When I read this letter at the Education department website, I was surprised. My first thought was that much of what they want for their own children's education may soon not be available in traditional public schools. Not if the current standardized testing fever continues.
I am not sure whether to call it hypocritical or simply clueless and naive about what is happening to our schools and teachers right now. He is in charge of America's public school policy...his "reform" ideas are affecting schools and teachers and students throughout the country. He should not be unaware that what he wants for his own children is quite different from those policies.
An Open Letter from Secretary Arne Duncan and Karen Duncan to Their ChildrenIt begins Dear Claire and Ryan:
Now that you’ve been back in class for more than a week, we’re so happy that you’ve settled in and are enjoying school. Our hope for you this year is that you will be challenged academically. You have some terrific teachers to support you. We want your love of literature to grow, and we’ll do our part by reading to you every night. We hope you will develop critical thinking skills in math, and we promise to help you when you’re struggling and celebrate when you’re succeeding. We would like to see you engaged in learning science, civics, and history, and we will continue to explore the natural world at nature centers, museums, and many of the other great resources in the Washington area.
We also want you to enjoy so many other enriching experiences that are so important to a complete education. We know you have great music, art, and physical education teachers at your school, and we believe that these subjects are essential for a well-rounded curriculum. And so is recess. We want you to have fun!
Because we believe that learning happens outside of the classroom, we would encourage you to seek out opportunities for leadership and service. As a family, we’ve all enjoyed service events like building playgrounds and painting murals in local schools. We hope you’ll do service activities with your classmates and strive to be leaders in the student government and other activities at school.
We are proud of you and excited for you. We have dedicated our lives to learning and to helping others receive a great education. Our greatest hope is that you’ll go back to school every fall excited and ready to learn.
His policies have enabled very wealthy investors to divert public funds for the charter schools they favor which are often not regulated locally. As the taxpayer money leaves the public schools, they are being forced to end such programs as Arne and his wife describe above. Teachers are laid off and temp teachers like TFA are hired. Art, music, and PE teachers are often the first to go.
And school libraries? That is the most shocking of all.
The school libraries are often abandoned now, and the funding from the federal government is slowing for their funding.
American Library Association says Obama's education department abandoning school libraries.It's official. Media centers around the country won't be getting one cent from the Improving Literacy Though School Libraries program in FY2011. For the first time since it was created in 2001, the federal grant program is being zeroed out, following a decision Monday by the Department of Education (DOE).
"This decision shows that school libraries have been abandoned by President Obama and the Department of Education," says Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Washington Office.
Here is more detail about that program. Money that once went to school libraries now must be shared with other initiatives.
The proposed literacy fund, along with the Department’s Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation (i3) programs, intentionally allow for greater spending flexibility at the state and local level, but AASL’s incoming president expressed concern that school libraries were not explicitly named components of these grant programs.
“If we’re not on the roster, we can’t get into the game,” Nancy Everhart said, employing a sports metaphor with the basketball-playing secretary.
Compare what Arne and Karen Duncan want for their children with what is really going on right now in the public school arena.
I quote from an article by Chris Hedges at Truth Dig. He says it better than I ever could.
Why the United States is destroying her education systemA nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.
What Arne and Karen Duncan want for their own children appears to me to be quite different than what Arne is allowing to happen in public education.
It is either clueless, naive, or he is hypocritical indeed.
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