tragically, this appears to be the wrong person for the job ???
In truth, there is not much in the world that is more important than the education of our future generations. The physical and mental health of those future generations would rival education in importance, but there is not much else. 'Our children are the future' is a standard, high sounding phrase that has tilted out of focus in recent decades.
Education was seen as important through most of world history and it was certainly seen that way through early American history. Slaves struggled and risked their lives to learn to read and to write. Early American leadership at every level supported education in a broad sense. There has been an understanding of the relationship between the public and political purposes and the values involved in education.
Education was seen as important through most of world history and it was certainly seen that way through early American history. Slaves struggled and risked their lives to learn to read and to write. Early American leadership at every level supported education in a broad sense. There has been an understanding of the relationship between the public and political purposes and the values involved in education.
It has been recognized that education contributes to community life by facilitating social justice and by promoting ideals of cultural and artistic excellence which all combine to contribute to advancing the human condition.
Starting in about 3500 B.C., various writing systems developed in ancient civilizations around the world. Education (writing) brought wealth and power to those civilizations able to grasp the developing technology. As these systems expanded, one can see the genius of human-kind as various concepts and materials were utilized in the process.
Surfaces used for early writing include wax-covered writing boards (used, as well as clay tablets, by the Assyrians), sheets or strips of bark from trees (in Indonesia, Tibet and the Americas), the thick palm-like leaves of a particular tree, the leaves then punctured with a hole and stacked together like the pages of a book (these writings in India and South east Asia include Buddhist scriptures and Sanskrit literature), parchment, made of goatskin that had been soaked and scraped to remove hair, which was used from at least the 2nd century B.C., vellum, made from calfskin, and wax tablets which could be wiped clean to provide a fresh surface (in the Roman times).
Leadership in a developing 'America' also knew of the value of education. As early as 1647, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school.
By 1785 the Continental Congress (before the U.S. Constitution) passed a law calling for a survey of the "Northwest Territory". The law created "townships," reserving a portion of each township for a local school.
In 1790 the Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education for poor children.
In 1820 the first public high school in the United States, Boston English, opens. And this is followed in 1827 with Massachusetts passing a law making all grades of public school open to all pupils free of charge.
Only in the most recent times has education fallen on hard times. Only in the most recent times has education been in the hands of capitalist thinkers. The result of such, in the United States has relegated education to a series of budget cuts under the guise of efficiency. Now, the stated goal of educational systems in the United States is profit rather than to enlighten the greatest number of young people.
We have moved to a system wherein our prison system dominates our system of schools. As would be expected by any rational being, this has resulted in a 'dumbing down' of our population... We are not doing very well and various studies demonstrate our failings...
According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, there are 2,228,424 prisoners in the United States. That is enough to make the United States rank first in that category. The second highest number of prisoners is in China, at 1,701,344.
According to Pearson, the United States has a “cognitive skills and educational attainment” score making the United States rank fourteenth out of forty countries ranked in that category.
According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 33% of Americans are satisfied “with the way things are going” in their country. That makes the United States rank nineteenth out of forty-four countries ranked in that category. China ranks first, with 87% of Chinese saying that they are satisfied with how things are going in China.
According to Bloomberg.com, the United States has the forty-fourth most efficient health care system out of fifty-one countries ranked in that category. (Efficiency includes life expectancy and health care costs per capita.)
According to the research firm IPSOS Mori, the United States ranks second out of fourteen countries in general ignorance about social statistics such as teen pregnancy, unemployment rates, and voting patterns. Italy is the most ignorant of the fourteen countries.
According to the 2014 Global Peace Index prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the United States ranks one hundred and first out of one hundred sixty-two countries ranked in that category. The most peaceful country in the world is Iceland.
As Americans look forward at the future of education in this country, we can only be frightened by what appears to be giant moves against public education and it taints everything else in our future.
"In fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact." -- George Santayana, and he was telling the truth !!!
This cuneiform text dates back to the 6th year of prince Lugalanda who ruled about 2370 B.C. in southern Mesopotamia. It is an administrative document concerning deliveries of three sorts of beer to different recipients (to the palace and to a temple for offerings) and gives the exact quantities of barley and other ingredients used in brewing. Credit: Max Planck Society
Betsy DeVos May Defund Public Ed
— But Wants Guns in Schools to Fight Grizzlies In a rushed confirmation hearing, billionaire Betsy DeVos's attempts to dodge tough questions occasionally entered the realm of absurdity from Common Dreams by Nika Knight
Billionaire heiress and school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos faced withering scrutiny Tuesday at a rushed confirmation hearing for her nomination as secretary of education, often betraying her inexperience with education policy as she dodged Democrats' questions.
As she attempted to avoid the line of questioning, at one point DeVos refused to say whether or not she'd defund public schools. Watch NBC News' footage of DeVos refusing to answer a series of questions about her donations to the Republican Party, her privatization agenda, and her total lack of government and policy experience: DeVos was also the first of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks to sit for a hearing without completing a full ethics review, a fact not lost on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who noted that without that review, the senators are unable to question the billionaire about how she stands to personally profit from education policy. Democrats were also dismayed when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, announced that he was limiting the questioning to "one round of five minutes for each senator," the New York Times writes, noting that the questioning in previous hearings had included two rounds. During the hearing, Warren pointed out that DeVos has no experience at all with managing loans or grants—particularly on the scale of the federal loan and grant system, a system upon which poor, working- and middle-class students depend to pursue higher education: And DeVos faced many pointed questions about her myriad conflicts of interest, such as when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked DeVos if her family's contributions of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party perhaps played a role in her nomination for education secretary. When Sanders went on to ask if DeVos would work with him to push for free college tuition, DeVos, who personally inherited billions, said, "I think that's a really interesting idea, and it's really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that nothing in life is really free." DeVos also refused to answer Sanders' questions about to how she plans to help people paid less than $15/hour—and the Republican Party is against raising the minimum wage, he points out—as they struggle to pay for the skyrocketing costs higher education and childcare: At times DeVos even appeared entirely unfamiliar with major education laws, such as when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked DeVos whether her plan to decrease federal funds for schools meant she wouldn't enforce the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. DeVos had apparently never heard of it: |
Whoah Say What?!? Betsy DeVos Diligently Loves Congress and States' Rights and Potential Grizzlies But Schools - Not So Much (Also, Actually, Not Crazy About Kids With Disabilities)
from Common Dreams by Abby Zimet,
Man, watching the crumbling of the republic is gonna be tough. Tuesday's accelerated confirmation "hearing" - ie a strictly allotted five-minute evening questioning so nobody could find out just what a debacle it represents for our democracy - on super-rich right-wing zealot Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education even though she hates it, knows nothing about it, and has spent her uber-privileged life working against it was unreal, aka "low, insulting burlesque and a revolting dumbshow of the arrogance of monied ignorance."
The deep-pocketed, God-and-conversion-therapy-loving lobbyist, best known for helping destroy Michigan's public education system and once conceding, "We are buying influence and we do expect something in return" kept a bizarre Stepford smile plastered on her face while hedging and dodging and repeatedly failing to answer questions about fraud, student debt, disability rights and fundamental educational philosophy from a host of Democratic notables who actually know their stuff. Because you probably, understandably don't have the will or iron stomach to watch it all, some highlights: Bernie does his forthright thing by asking if she'd be there if not for giving the Repubs $200 million. Al Franken raises his disbelieving eyebrows while hammering her for not knowing the difference between the debated-for-decades educational standards of "proficiency" vs "growth." Elizabeth Warren quickly tires of her vaguely saying sure she's against Trump-University-style waste, fraud and abuse and you can bet she'll be vigilant about working with Congress to make sure it doesn't happen and blah blah diligent blah, to which an exasperated Warren who's heard it all before snaps, "Yeah, I'm asking how." Tim Kaine and Maggie Hassan both get her to reveal she knows nothing about existing federal laws protecting the rights of kids with disabilities but what the hey she'll just let states decide if they get wheelchair ramps. And when Chris Murphy - Senator of the state that endured Sandy Hook - asks about guns in schools, she again hems and haws about states' rights before allowing as how maybe some schools need guns to protect against "potential grizzlies." Yes. Grizzlies. This would all be wildly entertaining if our kids didn't ultimately have to pay for it. But they will.  |
That was far from the most absurd moment of the hearing, observers noted: at one point, DeVos argued in favor of allowing guns in schools—citing the necessity of defending schools from grizzly bears. She mentioned a school in Wyoming that had a fence to protect it from wildlife, and said, "I think probably there, I would imagine that there's probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies."
"It's hard to imagine someone less qualified to oversee the nation's schools than Betsy DeVos," argued public education advocate Diane Ravitch earlier this month. "DeVos did not attend public schools, nor did her children. She has never been a teacher, administrator, practitioner or scholar of education. In fact, one wonders whether she has ever actually set foot in a public school."
"Betsy DeVos is a dedicated enemy of public education," Ravitch said on MSNBC Tuesday, "and 85 percent of this country's children are in public schools."
"Reason, knowledge, ethics—none of that matters here," wrote teacher and advocate Steven Singer after the hearing. "We are truly in the age of the plutocrats where money has arrogantly attempted to buy governmental power outright. Right in front of our noses."
"It's hard to imagine someone less qualified to oversee the nation's schools than Betsy DeVos," argued public education advocate Diane Ravitch earlier this month. "DeVos did not attend public schools, nor did her children. She has never been a teacher, administrator, practitioner or scholar of education. In fact, one wonders whether she has ever actually set foot in a public school."
"Betsy DeVos is a dedicated enemy of public education," Ravitch said on MSNBC Tuesday, "and 85 percent of this country's children are in public schools."
"Reason, knowledge, ethics—none of that matters here," wrote teacher and advocate Steven Singer after the hearing. "We are truly in the age of the plutocrats where money has arrogantly attempted to buy governmental power outright. Right in front of our noses."
Roman students with teacher
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