unemployment and single motherhood, conversely, were negatively correlated—the higher the rates of unemployment and single motherhood in any city neighborhood, the lower the college readiness rates of the students residing in that neighborhood. Moreover, the mean income in each neighborhood was very highly correlated with students’ college readiness scores – the lower any neighborhood’s mean income, the lower the college readiness scores of the students living in that neighborhood.”

“Studies Suggest Economic Inequity Is Built Into, and Worsened by, School Systems,” P. L. Thomas

“Is Poverty Destiny?: Ideology v. Evidence in Education Reform,” P. L. Thomas