Why Penny Pritzker Matters: On the Chicago Teachers Strike

We must first consider what Penny Pritzker wants for her children and the children of parents like her (Rahm Emanuel is one of these parents) who can afford private education: well-funded and resourced libraries, useful arts and music programs, good gyms and physical education, new facilities with the latest technologies, computer labs with enough working and up-to-date computers for the annual class-load, texts for every student, well-equipped and healthy cafeterias, and the best, most-educated, pedagogically progressive teachers a school could desire. We must second be willing to admit that Penny Pritzker does not think these things are a priority for Chicago Public School parents, teachers and students. You might believe this is a bit harsh, a little too mean, maybe even an unfair claim. It’s not. The problem with her involvement in public school reform is cultural.

What she wants for "those" people—and believe me that’s how she thinks about public school students, teachers, and parents—is a degraded form of what her privileged community can access. This degraded school is The Charter School. Charter schools don’t work as well as the kinds of private schools rich kids’ parents can afford. Why not? They are not fully-funded. I argue this under-funding and lack of resources is by design. The parents don’t have the time and money to fund and dedicate themselves to organizing the schools. The students still live in the problem neighborhoods, with problem cops, and often problem homes. The teachers are still under-paid and not provided with the best resources and appropriate materials. Nor do they have job security. People like Penny Pritzker know about these problems, but they also believe that they know how best to advise under-privileged people and their under-developed communities how *they* should work to earn what she already possesses. We have a culture that informs us about the purpose wealthy patrons of educational reform, government organizations, corporations, and misguided parents choose to insist appropriately funding public education is pointless. We should examine that culture, too, not just students and teachers.

What’s different at charter schools? Well, they’re pseudo-public schools that pretend to provide the benefits of an idealized--imaginary--private-school education. They can fire teachers and drop students who aren’t meeting oppressive standards they had no stake in implementing. In spite of rigging the system to look successful to the best of their abilities--the ability to get rid of low-performing students and teachers who don’t meet benchmarks--charter schools fail to live up to their missions all over the country.

Penny Pritzker wants poor kids to have schools that aim to reflect the kinds of private schools she admires. Why the need for the struggle and aim as imprecise as it happens to be? Because rich people believe they have earned their ambition and that poor people have yet to prove they are worth it. This isn’t to say Penny Pritzker and people like her don’t think she’s doing the right thing and being a good citizen. She does think so. People think she’s a blessing to the world. Believe me. She throws money at all sorts of things. It’s just that she’s wrong. And it’s our responsibility to keep this in mind and insure that people like her aren’t the ones setting our education agenda. Penny Pritzker shouldn’t be on a school board and engaged in curriculum development. She has not earned the right to help create educational policy.

Let’s be clear: teachers’ unions with all their complex problems and yes, even bureaucracy, are what we should get behind. This strike, the first in 25 years, is important because these are the people—the teachers and their students—who have a stake in the successful operation of public schools. They are not catering to the textbook industry, the corporate educational reform movement and its CEOs, the charter school movement, parents, and politicians. They are engaged with and within the classroom. They necessarily provide the tension we need when negotiating educational reform.

And now they are in the streets because citizens tend to afford rich people like Penny Pritzker the respect and ambition they have not earned and tend to distrust workers. Workers here are Students and Teachers.

In Solidarity: UNIDOS Take Over Tucson United School District Meeting

"Our education is under attack. What do we do? Fight back!"

Watch these amazing students stand up for their rights.


Write to the Tucson Unified School District :: You can watch the video and learn about the concerns students have. Maybe you can let the TUSD know what you think about it. Perfect time to email all politicians and superintendents and schools and board members. Much of their info is going to be online. Force them to respond to the kids' demands.

UNIDOS 10-point resolution on ethnic studies:

1. We want our ethnic studies classes to continue to meeting core social science requirement;
2. We want the repeal of HB 2281;
3. We want ethnic studies programs to expand everywhere, from K-12 to university;
4. We want no school turn-arounds, no school closures and full support for Rincon and Palo Verde high school communities;
5. We want a TUSD governing board that is accountable and will stand up for all students;
6. We want an equitable education for all;
7. We want an immediate end to all racist, anti-immigrant, anti-indigenous policies;
8. We want full compliance with our civil and human rights;
9. We want Attorney General Tom Horne, state Superintendent John Huppenthal and Governor Jan Brewer immediately removed from power;
10. We want local control of our education.

Vote on Future of TUSD Ethnic Studies Rescheduled for May 5th.

The kids united will never be divided.

Michelle Rhee's Celeb Status in Jeopardy. FINALLY

I wrote about how the corporate education reform movement is actually part of a wider tax reform movement the other day.

I thought I should share some links about Michelle Rhee and her growing scandal:

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real? (USA Today)
Michelle Rhee is a liar … (The Reality Based Community)
Michelle Rhee's Cheating Scandal (The Daily Beast)
Shame on Michelle Rhee (By Diane Ravitch @ The Daily Beast)

Read and share.

삼성고등학교 . Notes and Link.

my school's web page: like many web pages in the Republic, it runs best on Internet Explorer and is full of little programs that tend to run slowly even on Korean PCs.  Firefox would be best for Macs.

But you can see my students.  I love them with all my heart.  They absolutely look after me.  I don't want to forget my colleagues--my fellow teachers always care about my best interests.  I know many foreigners complain about treatment.  I have had bad experiences, but I am very happy here.  I am feeling like a teacher.  This is a renewal of a spirit I enjoyed prior to leaving teaching in 2006 to attempt finishing my dissertation--an attempt that failed.  Working full-time has slowed my writing down to hours a week rather than per day.  I think it's acceptable.  I am willing to be patient with finishing my novel.  However, I yearn for Time To Write.  I think I could finish in 6 months without work.  But it ain't gonna happen. 

I thought it would be fun to show the link because it will give you a good idea just how immersed I am in Korean daily life and language.  No English to speak of except for me.  The myth about English in Korea shattered my first week in Korea.  I have been thinking a lot about this: what it means to speak with others.  Everyday language--and I am thinking about Ordinary Language here, you know, what does it mean to say something, to say what you mean, etc--everyday language is completely different for me in Korea.

I want to post about this in a manner suiting the topic.  Later today, maybe tonight.  For example, I am called a native speaker here.  Of course, native is regarding English itself, not me-speaking-English but the idea that I come from there, there being the place they speak English everyday.  This is nothing ordinary:  it is a highly developed since of how English works in a presumed wealthy global culture with abundant opportunity.  English language is seen as part of the endeavor to succees in a capitalist culture.  Believe you me, English is here in Korea.  It's all over the place.  It's a more self-aware sense of English than most English speakers possess.  Now, when I look at a Korean student--my high school students, for example--and witness their anxiety regarding English education, I realize I am witness to a communal dread about the future of Korea and Korean citizens, their individual dread about their future and their families' futures.  The students may not be mature enough to say it this way, but their shoulders are already familiar with this cultural weight.  They began carrying the burden when their mothers, and sometimes fathers, offerred their first 잔소리 regarding The Future, tying IT to Education and, inevitably for the middle class here, to English.

Of course, English is a global language or we might say English has been in the process of becoming global for some time.  After all, it is hard to deny that it has long been the most acceptable for of global imperialism and the white power structure.  In this respect, the term native speaker just doesn't suit me, for me, as a means to describe me.  Nevertheless, it does suit the perspective Koreans inhabit regarding an approach to learning and using English.  I feel that, regardless what Korean might call me, I should reject the modifier "native" and simply speak with others.  I think I should attempt through teaching English--mechanics, grammar, vocabulary, et al--attempt to simply find a means to speak with others about what needs to be communicated.  I should also attempt, if not succeed, to speak the Korean language.

I will doubtless get into the classroom politics discourse here:  I abhor white folks who demand English Only environments.  In Korea, we really do have what a bilingual culture.  (We do in the US, as well, no matter what the politicians and guardians of the white power structure say.)  I listen to native speaker teachers proclaim with pride that they "insist" their classrooms are English Only.  Who are they kidding?  Do they believe the students think in English?  Don't they understand the value of using both languages to learn the other?  For some, though, teaching is about power.  We all know fellow teachers who aren't in it for the vocation but are in it for the authority and the claim to wisdom.  Many capitalist entrepreneurs teach.  They find profit in their lessons as they work FOR others rather than WITH them.  I don't really know how the exchange works in every instance, but I do see capitalism at work in the sense that out of the exchanges those teachers participate in the classroom the value of their own self-worth grows.  And this is often regardless of their students' successes of failures.

Inevitably, I'll have to address hagwon culture and the foreigners who flock to make cash working day and night "teaching" English.  I really don't have much to say about folks who come here to teach at hagwons (for-profit "Academies.")   I simply cannot think about hagwons without thinking about the market and culture of Education here.  I am opposed to hagwon culture for many reasons.  This does not mean I am opposed to hagwon teachers.  SO, you know, I am reticent to speak about hagwon teachers because I don't want folks to think I am saying "You are a bad teacher."  I am sure that good teachers exist in the hagwons in Korea.  Nevertheless, I refuse to teach in the Private Education Industry in Korea.  They are the death of community and public education.  They instituionalize education in a manner suiting standardization of ideas in an attempt to make culture monolithic and linear.  Hagwon culture also represents the death of critical thinking.

I wouldn't have come to Seoul unless I was able to teach in the public schools.

Look at my school's home page.  Imagine flying to Seoul.  After your 15 hour flight, you are picked up by a young man who drives you to your new school.  And not more than 90 minutes after your arrival, your job begins.  You simply cease being the teacher and writer, whatever I was, and begin a new daily life.  I really felt no break until December 19th.  An important day for me for two reasons:  first, I met Praise Lee; second, Winter Break began.  From September 5, 2008, until December 19th, 2008, I encountered a continuous renewal of attempting to get by in a place where my everyday language did not (and still doesn not) work.

Many people who travel here, live with their foreign coworkers.  Most hagwons put foreigners up in apartment bulidings where their coworkers live.  My situation is different.  Most of the public school teachers I know live by themselves and are fortunate if they have foreign neighbors.  Our schools find us places to live near work.

I have wanted to come to Korea for some time, so I was very happy to learn that I wasn't going to live with foreigners.  I want to learn as much as possible about the culture and language.  I am not exaggerating though when I tell you that I did not have a conversation for two weeks after arrival.  I live in a neighborhood where no foreigners live.  I like it; I hate it.  I had no phone for 60 days, so I wandered the streets of my new home yearning to talk.

...time to work...

More later.  I just wanted to get some points out for a more detailed discussion:

• what happened to my everyday languge?  (I think the answer is Nothing happened to it, it is not English and never has been.)
  
• what is wrong with Private Education Industry and why "Native Speakers" should radicalize it, alter it, or simply refuse to support it?
  
• what does it mean that English is a global language?  (Koreans are so focused on "accent."  Korean English teachers like to talk about "accent" and I get many questions from teachers and students alike about appropriate "accents."  I'd like to reflect on what they mean a bit more thoroughly, but I always ask, "what accent do you think is the correct one and why?"  I believe English is everyone's language and we are afforded an opportunity here to either betray the cultural imperialism usually accompanying ESL education by freeing it from the rigors of the American English-British English binary.)