MUSE WITH ME - So much politicking and money grubbing … it’s our children who suffer.
Always, they are the constituency with no one looking out for their special interests. I cannot begin to fathom why not; I know no one with children who does not arise every morning for the sole purpose of devoting themselves to their children’s welfare. And yet politically, it never seems to translate. Adults back-bite and undermine and sue and scrabble while children’s needs are back-burnered.
Nowhere is this more evident than in “Education Reform”. It’s not about education. Say this with me again, it astonishes me still: Education Reform is not about education. It’s about reforming a public institution, schools, so that they are better positioned for funneling public monies into private pockets.
That’s it.
The proof? Well, if it were about education, would private corporate funds be available to set-aside charter schools exclusively? Why can’t all that purported interest in improving classroom resources be given to public district schools? Why only among insulated, private fiefdoms? A: Better control over the kickbacks. If children were the focus of interest, then children would be receiving the money, not private school entities.
Nothing is stopping Broad or the Waltons or Gates or Jobs’ family or Bloomberg or any of the rest of these information-age tycoons from supporting education by investing in our classrooms. Except that this has never been their intention. Their support is a quid pro quo with public monies kicking back to them for testing contracts and computer contracts and information-data contracts.
Mining information from, and selling to, your kids, the next generation of consumers, is the point.
(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.wordpress.com )
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 44
Pub: May 31, 2013
