Friday, February 10, 2012

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

The NYC Dept of Education is now staffed with high paid "quality control consultants" who go from school to school poring over test scores, evaluating teachers and principals and closing schools if they do not meet standards mandated in Washington and Albany. If this sounds like Henry Ford's assembly line, the resemblance isn't accidental. Only this isn't cars being manufactured, it's children's minds allegedly being awakened and their character molded. Unless, of course, you want to produce a generation of obedient test taking automatons willing to take their place in a society which offers them little more than low wage work under conditions even more stressful and oppressive than the schools that are going to produce them. If this is what democracy looks like count me out!