New Movie Documentary Decries Failure of Public Schools, but.....
10.12.2010 by Winsip Custer CPW News Service
Waiting for Spiderman. I know. I know. It's called Waiting For Superman, but I thought that Spiderman would be a better title given the web of intrigue that covers America's education system and the alternatives being offered in its place....Waiting for Superman is hitting the theaters and follows the daily lives of five students trying to maneuver their way through America's public schools to obtain an education. The film is supported by Microsoft's Bill Gates who found formal education so exciting that he skipped it.
From Bill Gate's blog...
"There’s no question that the quality of our education system helped to make America great. But today, many of our public schools are failing. Only one-third of high school students are prepared for college when they graduate. And half of minority students drop out of high school altogether. It’s a tragedy that so many families have no real alternative for their children than a failing local public school. We need dramatic change, but it’s a difficult story to tell."
It sure is. I asked Dr. William Carr a Presbyterian minister living in Corpus Christi, Texas about his experiences with the public school system there. "The American public school system made the country great, but over time that system has been raped and pillaged," said Carr. Who has done the raping? Everyone. Here's how it works. The school is not only for production of the next generation of leaders, it is also, as with the schools of minows in the open ocean, a food source for predators. Several years ago a pastor moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. He was concerned that the local high school had an open campus at lunch time and that during that time crime rates shot up. The local police chief and sheriff knew this was happening and credited the problem to troubled youth influenced by the drug culture. Teen pregnancy rates were also out of sight and the open campus was credited with influencing this as well. The pastor sought to have the campuses closed at lunchtime and local law enforcement officials agreed. The president of the school board seeing all of the data rejected the idea. Two years later a girl was leaving the campus of one of the high schools when another student in a big SUV with oversized bumper plowed into her little car while speeding out of the school parking lot at the lunch hour. The crash put the girl into a coma and her life was changed forever. Only then did they close the campuses, but the incident got me to thinking about what it may have been that motivated the school board president to put up such resistance. "I asked the pastor who had done his own investigating and the facts in the case weren't pretty. I could come to only one conclusion as to why the school board president would not support other community leaders," said Carr. "Remember that we live on a corridor between the Mexican border and Texas' largest cities. We're not far from Laredo and Falcon Lake where David Hartley was killed and from El Paso and Juarez which are open drug war zones."
Randi Weingarten wrote in the June 28, 2010 Huffington Post the following point which was well covered by the Waiting For Superman producers whose underlying theme is that we have to get rid of poor teachers...
"Who wants to deal with the more complicated (but less sexy) and absolutely necessary (but unexciting) realities, such as the fact that teachers need tools, resources and support to do their jobs well? It's cathartic to say "fire the bad teachers," but it doesn't do much to improve schools. The plain, unsexy fact is that the best way to improve teacher quality is to do a better job of developing and supporting the teachers to whom we entrust our children's educations."
Tell that to the the rapers and pillagers of the lowly public school system where America's failed drug policies, immigration policies and financial oversight policies are heaped upon our childen.
The teachers' union makes the case that Randi Weingarten takes tens of millions of dollars from the Walmart Foundation for her work. And, of course, Walmart is a union busting company, but more importantly Sam Walton's father made his money during the Great Depression by foreclosing on American farmers. Does Willie Nelson have a song about that? Well then sing it at the next Farm Aide concert, Willie. There's no class in college that specifically teaches how to rape the system whether you're a dishonest union organizer or ethically challenged capitalist trying to find a greedy school board president or superintendent of schools who'll partner with you. You have to be home schooled in this nasty science.
Likewise, there's no Business Management Class 101 titled "Screwing the Public School System for Millions"....as with the wretched behavior of Office Depot in it massive bilking of America's public school systems in its overpricing practices. Office Depot's dealings with America's lowly public schools even became an issue in the Florida Gubernatorial race in Office Depot's home state. Such screwing must be homeschooled and when it is there are fewer and fewer resources to go around and we wonder how Scandinavian countries can get better results with half the money.
So what is the answer?
"Privitize and deregulate the public school systems and you'll still have people raping and plundering the new one," said Carr. "I know of a case in Austin where a principal changed the grades of students without the consent of the students in order to make the school look good on its state testing. The whistle blowers were the kid's parents, which has got to give you some sense of hope that sanity will rule," he said. "If there is that much pressure on administrators now, how do they think that will change in a privatized system? It won't. If anything they will be more competitive and then they'll graduate and maybe they'll go to work for Office Depot or Walmart....but not manning the cash registers....but in the home office in Boca Raton or Bentonville breaking unions, exporting jobs and importing gadgets and looking for dishonest admistrators in whatever school systems are remaining to overcharge for paper clips and copy machines. Plus you have to keep in mind that Albert Einstein was writing earth shattering assessments of the ruling scientific theories at a time when he was unable to get a teaching job. So just what were those wonderful, excellent and stellar teachers teaching at the time when Einstein was rewriting the book? Stuff that had to be relearned no doubt...which is the wonderful thing about education. Today's leaders are tomorrows' footnotes. As long as we remember that, I think we'll be okay," said Carr, "if they don't take the new lessons and make something really deadly stupid with it."
"Like we did with Einstein's theories?" I asked.
For a listing of Office Depot's troubled past in mining the arena of public school's tax dollars see in this website AMBIT OR SHAMBIT.
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