General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObama, the Third Way, TPP, education privatization..accepting "status quo" used against us.
Right now in this country so many are going along with the idea that all students are alike, learn alike, can perform the same educational tasks, and that there really are no special needs students that can't be fixed by more rigid standards.
In fact President Obama says if we don't accept these new reforms we are comfortable with the "status quo".
"But education is an economic issue if not the economic issue of our time," Obama said. "Its an economic issue when the unemployment rate for folks whove never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have.
Black leaders have charged that by firing teachers or closing schools that are considered to be failing, the president is only making a bad situation worse.
Obama, in addressing critics of his program, said that part of the controversy surrounding Race to the Top "reflects a general resistance to change; a comfort with the status quo."
Obama went further in his defense of the new normal in education. He said the "status quo" is morally inexcusable.
President Obama on Education: The Status Quo is Morally Inexcusable
Today, President Obama delivered an address on education at the Urban Leagues 100th Anniversary Convention highlighting the steps his Administration has taken over the past eighteen months to improve the education system in America. The President stated that education reform is a top priority for his Administration because the status quo is morally inexcusable, its economically indefensible, and all of us are going to have to roll up our sleeves to change it.
Recently when he spoke of those of us who opposed the Trans Pacific Partnership, he said we were "accepting the status quo".
Video in which Obama says if we oppose the TPP we are "accepting the status quo".
Those words are about 5 minutes into the video.
I believe in both instances there are positions that allow us to have a different opinion but also understand that things are not perfect just as they are.
I believe we can see the serious harm to be done if the "status quo" is changed so very drastically in both areas.
I remembered where I had seen the term "status quo" used to marginalize those of us on the left of the party who question such policies. Guess who said it.
Why Third Way
This dysfunction in Washington serves to maintain the status quo leaving us unprepared to meet the defining challenge of our time: making the global information era work for the United States, not against us. The innovation, dynamism, and modernization we need from our political system to meet that challenge have simply not kept pace:
Once, we could take prosperityfor America and most Americansfor granted. Now, we need new ideas for job-creation, expanding exports, shifting spending from entitlements to public investment, re-thinking higher education, and making the tax code competitive.
Once, our K-12 education system was the envy of the world. Now, we are struggling to compete in a knowledge economy, with a teaching professionthe linchpin to providing equal opportunity and mobilitythat hasnt been reformed in generations.
Once, our energy was largely shipped in and burned freely. Now, the U.S. is a fossil fuel powerhouse while simultaneously facing a global climate crisis, and we need new policies that can reconcile those two opposing forces.
Once, we stood atop the globe as a super-power. Now, we face ever-more complex security threats, but our defense systems are still fitted to a Cold War age.
And though some of our hot-button social issues have been addressed, new and pressing questions remain, on immigration, gun safety, and LGBT equality.
Third Ways role in these debates is to serve as a centrist counterweight to the forces of polarization and ideological rigidity forces that serve only to preserve the status quo. Our job is straightforward but not easy: we ponder, develop and then offer paradigm-busting policies and narratives; we find creative and strategic ways to make them politically salient; and then we work relentlessly to promote them to policymakers.
It's a term used too freely, so freely that it has literally lost its meaning.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Comfort with the status quo is why I oppose charter schools and the TPP? Once again, supporting his policies =denigrating those who oppose them.
madfloridian, your work in the field of charter schools in particular has been unbelievable and enlightening. Thank you for it.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)these new uncompromising reforms in education are mostly ignored. Once both major parties approve such policies, the rest of us are wasting our breath.
merrily
(45,251 posts)national exposure for your insights during a book tour, maybe even become of of dem thar spokepersons or pundits on the subject that MSNBC might call on whenever they have a big charter school fan on.
Still, posting here does inform whoever reads DU. You've enlightened me enough to oppose charter schools locally. Even in the city that gave the US its first public school, charter schools became a campaign issue in our most recent mayoral primary and general campaign.
Sadly, both Democratic frontrunners supported charter schools (and Republicans didn't matter at all in either race), but one of them got a huge chunk of money from a California charter school organization. (Isn't Rhee in California now?) Anyway, he and our current Mayor won the multi-partisan primary, but at least the biggest favorite of charter school proponents did not win the general. Cold comfort on the charter school score, but it is what it is. At least, the winner is a big union supporter, and I hope that helps public school teachers.
Lugano
(52 posts)will not get my vote or support.
You can be damn sure of that.
I believe education should be *FREE* to anyone who wants it, from K-PhD at ANY school of their choosing.
TPP is what Ed Schulz describes perfectly: "NAFTA on steroids" - and I will not support any DINOs who signs on to the TPP, which apparently includes Obama as he's trying to fast track it which should 2be disallowed. The agreement needs to be fully understood by Congress word for word, and whittled down to benefit America and their allies for the 99%, not for 1%. No Corporation should benefit AT all, only the people should.
Third Way policies has been a MASSIVE failure since 1992, actually, since Clinton and the DLC fucked up the Democratic Party so bad it turned hard right and everyone needs the Democratic Party to go back to the left side of the spectrum. I still blame Clinton for a lot of things that benefited the 1%'ers, which included NAFTA.
It's time to go progressive to a point of socialism so we can actually introduce things that should have already been there 50 years ago like free health care for all, free education for all, retirement at age of 50, full Social Security benefits that actually follows the real COLA, not some made up formula that throws an average of $20 a year increase. My disability benefits BARELY takes care of my family and I'm working part time. Our household income is barely above the poverty level for a family of 3. It's time for that shit to end.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)these impossible new standards. He would even ask if he could skip school, and I would tell him no he couldn't. That is what is morally inexcusable. The Democrats embracing the privatization of education is what made me not be a democrat anymore. I am now an independent, and I lean to the socialist side more than any other.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)And that is sad.
I don't remember a time when students were required to fit one mold. It's scary stuff.
Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Sad to say.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Give enough tax money to billionaires and they will fix the problem. That's how we got the abomination that is the ACA.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I did hear that over 150 Democrats petitioned Obama not to push the TPP deal.
I do know that parents and teachers are fighting these education reforms all over the country.
Does it matter? No, it does not.
The people ceased to matter a long time ago.