The recent Nikole Hannah-Jones New York Times article questioning her choice to enroll her daughter in public schools has generated much attention. This Wall Street Journal editorial highlights the response to Ms. Hannah-Jones’s piece from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Read more Protecting 3D Printing
“I was so saddened,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commented on the Bluesky social-media site. “Public schools must be places parents want to send their kids; where educators want to teach & where kids thrive. That is our North Star. We must learn what went wrong & address it so all students have what they deserve.”
A couple points to make before diving in too deep here.
1) Given the fact that the majority of Democrat politicians and teachers’ union honchos would, as one wag put it, crawl on their hands and knees through miles of broken glass before they would send their own children to a public school, I have to give Hannah-Jones a measure of credit for defying this convention — not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk and exercising the courage of her convictions. Though, as a lifelong liberal/progressive academic/activist, best known for spearheading The 1619 Project, it could certainly be argued that her own contributions to the conditions she encountered in NYC’s public schools were substantial.
2) I suppose, owing to some measure of naïveté, hubris, or both, Ms. Hannah-Jones seemed to think that, being both an affluent and high-profile parent, she would be on the vanguard of a movement for other similarly situated parents to follow suit and improve educational outcomes in favor of not only their own children, but all the others as well. This movement never materialized. As noted, a noble goal, worthy of credit, but ultimately futile. The more hubristic element of Hannah-Jones’s thinking was that she alone, given her elevated liberal/progressive status, through her sole interactions with teachers and school administrators, could achieve more positive outcomes for her daughter and the other students of her school. This too failed spectacularly. Many of us might call this a case of a liberal being mugged by reality.
The WSJ piece goes on to retort:
But Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article makes clear “what went wrong.” Her daughter, Najya, and her classmates “were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach.” And the failure to educate “poor Black children” isn’t limited to Najya’s school or even to the Hannah-Joneses’ city: “There was nothing exceptional about what I witnessed at P.S. 307. I had observed and reported on similar educational malfeasance in Detroit, in Durham, in St. Louis, in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham.” Ms. Hannah-Jones writes.
If Ms. Weingarten wants to “learn what went wrong,” she should start by looking in the mirror. Her union is the primary reason New York’s public schools fail to educate so many children, especially poor black children.
Two flagrant omissions from the Hannah-Jones piece are 1) any mention of teachers’ unions, arguably the largest source of the problem, and 2) charter schools — again arguably, at least what appears to be a very big part of any solution.
The first piece I ever had posted here at AT in 2010 was a condemnation of the unholy alliance between teachers’ unions and Democrat politicians. Alas, nothing has changed in the ensuing years, and in fact, it all has gotten considerably worse.
But what happens if one goes from being poor to being rich? The Democratic Party (don’t pretend you didn’t know who I was talking about) loses a vote! If we could wipe out poverty tomorrow a large component of the coalition that keeps the Democratic Party in power would vanish overnight. Oh, to dream…
Read more Traitors of a Marxist Bent
I’m sure others have made this observation before but think for a minute about what it really means. If you are a poor black inner city kid your best chance to break the cycle of poverty is to receive a quality education. But as spelled out above, Democratic politicians, from your local city councilman all the way up to the President of the United States of America, have a very real and vested interest in seeing that this does not happen, and if it must, to limit it as best they can!
What is the easiest way to keep poor people poor? To construct as many barriers as possible between poor children and quality education. And how do Democratic politicians achieve this goal? They vote overwhelmingly and consistently to oppose education reforms; school choice, voucher systems, and charter schools, that have proven successful everywhere they have been tried.
Remember, this was 2010. Barack Obama was the president. But for the Democrats, and poor black children, nothing has changed.
They still fight tooth and nail against any and all education reforms that have proven successful, everywhere they’ve been tried. NYC’s charter schools have waiting lists of thousands of children whose families, like most of us, would do everything in their power to improve their children’s lives, and at every turn are thwarted by the politicians whom, for whatever unknowable reasons, they keep re-electing.
State level policies such as those that generated the Mississippi Miracle could be implemented nationally to reverse the downward spiral in education we see in most large urban areas. Naturally, the results are disputed by the teachers’ unions because they are such a scathing indictment of everything they do and represent.
What might we do to address all these problems? High-level teachers’ union officials should be required to spend a good amount of time in the classrooms, cafeterias, and playgrounds of these schools, that for generations have miserably failed those unfortunate enough to be forced into them by these unions and their Democrat political allies. How about eight weeks annually, as a start? One solid week each in eight of the lowest-performing schools within their jurisdictions, from the opening bell until the end of the day. Recall the scene from Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian masterpiece and liberal/progressive hellscape, A Clockwork Orange, where young Alex has his eyes clamped open and is forced to watch, for hours on end, the kind of horrific ultra-violence he has inflicted on society.
Like young Alex, our teachers’ union leaders and the Democrat politicians who enable them should be forced to witness, firsthand, and at great length, however discomfiting, exactly what it is they have imposed on the rest of our society. On some level, these teachers’ unions and the Democrat politicians in their pockets need to be held accountable to the generations of children they’ve saddled with ignorance, poverty, hopelessness, and despair. Perhaps this would open their eyes and soften their hearts enough to say enough is enough and demonstrate that their constant retort that it’s all about the kids is more than just another empty platitude.
Read more The All-Seeing State Is Coming
Pixabay, Pixabay License.” class=”wp-image-187″ width=”640″ height=”426″ />
Image: jarmoluk via Pixabay, Pixabay License.