Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015
There are an awful lot of great blogs out there.
Especially if you’re into education. But many are telling the same story.
You don’t hear much about it in the mass media, yet our public schools are being systematically starved to death. They’re being set up to fail while the vultures of privatization and free enterprise drool over the corpse.
Phony philanthropists offer schools fake donations with more strings attached than Pinocchio and noses twice as long. To secure these financial “gifts,” schools are forced to pay out more than they receive for reforms that ultimately benefit the benefactor more than the beneficiary.
And even when these philanthro-capitalists are absent, our government is pretending to hold schools accountable by forcing them to enact these same unproven, disproven or counter-factual policies that actually make things worse. Then when these schemes fail, lawmakers use that as a justification to close schools and gift them to for-profit companies who squeeze every ounce of profit they can from what’s left while further cheating students out of resources.
It’s a scam, a heist, a racket – and you’re paying for it with your tax dollars.
But if you’ve been reading the plethora of excellent edu-blogs out there, you already know this.
Who writes about this public school shakedown? Often it’s the same teachers, parents, professors and bonafide education experts whom policymakers have excluded from the conversation.
As a public school teacher, myself, with more than a decade in the classroom, a masters degree and a national board certification, my empiricism and experience is not valued. So like many folks burdened with real-world knowledge, I write a blog.
In only a year and a half, I’ve had more than 487,000 hits and 9, 208 followers. In my last post I listed my 10 most popular articles from 2015.
Today I propose to continue a tradition I stole from fellow blogger Russ Walsh. I present not my most popular work, but 5 articles that deserve another look. Most of these didn’t receive massive public attention, but perhaps they should.
Please enjoy your humble gadfly’s choice.
5) Prejudice of Poverty: Why Americans Hate the Poor and Worship the Rich
Published: Nov. 18, 2015
Views: 5,005
Description: America is rife with myths about the poor – mainly that the impoverished deserve their poverty. If they just worked harder, they wouldn’t be poor. Moreover, it’s a scam. The rest of us pick up the slack while they lounge around at home living better than we do. These are pernicious lies told with the certainty of truths. This article is my attempt to dispel these myths with facts.
Fun Fact: In my experience, often people are afraid to say certain things because they don’t want to appear racist. However, no such fear exists about sounding prejudiced against the poor, because few realize such bigotry even exists. It does. Big time.
4) Stories about Puerto Rican Resistance to Corporate Education Reform
–Parents and Children Occupy Puerto Rican School Refusing to Let Corporate Vultures Raid Its Contents
(Aug. 22 – 1,551 hits)–In Puerto Rico, Students Go On Strike to Stop Teacher Relocations
(Sept. 25 – 1,211 hits)–Puerto Rico Teachers Plan One-Day Strike to Protest Corporate Education Reform
(Nov. 15 – 634 hits)
Published: Aug. – Nov. 2015
Views: 3,396 TOTAL
Description: The US territory of Puerto Rico is besieged by vulture capitalists encouraging damaging rewrites to the tax code while buying and selling island debt. Meanwhile hundreds of American private equity moguls and entrepreneurs are using the Commonwealth as a tax haven. As a result, tax revenues to fund public goods like education are drying up and hundreds of schools are being closed. However, the citizenry is putting up one of the most aggressive and successful resistance campaigns against corporate education reform in this hemisphere.
Fun Fact: For a while, few people on the mainland were talking about this – certainly not in the media. That appears to be slowly changing. There is so much we can all learn from Puerto Rico. We need each other.
3) Education Does Not Cure Poverty – It Cures Ignorance
Published: Oct. 18, 2015
Views: 3,080
Description: One of the biggest lies told by our national education policymakers is that schools alone can cure poverty. We don’t need an anti-poverty campaign. We just need to ensure people get a good education. This is baloney. The purpose of learning has never been to gain wealth or even teach how to gain wealth. It is and always has been about eradicating ignorance.
Fun Fact: If more people knew this, there would be no more high stakes testing, Common Core, etc. Also I’m kind of partial to this article because of the image I made to go along with it. Campell Brown vs. Socrates!? That always makes me smile!
2) Do Americans “Throw Money” At Their Schools? A Fair Funding Primer
Published: July 9, 2015
Views: 1,372
Description: How many times have you heard someone complain about all the money we throw at our schools? It’s dismissive nonsense. We aren’t throwing anything. We INVEST in children. That money is not a waste. In fact, it is far from adequate for the job. This post is my attempt to explain the facts behind school funding. Please share.
Fun Fact: It is so nice to have all of this information in one place. I have tweeted, emailed, and posted this article to blowhards and ignoramuses more times than I can remember. Feel free to do the same.
1) We Shall Overcome… Our Lack of Standardized Tests!?
Published: July 19, 2015
Views: 628
Description: This is the newest myth being spread about standardized testing. Somehow high stakes assessments ensure that minorities civil rights don’t get violated!? It is exactly the opposite of the truth. Yet many of the more well-funded civil rights organizations suddenly began singing this tune over the summer. My article tries to explain why.
Fun Fact: Make no mistake. Many civil rights organizations still vehemently oppose high stakes testing. If we really want to stand up for our black and brown brothers and sisters, we need to stand with them and counter this AstroTurf narrative at every turn. Testing violates their rights, not protects them.
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