Market-Based Dogmas Undermine Strong Education

26Dems Editorial Comment:  Rick Ayers explains how much the rightist free-market ideology has deeply infiltrated common knowledge by undermining widely accepted social norms and is sowing the seeds of destruction of our educational system as well as our entire society. According to Ayers, the "reform" movement at its core represents a Darwinian struggle highlighted in the recent film Waiting for Superman.  This is one of the most cogent, comprehensive evaluations of why the social institutions in our country are collapsing I have read. We must realize what has happened if we are to understand how to restore America to its ideals of social justice, equal opportunity and full development of creative potential.  And we must remember that exploitations by the corporate titan class in the nineteenth century were overcome by real reform that yielded a strong more just and prosperous society for all. If we are to turn the tide we must as the author suggests, not to be afraid to champion the values of an educational system based on building community, supporting students and inspiring every child to achieve potential. Moreover, we must do a better job of explaining how damage wrought by an emotionally dysfunctional ideologically driven educational model. It is imperative that we connect educational ills to economic and social suffering many are experiencing as rightists blame the victims and openly celebrate their glee at finally being able to destroy government altogether.

By Rick Ayers
Adjunct Professor in Education, University of San Francisco
Huffington Post
Posted: November 4, 2010 09:22 PM

One of the barriers we must overcome in framing a reasonable debate on school reform is the powerful hegemony of right-wing ideology which sees free-market mechanisms as the only way to organize a large social project such as education or health care. Indeed, the notion of a public space, a democratically controlled community effort, is almost impossible to advance in the current debates. For this, we have to thank the victory of the right-wing Reagan agenda, building on the dogmas of free-market gurus such as Milton Freedman and Ayn Rand.

The current free-market religion makes such pre-Reagan Republicans as Nixon and Eisenhower look like lefties. Politicians and researchers only a generation ago, even conservatives, entertained the possibility of various models of how to organize society, different versions of liberal capitalism, which allowed for aspects of social democratic ideas -- strong social supports, medical care, public education, etc. All of these are now under attack. The ideology of American politics today makes liberals such as Obama and Duncan act like blinkered rightists.

The goal of the most extreme exponents of the new ultra-right is nothing less than the turning back of all the reforms of the New Deal -- privatizing social security, ending trade unions, and even making such services as fire protection and medical care a matter of individual, private purchase. Everything functions when there is competition, self-interested battle, and Social Darwinist struggle. (Of course, as an aside, we note that these ideologues of competition usually end up supporting massive monopoly power -- a command economy where those calling the tunes sit in the top boardrooms).

This debate in American society goes back even before the New Deal. During the late 19th Century, when massive industrialization led to efforts of workers to build trade unions for decent pay and conditions, when Native American and African-American communities were struggling for basic survival, Horatio Alger wrote a series of popular pulp novels which proposed that the plucky determination of individuals could help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they could achieve success and happiness by looking out for only themselves. The dream of individual success, of escaping the working class, was supposed to keep the rest, the millions who did not escape, content and hopeful -- hey maybe they could make it. This myth was always in conflict with the vision of the unions and activists, the idea of a public good in public power.

During the 19th century, advanced education was reserved for the elites -- basic literacy and social discipline was the lot of those designated for factory work. As for people of color, the place reserved for them in the rightist universe was even more limited. Chinese men were brought in for railroad construction -- no education. Native Americans were kept out of schools or sent to such centers as the Carlisle Indian School whose mission was to "civilize the savages," by "killing the Indian to save the man." African-American education either did not exist or focused again on the civilizing (subordinating) mission of schools.

Today in the mainstream political discourse, any talk of public space, democratic options, or social justice is seen as just so much fuzzy headed socialism. Reintroduction of the claim that poor people are stuck in ghettos because of a self-destructive "culture of poverty" echoes the charge by school authorities in the 19th century that those who did not do well suffered from moral failings.  
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