School Boarding

I journeyed to the neighborhood theatre with another octogenarian to see Zero Dark Thirty. We created quite a site: two little old white-haired ladies in a suspense and action packed movie where most of our fellow attendees where quite young and dressed in camo. I found it to be an excellent movie, though some scenes made me squirm. I hated the torture scenes, and though my patriotic heart was proud at the end, I did not like seeing the violence. Guess I am getting old. Older.

If you have not seen the movie I recommend it. If you have not seen the movie then the following includes some spoilers.

The scenes where we saw water boarding of prisoners to gain information were especially hard for me to take. I know these were enemy combatants of the US. I know we had to get information. I am appalled that we used violence to extract information from those who commit violence. The inherent cognitive dissonance resonates with me even today. I wonder at the times we have resorted to such strategies with other human beings what makes our cause more noble, more just, and promotes the US as a superior culture for the rest of the world to emulate? Are we the good guys if we practice the same strategies as the bad guys? I took away several messages from those scenes: The ends justified the means; under torture truth will be told; and place someone in enough pain and they will do what you want them to do.

I found it fascinating that in the pursuit of killing Osama Bin Laden that we were in no way lacking resources. The men, machines and technology necessary to accomplish the mission were all provided. These men were supported by a large group external to the mission who very much wanted the men to be successful and accomplish their mission. Interesting. Especially when I think about what we are doing to public schools.

Public school people are being tortured. Admittedly it is more psychological torture than physical torture, but it is torture none the less.

The so called school reformers are doing the following to public schools: they are constantly raising measurable standards while promoting both a decrease in resources and redirection of resources to other forms of education. They are constantly seeking new ways to demonstrate that we are failing to achieve our mission and rather than promote and support they punish and belittle. They have placed every public school person in a double bind: Do more with less while being held accountable for ever rising standards. That is organizational torture, and it is being committed by our elected officials against public schools.

Every time you hear we have failed, that is part of the torture. Every time you hear that we do not need more resources, that is part of the torture. Every time you hear that teachers should be held accountable for the test scores of children, that is part of the torture. Every time you hear we need to raise standards and make the tests more difficult that is part of the torture. Every time you hear that what we need is more choice and the solution is to divert scarce resources to alternatives like charters and vouchers, that is part of the torture. We are being drowned by ever new accountability measures, expectations, standards at the same time our resources to accomplish those things are being reduced. We are blamed and belittled. We are cast as the enemy of student learning, not the dedicated professionals in pursuit of a lofty and noble goal.

School people are flat on their backs while the government pours more and more down our throats. This is not water boarding. This is school boarding. And it has to stop.

One wonders what the goal of this torture is. Do legislatures want us all to quit? Do legislators want data to show we failed? Do legislatures want to beat us into some kind of submission, and what would that submission look like? Or, is the real mission of school reform to end the notion of public education in the US? Is their mission to provide an educational system for the haves and forget the have-nots?

Zero Dark Thirty portrayed a mission accomplished via a vast array of human and technological resources devoted to the mission. State and federal legislatures, even the Secretary of Education and the Commissioner of Education in Texas, are contributing to the torture of public schools by doing just the opposite. If you want schools to do better and accomplish their mission then provide more resources, support the folks who are working hard every day to accomplish the mission. It is hard to imagine asking Seal Team 6 to accomplish this mission if they were constantly told they are worthless, incompetent and that they must accomplish the mission on their own with ever decreasing resources, or tell them that we are redirecting some of their resources to private military groups to give them a sense of competition. We cannot blame the people in the field, we must support them. We cannot reduce resources we must increase them. We cannot make our heroes the bad guys.

Stop the School Boarding!