Nationwide Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Public Schools in All Areas Except One

September 4, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Learning, Media, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Students, Teachers charter schools, education, PDK poll, Politics, public schools, school vouchers, teacher shortage, teachers

Waylon Jennings classic country hit advises Mama’s not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys.

Now, I guess we can add teachers to that list.

According to the 50th annual PDK Poll of attitudes about public schools, Americans trust and support teachers, but don’t want their own children to join a profession they see as underpaid and undervalued.

In almost every other way, they support public schools and the educators who work there.

When it comes to increasing school funding, increasing teacher salary, allowing teachers to strike, and an abundance of other issues, the poll found a majority of people unequivocally in favor of endeavors meant to bolster learning.

In fact, support for education and educators has never been so high in half a century.

“Two-thirds of Americans say teachers are underpaid, and an overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay,” according to PDK’s Website.

If true, this result illuminates an incredible tone deafness among politicians like Scott Wagner in Pennsylvania who is running for governor on the platform that teachers make too much money. According to the poll, only 6% of Americans agree with him.

Moreover, those who support teachers strikes include 6 in 10 Republicans.

“Those who would be most affected by a teacher walk-out — say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay. Among the general public, 73% say they would support a job action for higher wages.”

These are record high results that are also reflected in respondents unwillingness to encourage their own children to become teachers in the current political landscape.

For the first time since the question was asked in 1969, a majority of 54% say they would not want their child to become a teacher.

The reason? Poor pay and benefits.

Moreover, a lack of adequate funding is cited as the most common problem facing public schools – a finding that’s held true since the early 2000s. In fact, for the 17th consecutive year, Americans have named the lack of funding as the biggest problem facing their local schools.

It seems that either or both major political parties could easily pick up broad popular support by doing an about face on education. Instead of backing standardization and privatization, they should get behind public education.

The topic has typically served as a wedge issue between progressives and corporate Democrats while Republicans have almost exclusively backed a strategy to “starve the beast” and promote privatization.

However, Democrats and/or Republicans who ran on respecting and remunerating teachers as well as increasing support for the public schools that employ them would find major support among voters.

The PDK poll is based on responses from 1,042 adults including 515 parents of school-age children. They were randomly and representatively sampled in May 2018 through on-line surveys.

The 2018 results include particular support for the public school system as opposed to charter and voucher schools.

Nearly 8 in 10 people said they prefer reforming the existing public school system rather than finding an alternative approach.

That’s a higher response than any year since the question was first asked 20 years ago. Moreover, it’s not just an opinion about nationwide schooling: 78% say they’d rather reform than replace the local school system, as well.

In addition, there is support among Americans to not only increase funding, but also spend it more equitably.

A majority (60%) support spending more on students who need extra help than spending the same amount on every child (39%).

Responds were more divided on where the influx of funding should come from.

Half of respondents favor raising taxes and half say the schools should spend less on students who require fewer resources.

This is related to public perception of exactly which students are receiving unfair funding. The poll revealed that most people recognize some resource inequality based on race and geographic region but they think most is based on parental wealth: 75% of respondent say public school students serving mostly poor students have fewer resources than those serving rich students.

One of the most interesting findings is always the public’s overall perception of schools.

And this poll – as in previous editions – found a sharp difference in respondents appraisal of schools nationwide vs. the schools in their own neighborhoods.

Fifty-five percent say that on a national scale students today get a worse education than those in previous generations.

However:

“The public schools continue to suffer from an image deficit. Among those who know them best, parents of current students, 70% give their oldest child’s school an A or B grade. Among the public more broadly, by contrast, only four in 10 give their local schools an A or B. In results that are typical across the years, far fewer give top grades to the public schools nationally, just 19%.”

In other words, people seem to think that nationally our schools stink. But the schools in our own neighborhoods are pretty good.

The reason is simple. National perception is formed by the media. Local perception is formed by actual empirical evidence.

The forces of school privatization and their propaganda network has pushed the lie of “failing schools” for so long, that people believe it – except in their own neighborhoods where they see it to be false.

But the questions weren’t all about how schools should be run. They also asked about security – a hot topic when school shootings happen at least once a month.

“Parents lack strong confidence that schools can protect their children against a school shooting but favor armed police, mental health screenings, and metal detectors more than arming teachers to protect their children.”

This bodes badly for the Trump administrations plans to push guns on public school teachers instead of enacting common sense gun regulations.

As usual, policymakers are trying to herd Americans to their point of view instead of listening to their constituencies.

And that seems to be the big take away from this year’s poll.

Americans want and support public education.

It’s time our so-called leaders got with the program.

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Public School is Not For Profit. It is For Children.

August 29, 2018August 30, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Labor, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Media, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, private schools, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school violence, school vouchers, Schools, Shooting, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM, Violence Against Children Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, education, Greed, philanthrocapitalist, Politics, public schools, Purpose of Education, teaching

Betsy DeVos doesn’t get it.

But neither did Arne Duncan.

Whether right or left or somewhere in between, the person sitting at cabinet level tasked with advising the President on education matters invariably knows nothing about the purpose of public schools.

Duncan thought it had something to do with canned academic standards and standardized tests.

DeVos thinks it involves vouchers to religious or private schools.

But they’re both as wrong as two left shoes.

Public schools exist for one reason and one reason only – to meet the needs of children.

They aren’t there to enrich the private sector or even provide the job market with future employees.

They exist to teach, to counsel, to inspire, to heal.

And all these other schemes favored by Dunce Duncan and Batty Betsy that purport to meet kids needs while somehow enjoying the totally unintended side effect of enriching wealthy investors completely misses the point.

Public schools serve one purpose – to help the kids enrolled in them.

That’s all.

If someone is getting rich off that, there’s a huge problem somewhere.

Unfortunately, the Secretaries of Education of Donald Trump and Barack Obama aren’t the only ones to get it wrong. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have lost sight of this fact.

So have pundits and media personalities on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. So have CEOs and tech entrepreneurs and economists and anyone – really – whom our society seems to take seriously.

Don’t believe me?

Take the latest pronouncement from DeVos, our Secretary of Education.

She announced recently that she was looking into using federal funds to buy guns for teachers to better protect their students from school shooters.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is not in the best interests of children.

Teachers with guns mean a MORE dangerous environment for children, not less.

It means escalating the chance of friendly fire much more than boosting the possibility of a kindergarten teacher turning into an action hero.

It means heightening the chance of children getting their hands on these firearms and doing themselves or others harm.

And given the disproportionate murders of people of color even at the hands of trained professionals in the police force, it means children of color being legitimately terrified of their mostly white educators – or worse.

The reason given by DeVos may be to make children safer. But the measure she’s proposing really has nothing to do with them at all.

It’s a boondoggle for private industry – one private industry in particular – gun manufacturers.

Instead of sensible regulations on a product that’s at least as dangerous as items that are much more heavily controlled – such as cold medicine and automobiles – DeVos is doing the only thing she can to protect what she really cares about – corporate profits.

She is using money earmarked “safety” to increase danger.

Or as she sees it – she’s using a government apparatus that could harm the gun industry to instead pad its pockets.

You’ll hear some progressives and moderates decry this move with passion and fervor – and for good reason – but what many fail to realize is that it’s not new.

It’s really just a continuation of a sickness that has crept into our society about how we conceptualize the very idea of school.

We have moved away from the proposition that everything must be done in the student’s best interest and have replaced it with an imperative to benefit business and industry.

After all, what is the push for academic accountability through standardized tests and Common Core but corporate welfare for the testing and publishing industry?

What is the push for charter and voucher schools but government subsidies for school privatization?

High stakes standardized testing isn’t about helping students learn. Neither is Common Core, value-added measures or a host of top-down corporate policies championed by lions of the left and supply-side patriots.

They are about creating a problem where one doesn’t exist: accountability.

“How do we make sure students receive a quality education?” As if this has ever been hard to determine.

In general, the schools with greater needs than funding are where students struggle. The schools where everyone has more than they need is where they excel.

But they try to sweep the issue of inequitable funding and resources under the rug by framing the question entirely about teachers and schools.

In short, instead of asking about an obvious inequality, they hide a preconceived answer in the question: “How do we make sure teachers and schools are actually educating kids?”

Wrong question. But here’s the answer, anyway: Administrators observe teachers and determine if they’re doing their jobs. And school boards evaluate administrators.

In general, the staff isn’t the problem. It’s the lack of resources we give them to work with – everything from crumbling buildings, large classes, narrowed curriculum to a lack of wraparound social services.

It doesn’t take much to see we’re shortchanging our neediest students.

You don’t need standardized tests to tell you that. You don’t need new academic standards. You don’t need to evaluate educators on things beyond their control.

But doing so creates a new market, a need that can be filled by corporate interests unrestrained by the conviction that public schools are not supposed to be a profit-making venture.

People providing services for schools are supposed to make a living – not a killing – off the public’s dime.

The same can be said for school privatization.

Public schools are in no way inferior to institutions that are privately managed. Tax dollars administered by duly-elected representatives in the light of day are in no way less effective or more corrupt than the alternative – letting bureaucrats behind closed doors dole out the money however they choose even into their own pockets.

In fact, just the opposite!

Nor have charter or voucher schools ever been shown to increase student learning without also selecting only the best academic students and shunning those most difficult to teach, providing fewer resources for students and/or operating with greater funding.

But pretending that privatization is a better alternative to democratic rule creates a market, it opens the door so the system can be gamed for profit at the expense of student learning and wellbeing.

That’s why we look in awe at LeBron James, an athlete who uses his fortune to open a school providing all the things society refuses for students of color. A basketball player who refuses to usurp the public’s leadership role in administering that fully public school.

He’s a shinning example of actual philanthropy in an age of bogus philanthrocapitalism. But he’s also proof that his solution is not reproducible large scale.

The rich – even if they are well intentioned – cannot save us. Only the public can support all public schools.

And to do that, we must understand the purpose behind these institutions.

Otherwise, we’ll continue to be trapped on a runaway train where the conductor seems to possess no sense of urgency about slowing down.

We would never have been in this situation – and in fact could right the course even now – if we just took the time to clarify what we were doing and why we were doing it.

We could save generations of children if we stopped cashing in on public schools and realized the reason for their existence.

We could ensure both our present and our posterity.

If only we remembered that one thing.

Public schools are not for profit.

They are for children.

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Wannabe Terrorist Attempts to Flood Our Schools & Public Spaces With 3D Printed Guns to Make Common Sense Restrictions Moot

August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Obama, Politics, Propaganda, Republican, school violence, Schools, Shooting, White Privilege 3D Printed Firearms, 3D Printers, Cody Wilson, courts, Donald Trump, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Politics, technology

In the United States, we literally have more guns than people.

Yet we’re trying really hard to make even more available with the touch of a button.

It’s not enough that our right to kill is better protected than our right to live, we need to make it EASIER to commit murder. In the land of the drive-by shooting, slaughter needs to be as convenient as ordering a pizza.

Cody Wilson, a wannabe terrorist who apparently believes John Wayne westerns are documentaries, claims to have invented the first gun that can be made almost completely on a 3D printer. And he wants to post the plans on-line so anyone with access to the device can make one.

He was stopped by a U.S. District judge in Seattle who temporarily banned the plans from publication on the Internet this week following a last-minute lawsuit filed by seven state attorneys general.

They argued that 3D-printed firearms would be invisible to metal detectors and could bypass gun restrictions recently adopted after a string of school shootings in some states.

The issue will go back to court on August 10, when the sides will discuss whether a preliminary injunction is needed.

The whole matter was almost settled in 2013 when the Obama administration originally stopped Wilson from putting his plans online with a lawsuit. After years of back and forth, the federal case against the virtual arms merchant seemed like a slam dunk. Then Donald Trump came into office and not only stopped the suit but paid Wilson $40,000 in damages.

So the question remains – why would any sane human being want to post a do-it-yourself gun kit on the Internet where any criminal, psychotic or violent fanatic could easily access it?

Wilson says he’s not in it for financial gain. He wants to make a political point – to flood the world with so many cheap, untraceable guns that the idea of passing any kind of regulations on them would be impossible.

No, really.

As he told Wired:

“All this Parkland stuff, the students, all these dreams of ‘common sense gun reforms’? No. The Internet will serve guns, the gun is downloadable. No amount of petitions or die-ins or anything else can change that.”

Not only that, but the owner and founder of Defense Distributed, an Austin, Texas, based start up that pretends to be a nonprofit organization, says he is prepared to kill police and federal agents if the courts don’t continue seeing things his way.

In the same Wired interview, he says he wasn’t expecting support from the Trump administration. He expected Hillary Clinton would win the White House in 2016 and that she would continue to oppose his 3D printed firearms.

As Wired reported:

“If that happened, as Wilson tells it, he was ready to launch his [3D printed gun] repository, regardless of the outcome of his lawsuit, and then defend it in an armed standoff. “I’d call a militia out to defend the server, Bundy-style,” Wilson says calmly, in the first overt mention of planned armed violence I’ve ever heard him make. “Our only option was to build an infrastructure where we had one final suicidal mission, where we dumped everything into the Internet,” Wilson says.”

So let’s be clear about one thing – the guy pushing for 3D printed firearms is literally a terrorist imitator.

He is an American extremist. He is to us as Osama bin Laden is to mainstream Muslims.

Or at least he wants to be that.

While we’re rounding up brown people and separating them from their children without any workable plan to reunite them on this or that side of the border, we have a US citizen making terroristic threats with the means to carry them out and he’s walking around free.

Oh, but he’s a privileged white dude, so no harm no foul.

If Wilson’s little plastic death dealers do become widely available on-line, they won’t immediately make a huge difference.

It’s hard to make a 3D-printed gun. You need an expensive, top-of-the-line 3D printer and some knowledge of how to work it. And even then the result is a shoddy firearm at best. It may only fire a few bullets before falling apart.

A shooter would have to work extra hard to accomplish his goal with Wilson’s design. It would be much easier to use one of the billions of firearms already available – and much more deadly.

But it wouldn’t take much to make a 3D-printed gun more dangerous.

To comply with federal law, Wilson’s design requires a metal firing pin, which he claims would set off a metal detector. However, it may be relatively easy to bypass that metal part to make his design truly concealable from such devices.

Moreover, technology is always advancing – 3D printers will probably be able to create stronger and more deadly firearms in time. With these sorts of designs readily available, it is easy to imagine a school shooter accessing a device in a tech or computer lab and creating a weapon of mass destruction. He wouldn’t set off any alarms because he wouldn’t have the gun when he entered the building. He’d make it in school.

Some shrug at these dangers saying that they’re inevitable.

Even if we stop Wilson, these sorts of designs will eventually be available in some form on-line. That’s the double-edged sword of mass media – all information is available including easy ways to kill a large number of people.

However, I think this is a cop-out.

For instance, the Internet and computer technology make it fairly easy to mass produce currency as well as firearms. In fact, it’s theoretically much easier.

Yet we don’t see a major influx of counterfeit bills. The reason? Business and industry have collaborated with government to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Programs like Adobe Photoshop include software that restrict the printing of your own money. We could do the same with future 3D printers. We could recall those already in service and retrofit them with such code.

Oh, sure not everyone will comply. There will always be someone who breaks through the safety net. But if all we can do is greatly reduce the spread of 3D-printed firearms, that doesn’t make it futile.

There is a mountain of research proving that the more firearms you have in a country, the greater the number of firearm deaths.

We should be working to restrict guns to responsible people.

But the Wilson’s of the world don’t want to allow us that choice.

They want to force us all to live in a world where guns are even more pernicious than they are today.

Will we let them?

Human beings have such potential, but we seem determined to kill ourselves.

If intelligent aliens came to Earth today and landed in the USA, what would they think of us?

Would they see what we might become or would they only see a pitiful animal struggling to put itself out of its own misery?

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Resistance to High Stakes Testing Persists as Media Celebrates Its End

July 31, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Journalism, Junk science, Learning, Local Control, Media, Opt Out, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Toxic Testing, Value Added Measures, VAM annual testing, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Fair Test, high stakes testing, media, Opt Out, Politics, spin, standardized testing, test-based accountability, Value Added Measures

There has never been more opposition to high stakes standardized testing.

Yet the corporate controlled media is pretending that the resistance is over.

Parents are refusing to let their kids take these tests at the same or even greater numbers than ever.

Fewer states require high stakes tests as graduation exams and/or use them to evaluate their teachers. Across the nation, states are cutting the size of standardized tests or eliminating them altogether. And more state legislatures passed laws explicitly allowing parents to opt their children out of the tests.

Yet Education Week published an article a few days ago called “Anti-Test Movement Slows to a Crawl.”

I think we have different definitions of “Slows” and “Crawl.”

That may not be surprising since we also seem to have different definitions of “Anti-Test.”

The Opt Out Movement is not “Anti-Test.” It is anti-high stakes standardized test.

It is against the federal government forcing states to use corporate written, corporate graded and corporate remediated standardized assessments.

It is against the federal government requiring each state to participate in a corporate boondoggle that not only wastes billions of tax dollars that could be better spent to educate children but also unfairly assesses their academic progress and feeds the push to privatize public schools.

Most people against high stakes standardized testing, however, have no problem with authentic teacher-created assessments.

Calling these folks “Anti-Test” is like labeling those pushing for stricter gun regulations “Anti-Gun” or smearing those protesting government corruption as “Anti-Government.”

And that’s just the title!

The author Alyson Klein further misdirects readers by conflating opt out rates and test resistance.

She implied that the only measure of opposition was the percentage of students who opt out. However, as noted above, there are multiple measures of resistance.

Moreover, few states advertise their opt out rates. Especially after the movement began, states made that information harder to come by to dissuade more people from joining it.

Of those states where information is available, Klein puts the most negative possible spin on the facts in order to make her point – a point that it seems to me is not at all justified.

For instance, Klein writes:

“At least some of the steam has gone out of the opt-out movement in states such as New Jersey and New York, considered hotbeds of anti-testing fervor.”

Really?

In New York, Opt out numbers remained at approximately 20% – the same as they have for the past three years.

And New York is one of our most densely populated states. That percentage represents more than 225,000 parents across the Empire State who refused to let their children take the tests despite threats from many administrators and district officials for doing so.

In New Jersey, opt out rates were marginally lower this year than last year. They went from 7% to 5%. But once again New Jersey is a populous state. That percentage represents about 68,500 students.

In addition, this is after massive opt outs three years ago that forced the state to change its federally mandated assessment. Testing boycotts pushed the state education association to get rid of four PARCC assessments and allow students who fail the remaining two tests to take an alternative assessment. And this is in a state where there is no law explicitly allowing parents to opt out of the tests.

I don’t know if I’d call that running out of steam.

Moreover, opt out rates have increased in other states for which we have data. For instance, test refusal is on the rise in heartland states like Minnesota.

And it nearly doubled in Utah over the past two years to about 6%. In some schools in the Beehive State, rates are much higher. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, 1 in 5 students in the Park City school district refused to take the tests.

Though my own state of Pennsylvania has been mum on last year’s opt outs, from my own personal experience as a teacher in suburban Pittsburgh, I never had more students boycott our federally mandated standardized test than I did last year.

There were so many they had to be quarantined in a special room.

Moreover, an increasing number of parents ask me about the issue, express concern and wonder about their rights.

So even when examining just the rate of opt out, I don’t see any reason to assume the movement is slowing down.

On the contrary, it is picking up steam with multiple victories.

As recently as 2012, half of all U.S. states required high school exit exams in order for students to graduate. Today that number has dropped to 12. The reason? Exit exams don’t raise student achievement – they raise the dropout rate. At least that’s what The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences tells us.

Another positive sign – seven states have stopped using value added measures (VAM) to judge teachers. This is the highly controversial practice of assessing educators based on their students test scores – a practice that has never been proven fair to teachers or effective in helping students learn. Six states have dropped this requirement altogether: Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Connecticut still gathers the information but cannot use it in the teacher’s “summative rating.” And other states like New Mexico still use value added measures but have reduced the weight given to student test scores.

Moreover, let’s not forget how many states have slashed the size of the high stakes tests they’re giving to students. After the recent wave of opt outs and public outcry, state education departments have ensured that testing at least takes up less time. This includes New York, Maryland, New Mexico, California, Minnesota, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Washington, Illinois, West Virginia, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas. Some of this is because the PARCC test used in 21 states was slashed by 90 minutes.

And when it comes to opt out, two more states – Idaho and North Dakota – now have explicit laws on the books allowing parents to refuse the test for their children – in whole or in part. That brings the total number of states up to 10. It would have been 11, but Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a Republican, vetoed an opt-out bill. The federal government still wants us to penalize these districts for non-participation in flagrant violation of its authority. But as more states respect parents’ rights on this matter, it will be increasingly difficult for the U.S. Department of Education to continue trampling them.

And speaking of the federal government, some states are taking advantage of the wiggle room in the federal law that governs K-12 education – the newly passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – to allow students to avoid standardized testing entirely. Some states are implementation performance assessments instead. Kids can use a portfolio of classwork to demonstrate learning instead of getting a grade on a corporate-written standardized test. New Hampshire, for instance, has pioneered this approach with a program that now involves half the state’s districts.

These are not the signs of a movement that is slowing to a crawl.

It just makes sense that some of the rhetoric of the movement may have become less forceful with the enactment of the federal ESSA.

Many had hoped for a better law – one that did away with federally mandated testing altogether.

And that could still happen sooner than many think. Next year it will be time to reauthorize the law again.

It took Congress six years to reauthorize the federal education law last time. Perhaps our duly elected representatives can be coaxed into doing their jobs a bit quicker this time.

There is already some proposed legislation to make positive changes. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation last year to replace annual assessments with grade-span tests. The United States is, after all, one of the only countries in the world – if not the only one – to require students be tested every year. These proposed changes are not nearly enough, but they’re a step in the right direction.

One of the biggest obstacles to abolishing federally mandated testing last time was that some of the oldest and most well funded civil rights organizations opposed it. Many of them get their money and support from the same billionaires who profit off of the standardized testing and privatization industries.

However, that support for testing was short lived. Already the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has revoked it returning to a call for opposition to testing.

If our nation survives the many crises of the Donald Trump administration, there is no reason our future cannot be bright.

We have the support, we have the tools, we just need the chance to do right by our children.

And the pendulum is swinging back our way.

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Don’t Tread on Me, But Let Me Tread All Over You: The Credo of Personal Freedom and Limitless Greed

July 12, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, capitalism, church and state, Civil Rights, Compassion, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, immigration, Labor, LGBT, Mass Shooting, Media, Obama, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, Shooting, Social Justice, Students, Whiteness America, American Culture, American Revolution, class warfare, Don't Tread on Me, extremism, Far right, freedom, Gadsen Flag, Greed, history, patriotism, Politics, racism, selfishness, Tea Party, United States

Every neighborhood has one.

A yellow flag showing a coiled spring of a snake above the motto, “Don’t Tread on Me.”

In my usually well-manicured suburb, you’ll find it waving bravely over the garbage house.

There’s three broken down RVs sitting on the lawn, a busted sofa in the back yard, a rotten picnic bench and several rusted out vehicles in various states of disrepair.

I’m not sure why the owners think anyone would want to tread on them. We’d much rather walk quickly on by without being seen or commented on.

Because in my experience that’s the thing about most of the people who fly this flag.

They’re indignant about anyone stepping on their rights but all too ready to step all over yours.

I remember it wasn’t really too long ago that this flag had no such connotations.

It was simply the Gadsen flag, a relic of the American Revolution. It was nothing more than a reminder of a time when we cherished our national independence from Great Britain and wanted to make sure they knew we didn’t want the King to come back and start ordering us around.

In fact, it was designed by American general and politician Christopher Gadsden in 1775. This “Sam Adams of South Carolina” modeled his patriotic statement first used by the Continental Marines on an earlier famous cartoon from Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette.

You’ve probably seen it. A snake is cut into several pieces – each representing one of the colonies – with the motto, “Join or Die.”

So originally it was a call for unity, perhaps even federalism. It was a way of framing the argument that we’d be stronger as one nation than as a group of separate states.

Gadsen’s version was really a continuation of that same thought. It was as if he were saying, “Here we are, one unified nation ready to strike to protect itself from tyranny.”

It wasn’t until 2009 that Gadsen’s flag became associated with the radical right.

Like so many hitherto nonpartisan symbols, it was appropriated by the Tea Party movement, which tried to cast their libertarian extremism as somehow harkening back to the American Revolution.

Even the name Tea Party is a misnomer. The original Boston members of the Sons of Liberty who threw British tea into the harbor in 1773 were protesting taxation without representation. Modern day Tea Partiers were protesting the taxes levied by their own duly elected representatives.

They were poor people duped into thinking the rich paid too much despite the fact of gross income inequality and the wealthy not paying their fair share.

It’s this willful ignorance that typifies the contemporary right.

The truth doesn’t matter. It only matters what can be spun into a pithy sound bite that can be broadcast on Fox News or some other propaganda source and then repeated ad infinitum in place of any real debate or conversation.

To be fair, the left does it, too, but not nearly to the same degree.

When a topic makes the rounds of the 24-hour news cycle, you can hear the same canned responses from right and left on just about every channel regardless of who is speaking. The only difference is that the left usually makes at least passing reference to reality while the right closes its eyes and says whatever it believes to be true with perfect conviction.

The Gadsen flag is a perfect example of this hypocrisy.

The motto “Don’t Tread on Me” has come to mean radical individual freedom.

I can do whatever I like and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I can own as many guns as I like. I can teach my kids whatever facts I like. I can discriminate against anyone I like.

But there’s never a mention about other people except to limit what they can do in relation to the speaker.

In short, there’s nothing explicit about making this rule universal – I won’t tread on you if you won’t tread on me.

It’s just don’t tread on me and I’ll do whatever I like in relation to you.

After all, many of these personal freedoms the radical right cherishes actually do impact the rest of us.

Unregulated gun ownership means more shootings, more suicides, more deadly instances of domestic violence, more kids coming to school with semi-automatic guns in their book bags and more malls and theaters slick with bystander blood.

Moreover, if you teach your kids whatever facts you like, that means you indoctrinate them into your worldview. You don’t give them the chance to see the real world for what it is in case they may have different views on it than you do. This impacts both your children and the country, itself, which will have to somehow run with a greater portion of ignorant and close-minded citizens.

And don’t get me started on discrimination! You think you should be able to say whatever you like to whomever you like whenever you like. It’s fine to wear a t-shirt calling Hillary Clinton a “cunt” but when late night comedian Samantha Bee does the same to Ivanka Trump, you’re up in arms!

You think you can support laws that allow bakers to refuse to make wedding cakes for gay couples but are raving mad when a restaurateur refuses service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders!

This kind of sanctimonious duplicity has real world consequences.

Unarmed black people are shot and killed by police at a much higher rate than white people. Yet you won’t tolerate any protest, condemnation or protest. People can’t assemble in the streets, athletes can’t kneel during the national anthem, you won’t even allow the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” because you say, “All Lives Matter,” while in reality you mean “All Lives Except Black Ones.”

You oppose abortion but no one is forcing anyone to have abortions. In your headlong crusade for individual freedom you want to ensure that others don’t have this choice because they might choose differently than you. Or at least they might choose differently than you SAY you do, because when the light of day is cast upon you, we find an alarming number of hypocrites here, too.

There are too many far right politicians who campaign on overturning Roe v. Wade who pressure their mistresses to abort the unwanted issue of their indiscretion.

The underlying cause of such myopia is a perverse focus only on the self.

You look at what you want for you and pay no attention at all to what others should likewise be allowed.

It is the underlying selfishness of post Enlightenment Western thought come back to haunt us.

Hobbes and Locke and Smith told us that greed was good.

It’s what makes the world go round.

You look to your self-interest, and I’ll look to mine, and that’s what’s best for everyone.

However, they forgot that everyone doesn’t have the same power – physical, social, financial or political. Some people are strong and some are weak. Some are rich and some are poor. If you pull the shortest straw at the lottery of birth, you won’t be able to get the same things for yourself as those who won it as soon as the doctor slapped their newborn bums.

So we have layers and layers of class and economics. We have social structures designed to keep black people here and Hispanics there and white people at the top. We have a society that worships the rich and bedevils the poor. We have belief systems that praise one kind of sexuality only and demonizes anything that diverges from that norm. And the most defining thing of any newborn baby is what you’ll find between its legs.

“Don’t Tread on Me” has become a farce.

It’s a maxim hoisted on those with very little individual power to convince them to join together and become powerful while guarding the door for the wealthy.

They sit atop their mountains of trash as if they were dragons on piles of gold.

And they point their pitchforks at the rest of us as if we wanted a piece of it.

In this way, they make themselves the willing patsies of the ruling class.

It’s a sad thing to behold.

Because if we all just stopped for a second and recognized our common humanity, we’d agree that the status quo is unacceptable.

If we were more concerned about the rights of all than just our own rights, we’d agree that the wealth of this great nation has not been fairly distributed.

The snake is coiled and ready to strike but it is pointed in the wrong direction.

It shouldn’t be pointed at 99% of us. And it shouldn’t be so solitary.

It should be a sea of snakes, a great slithering mass of humanity, hissing and spitting with venom, our reptilian eyes focused on the elites.

Don’t tread on me?

Don’t tread on USSSSSSSSSSS!

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It’s Not Rude to Refuse Service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It’s the Height of Respect

June 26, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Journalism, Media, nonviolence, Obama, Philosophy, Political Correctness, Politics, Prejudice, President, protest, Racism, Republican, Social Justice Civility, Donald Trump, ethics, Golden Rule, moral, Politics, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, shunning

We’ve all heard the story by now.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went to the Red Hen restaurant and was refused service because she works for the Trump administration.

But while many far right and mainstream media outlets are decrying the restaurateur’s decision as discourteous, they seem to have missed the point.

Discourteous?

It was exactly the opposite.

There was no greater way to show Sanders respect than to deny her service.

After all, she defended the Supreme Court’s recent ruling for a conservative baker’s right to refuse to make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.

If Sanders thinks it’s a good thing for this baker to be able to deny service to someone because this potential customer’s lifestyle violates his moral convictions, then she should also support the owner of the Red Hen denying her service because her lifestyle violates the owner’s moral convictions.

And make no mistake – this isn’t a rebuke of Sanders. It’s a celebration.

Twice in the New Testament Jesus, himself, is quoted prescribing what has come to be called The Golden Rule.

In Matthew 7:12:

“Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.”

In Luke 6:31:

“Do to others what you would want them to do to you.”

Sanders and other Trump Republicans have done onto others in just this manner. Therefore, that is how they must also want to be treated.

Isn’t that exactly what the owner of the Red Hen did?

She knew Sanders was in favor of business owners refusing service based on their own personal religious convictions.

Sanders life violates the owner’s religious convictions.

Therefore, she should deny Sanders service.

What has Sanders done to violate the owner’s ethical beliefs?

Easy.

No matter what immoral and repulsive position Donald Trump takes, Sanders defends it.

Separating undocumented children from their parents in detention centers – she defended it.

Using a racial slur to describe Sen. Elizabeth Warren – Defended it.

Spreading lies that diversity immigrants are not vetted – backed it up.

Assuring us that Trump has never encouraged or promoted violence – she said it.

Backing up Trump’s absurd assertion that President Obama wiretapped him – she backed it up.

Heck! Covfefe!!!!! COVFEFE! She actually told a roomful of adults that a typo on her boss’s Twitter was a hidden message to supporters!

Lies, racism, blood libel, and outright fascism!

What Sanders does everyday in the White House violates just about everyone’s moral code.

So how should we treat her?

I say, with the utmost respect and dignity.

And if we truly want to give Sander’s beliefs the reverence they deserve, we should deny her service. Reporters should stop attending her press conferences. Cable news programs should stop inviting her on the air. And, yes, no more food at chicken restaurants!

But we shouldn’t stop with her.

We should do the same for every member of the Trump administration. THEY believe this stuff. We should honor their convictions and treat them how they apparently want to be treated.

And why stop there? Every MAGA hat wearing Trumpster you see in your everyday life should likewise be denied service.

When they come into our places of business, our houses of worship, our homes, we should ask them politely to leave.

This isn’t punishment.

It’s the most deferential treatment imaginable.

We are showing them that we honor their moral code of reciprocity and individual freedom.

Those who are calling for “civility” don’t seem to understand that patronizing Trumpsters would be the true mark of disrespect.

If they think it is right to treat others like this, then we should treat them the same way.

That is how you show respect for someone’s beliefs – not by denying their code and treating them by your own.

Now I know what some of you are thinking – Didn’t Jesus also say, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39)?

Yes, he did. And many of US may believe that sentiment, but Trumpsters obviously don’t or else they wouldn’t support the policies they do. Should we really force our beliefs on them? Would that be fair?

I say no. We should treat them by their own code – and refuse them service.

Ah, but I can hear this objection, too – what if treating Trumpsters like this changes their beliefs?

Might attaching social consequences to repugnant political views dissuade people from holding those views?

Perhaps.

But don’t we owe it to these far rightsters to give them that choice?

If being ostracized from society makes them recant their views, then at that point we should stop excluding them. However, this may be exactly the test Trump-servatives are hoping for. Perhaps they want to see which they care more about – being part of a civil society or supporting neo-fascist politics.

The best course is to treat their conviction as serious and to give it the seriousness it deserves.

Doing so treats them as ends in themselves and not merely as a means to social lubrication.

No one wants to rock the boat, but we must.

This is the only truly polite course of action.

You’re welcome, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

You’re welcome, Donald Trump.

Now get outta here.

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Facebook is Censoring Your Favorite Bloggers

May 7, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, capitalism, Censorship, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Facebook, Journalism, Media, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Social Justice, Teachers algorithm, bloggers, capitalism, Censorship, Democracy, Facebook, freedom of speech, Internet, Mark Zuckerberg, network, Politics, Privatize, Regulation, Social Media

Have you seen me?

Probably not.

In fact, you’re probably not even seeing this right now.

Though you may have read and enjoyed my articles in the past, though you may still want to have the opportunity to see and enjoy my posts in the future, you probably aren’t seeing them anymore.

The reason? Facebook has employed a new algorithm to determine exactly what you’re allowed to see on your news feed.

Like a parent or a government censor, they are scanning your content for certain words, judging your posts based on interactions, and otherwise making choices on your behalf without your consent.

Unless someone pays them to do otherwise. Then they’ll spam you with nonsense – fake news, lies, propaganda: it doesn’t matter so long as money is changing hands.

So homegrown blogs like this one are left in the dust while corporations and lobbyists get a megaphone to shout their ideas across social media.

Look, I don’t mean to minimize what Facebook does. There’s a ton of information that comes through the network that COULD be displayed on your screen. The company uses an algorithm – a complex set of steps – to determine exactly what to show you and when. But instead of basing that solely on who you’ve friended and what you’re interested in, they’ve prioritized businesses and shut down the little guy.

Since Facebook made the change in January, my blog only gets about 40% of the hits it did in years passed. And I’m not alone. Other edu-bloggers and organizations dedicated to fighting school privatization and standardization are reporting the same problems – our voices are being silenced.

And all this is happening after a series of Facebook scandals.

After the whole Cambridge Analytica outrage where Facebook gave the data of 87 million users – without their consent – to a political analysis firm that used it to help elect Trump…

After Facebook sold more than $100,000 in advertisements to Russian bots in 2016 who used them to spread propaganda to help elect Trump…

After enabling the spread of hate speech in Myanmar which allowed the military to engage in “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslim minority – which has forced 700,000 people from their homes and across the border into neighboring Bangladesh…

After all that, Facebook still pretends that changing its algorithm is simply a way to crack down on “fake news.”

It’s not.

They are controlling information.

They are policing free expression.

They are NOT cracking down on falsehoods and deception.

In fact, much of what they’re doing is completely devoid of ideology. It’s business – pure and simple.

They’re monetizing the platform. They’re finding new and creative ways to squeeze content providers to gain access to users’ news feeds.

This won’t stop propaganda and fabrications. It just charges a fee to propagate them.

It’s the same thing that allowed those Russian bots to spread Trump-friendly lies in 2016.

It’s pay-to-play. That’s all.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized the change in January of 2018 as prioritizing content from “friends, family and groups.”

Zuckerberg admitted this means it will be harder for brands and publishers to reach an audience on the social media platform – unless they pay for the privilege. That’s significant because even though organic reach had been diminishing for some time, this is the first time the company admitted it.

Zuckerberg wrote:

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard—it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

What are “meaningful interactions”?

Apparently, what the company calls active interactions are more important than passive ones. So commenting and sharing is more important than just liking something.

In practice that means if you comment on someone’s post, you’re more likely to see things by that person in the future. And if they respond to your comment, their post gets seen by even more people.

Reactions matter, too, as does the intensity of those reactions. If people take the time to hit “Love” for a post, it will be seen by more people than if they hit “Like.” But whatever you do, don’t give a negative reaction like “Sad” or “Angry.” That hurts a post’s chances of being seen again.

I know it’s weird. If someone shares a sad story about their mother with cancer, the appropriate response is a negative reaction. But doing so will increase the chances the post will be hidden from other viewers. Facebook wants only happy little lab rats.

Sharing a post helps it be seen, but sharing it over messenger is even better. And just sharing it is not enough. It also needs to be engaged in by others once you share it.

Video is also prioritized over text – especially live video. So pop out those cell phone cameras, Fellini, because no one wants to read your reasoned argument against school privatization. Or they may want to, but won’t be given a chance. Better to clutter up your news feed with auto-playing videos about your trip to Disneyworld. I suppose us, social justice activists, need to become more comfortable with reading our stuff on camera.

And if you do happen to write something, be careful of the words you use to describe it. The algorithm is looking for negative words and click bait. For example, if you ask readers to like your posts or comment, that increases the chances of Facebook hiding it from others. And God forbid you say something negative even about injustice or civil rights violations. The algorithm will hide that faster than you can say “Eric Garner.” So I guess try to be positive when writing about inequality?

Do you happen to know someone famous or someone who has a lot of Facebook followers? If they engage in your posts, your writing gets seen by even more folks. It’s just like high school! Being seen with the cool kids counts.

One of the best things readers can do to make sure they see your content is having them follow you or your page. But even better is to click the “Following” tab and then select “See First.” That will guarantee they see your posts and they aren’t hidden by the algorithm.

I know. I know.

This is all kind of silly, but Facebook is a private corporation. It should be allowed to control speech however it likes. Right?

Wrong.

The social media giant collects a ton of data about its users and sells that to advertisers. As a user, you have to make that Faustian bargain in order to gain free access to the platform. However, as we’ve seen, that data can be used by political organizations for nefarious ends. Private business cannot be trusted with it.

Moreover, there is the echo chamber effect. Facebook controls what users see. As such, the company has tremendous power to shape public opinion and even our conception of reality. This used to be the province of a free and independent press, but after media conglomeratization and shrinking advertising revenues, our press has become a shadow of its former self.

In order to maintain a democratic system that is not under the sway of any one party, faction or special interest group, it is essential that social media providers like Facebook become public utilities.

It must be regulated and free from manipulation by those who would use it for their own ends.

The way things are going, this seems more unlikely than ever.

Our democracy is a fading dream. Fascism is on the rise.

But if we want even a chance of representative government, we need to reclaim social media for ourselves. We need control over what we get to see on Facebook – whether that be a school teacher’s blog or your cousin’s muffin recipe.

In the meantime, do what you can to take back your own news feed.

If you want to keep seeing this blog, follow me on Facebook and click “See First.” Hit “Love” on my content. Comment and share.

The only thing standing in our way right now is a brainless computer algorithm. We can outsmart it, if we work together.

Hope to be seeing you again real soon.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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