Julin Castro: Why my mother yanked me from my sixth-grade classroom

[left-of-center2012]

"Look around," the school official said in a stern voice, almost daring the assembled crowd of incoming sixth-grade students and parents. It was the summer of 1986, and I was sitting in a hot auditorium with my mother and my brother, Joaquin, nervously waiting to start the new school year. "Statistically, the chances are that up to half of you won't be here when it's time to graduate from the eighth grade." Those were infamous last words.

Mom announced the next morning that we would attend another school, a foreign-language magnet program two miles away. My mom, a Chicana activist and hell-raiser, had higher aspirations for us.

Later I reflected on how profound this lesson was; low expectations were a tragic reality in the segregated schools on the west side of San Antonio where Joaquin and I grew up. At our new school, the teachers were supportive, mom encouraged us, and we excelled. But I kept thinking about our friends who stayed behind. I remembered that statistic that eventually proved true for too many of our former classmates.

And I never stopped believing that there was nothing fundamentally different about them and us, except for opportunity.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/28/opinions/julian-castro-2020-prek-for-usa-education/index.html

[DesertRat]

1. This experience led him to propose universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year olds

[PatrickforO]

2. Geez. What a mean thing to say to a bunch of sixth graders.

See, this is the difference between approaching something (such as junior high education) with the corporate-induced 'you have to raise yourself up by your own bootstraps' model versus a model of love, cooperation and support.

So that poor little kid who only had a 50% chance in that principal's dog-eat-dog worldview went on to attend Stanford, then Harvard Law School, and then become Obama's youngest cabinet member. All because his mom rejected that capitalist lie and put him in a place of support, love and cooperation.

[patphil]

3. It's called negative programming.

[PatrickforO]

5. Something to which we've all been exposed since the snake Reagan's

pocket veto of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which allowed right-wing AM talk radio and Fox 'news' to spread over this country like a bunch of suppurating pustules.

Lewis Powell's Manifesto laid the plan for corporate domination of American democracy out back in '71, and during the 70s and 80s we saw the birth and growth in influence of many right wing think tanks. The Heritage Foundation was founded, for instance, in 1973.

All of this is based on the primacy of the shareholder and the feverish 24/7/365 quest for profits at the expense of everything else. That's why we've been propagandized to be rugged individuals while guys like Jamie Diamon and Eddie Lampert have learned to use public monies from our treasury to bail themselves out of the holes they dig with their unrestrained greed.

This is a house of cards, the last gasp on the neoliberal 'deregulate, privatize and gut social programs' form of capitalism, but we'd all better hope that it doesn't drag us down into bloody revolution. We have 2020 as a very real last chance to save this republic from these oligarchs and save ourselves from living under a white-nationalist 'theocracy' while the billionaire parasites continue to consolidate wealth into fewer and fewer hands while the rest of us languish and suffer.

This is why I want medicare for all Americans or some other single payer. Oh, I know that what will probably happen is the compromise of adding a public option, because there's SO MUCH corporate greed-money lined up against the moral imperative of single payer. But I'm sick of being nickel and dimed with more and more of the costs of everything being passed onto me so shareholders can continue earning profits.

Sorry for the lecture...it isn't you, just the troubling fact that 41% of Americans are stupid (or hate-filled) enough to still approve of Trump. That just blows me away.

[Delmette2.0]

6. I've been thinking about the public option.

If that ends up to be the way to go, then there has to be a compromise from the employer. I'm thinking about the employer's contribution to the health insurance for the employee. What ever the amount is, should go to the employer's paycheck as a raise.

The employer currently gets to use that amount as a tax deduction, under employee benefits, part of their overhead. So why should they benefit from less employee expense when their taxes on profits have already been reduced?

The employee's taxes may go up somewhat because we will all pay for the benefit like we do for Social Security, but the low to middle income employees will bare the brunt of the cost. The employer wins.

[pecosbob]

8. Nice screed

The one percent need to need to be monitored like sex offenders...the're a threat to the species.

[hughee99]

9. Except this was 1986 and the governor of TX was a Dem as was the

State legislature.

[PatrickforO]

10. I don't understand your point. Sorry.

[hughee99]

11. It sounds like you were suggesting Reagan was responsible for this, but

I don’t think this one was the republicans fault.

[PatrickforO]

12. Well, the Powell Manifesto wasn't the Dems fault.

Reagan vetoing the Fairness Doctrine wasn't the Dem's fault, either. And it did happen in '87. There are larger issues, though - cable TV was making broad inroads and the FM dial opened up, leaving AM for mostly talk. So, I do admit to some disingenuousness in that comment, because even if we had not lost the Fairness Doctrine, Fox and AM talk radio would have proliferated. So that's true.

[bluewater]

4. K&R

Thanks for posting this, left-of-center2012.

[IronLionZion]

7. That official wants the kids to believe and expect negative outcomes

it doesn't sound very encouraging. It would be better to bring in successful graduates and show how they overcame adversity and inspire the kids.