Monday, January 24, 2011

Got Dough? How Billionaires rule our Schools

http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

Got Dough? How Billionaires rule our Schools.

From Winter 2011 - Dissent Magazine

By Joanne Barkan ====

-----

In 2007 I ran for Seattle School Board from West Seattle. Steve Sundquist won that position. He was in favor of corporate philanthropy assisting the schools.

At the time that sounded like a good idea to me.

Now after three and a half years it is most apparent that the Seattle School District is not requesting financial assistance but rather has turned control over to the corporate philanthropists. The district leaders just do what the corporate monarchs tell them to do.

This has been a disaster for the district and especially for educationally disadvantaged learners.

The State Constitution is violated on a regular basis by District decision-makers ... No one could possibly believe the district is making ample provision for the education of all.

Article IX of the WA State Constitution:

Text of Section 1: Preamble.

It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.

1 comment:

kprugman said...

Thirty or forty to a classroom, sometimes two on a computer, but six or eight was the norm. They woke up before six and stayed until six in the evening. They were sent to six or eight lessons in a day, but the teaching was at best perfunctory. The discipline that was enforced during this regime was a deliberate attempt to instil fear of disobedience and idelness into the hearts of the pupils.

This harsh attitude toward the poor was due to the prevailing belief that even the slightest taste of achievement or extra free time would corrupt them so much that they would no longer be willing to work to support the extravagences of their masters.

Now what greater temptation can there be to voluptuousness, than a place were every sense and appetite of which it is compounded, are fed and delighted; where the eyes are feasted wigth show, and the ears with music, and where gluttony and drunkenness are allured by every kind of dainty; nay where the finest women are exposed to view, and where the meanest person who can dress himself, may in some degree mix with his betters and thus perhaps satisfy his vanity as well as his love of pleasure?

Does not the luxury of the rich add to the benefit of society as a whole, because their demands create jobs, while any hint of the poor doing but any more than getting by must be a terrorist's lie. For if the poor had enough for drinking and partying than they must be paid too much. After all, that is a part of their innate corruption. Who needs a public hanging when it gets reported by the news and a prison is as good home as a park bench.