America is facing yet another easily avoidable, self-inflicted existential crisis in the wake of the re-election of Donald Trump as President, but this post will not be about that. Every other writer, blogger and talk show host in the world is talking about that. Instead, as always, I’m looking for an alternate angle that no one’s really talking about.
What we’ve been seeing from members of the Trump Administration is, in many ways, evil or incompetent people doing the right things for the wrong reasons and in utterly ridiculous ways. First example? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the worm that ate his apple after it fell from the Kennedy family tree want to revamp America’s food system. HALLELUJAH! Talk about something long overdue!!! Most of what we can buy in the nearest grocery story is poison designed to do nothing more than feed us to the pharmaceutical industry for something to cover up the symptoms of the poison in the “food.” There’s no question this needs to be done, but could we find anyone less qualified to do it? Could we find someone less inclined to bow down to corporate lobbyists and reverse course for irrational reasons?
Kennedy, remember, was antivax but got his own children vaccinated and is now saying he never been an antivaxxer. Huh. Too bad YouTube exists. For now, anyway. Kennedy also says WIC (food stamps) should not be used to purchase soda, which also makes perfect sense! Soda is made with high fructose corn syrup, which is a natural-sounding name for a toxic chemical that literally kills the mitochondria in the human body. Mitochondria? Oh yeah, those things that act like energy generators for our bodies. Those are kind of important. So we have an incompetent person trying to do the right thing, but then the soda lobbyists showed up and he has reversed course on that. It turns out poor people waste a lot of their hard unearned money on soda. Makes sense not to stop them. (?????????)
Enough of that tangent.
I have spent much of my life as an educator. I’ve taught middle school, high school and college English and also spent many years training professional writers to cover the NBA. I think that qualifies me as an expert. I can tell you that one of the biggest enemies of the American education system is the Department of Education. Even when someone qualified and competent is running it, which often is not the case, the way it goes about funding education and setting national standards is asinine. Basing an entire system of funding on a culturally biased and unrealistic standardized test is one of the worst ideas in the history of bad ideas…and what a storied history that is!
The United States currently ranks 31st in education, globally, coming in 38th in math and 24th in science, and we’re not even in the top 10 in adult literacy rates. If that doesn’t equate to the utter and total failure of the US Department of Education, I don’t know what does.
Here’s the rub, though. When evil, incompetent people do the right thing for the wrong reasons the result will not be better than what we already had that was failing. What the Trump team wants to do is privatize the public education system, turning over all state and federal taxes to corporations which will funnel that money to private schools, where they will even accept such students, essentially gutting all public schools. Here’s a succinct and precise description of what will happen:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=634569868918113
Poor kids, in particular, will be left with nowhere to go during the day….leading to….anyone? Anyone? Let’s take a look at a case in point in Chicago:
Chicago residents are still reeling from the devastating [school] closures—a policy decision that has not only failed to bring about notable academic gains, but has also destabilized communities, crippled small businesses, and weakened local property values. With the city struggling to sell or repurpose most of the closed schools, dozens of large buildings remain vacant, becoming targets of crime and vandalism throughout poor neighborhoods. “These schools went from being community anchors into actual dangerous spaces,” says Pauline Lipman, an education policy professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Hmmm. Does that sound like an improvement to anyone? If so, please let’s discuss in the comments below.
Again, there’s a lot going on as the Trump Administration and Elon Musk’s breakfast club of the misfits of science run around in the underwear breaking things and firing people. Some of those things actually need to be broken, but breaking things without a plan for rebuilding and replacing them is a recipe for disaster.
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 