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Mad as Hell That I Was Indoctrinated In School and Not Educated

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I’d like to go on a bit of a rant about how naïve I have been for so long and even though I am an educated person, my education was more akin to indoctrination. Now that I am finally waking up, I wish to share a few examples of what I was taught and what I now believe.

Christopher Columbus – I was taught he was a hero for proving the world was not flat and discovering and bringing Christianity to the new world. In fact, he was a really a “bad hombre” and he was not the first explorer to reach the Americas – he was preceded by its indigenous people who came from Asia and later, the Vikings. As for the shape of the earth, scholars had known since antiquity that the Earth was a sphere. Most shocking to me was learning that he started the transatlantic slave trade; used torture and mutilation; and initiated the genocide of the natives.

Time to get rid of Columbus Day for sure!   [Read more…]

School Choice: Segregation by Another Name

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The Privatization of Public Services Is Always a Money Scam.

By Mark E. Andersen / Daily Kos

On May 9, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attended a technology conference in Utah. In and of itself, her attendance was not a very remarkable thing. As education secretary, it makes sense that she would be at this event. But then there’s what she said while she was there: yes, she compared school choice to switching cell phone providers.

Under normal circumstances, this would be considered the most out-of-touch thing a member of a presidential administration could say. But these are not normal times.   [Read more…]

Making our Schools Safe for Muslim Students in a Climate of Hate

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There’s a survey highlighting that a large number of Muslim students are being bullied at school. Our school district picks up on it and looks at ways to make them feel safe on their campuses. And before you can say “Way to go!” to the school system, a bunch of hateful folks come up with some “reverse discrimination” kind of BS.

They whine about those students being given “special treatment.” They blabber about the schools surrendering to Sharia law and caving into demands made by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). They claim falsely that CAIR is a “covert supporter of Islamic fundamentalism rather than a supporter of a reformed Islam compatible with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”   [Read more…]

Workers, Students and Adjuncts as Disposable People in the Trump Era

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Last week will live in infamy as the time when the American House of Representatives consciously voted to take away health care from millions of Americans, potentially threatening the lives of countless numbers of our family members, friends, and neighbors. It was also the week when May Day rallies happened across the country, including here in San Diego.

At San Diego City College, my friend and colleague, Christy Ball, delivered the following speech that tells the story of the very Americans who are now at great risk, and it shares the anger that more and more Americans are feeling at the cruelty of the current regime. For my column, then, I yield my soapbox to her.   [Read more…]

California Is Undermining Public Schools by Spending Big on Charters It Doesn’t Need

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By Laura Clawson / Daily Kos

California charter schools have gotten more than $2.5 billion to build, lease, or buy school buildings over the past 15 years. Has the money been well spent?

Not if by “well spent” you mean fulfilling needs for additional classroom space or providing improved educational opportunities, according to a recent report from In the Public Interest.   [Read more…]

Helping Children and Animals Together: Children’s Nature Retreat in Alpine

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Giving back to others is always good, but when you can give back to both animals and children, that is even better! Local humanitarian, Agnes Barrelet, is doing just that by heading up two non-profits, Hands United for Children and Children’s Nature Retreat.

The Children’s Nature Retreat in Alpine is a haven for all kinds of animals, including two zebras, four Friesian horses, African cows, mules, donkeys, rabbits, mini horses, goats and pigs, ostriches, and desert tortoises, etc. There are over 95 domesticated livestock with 17 species and 38 breeds from around the world. They all live comfortably on this beautiful 20 acre property. There are several animal enclosures, including Barnyard Alley, Tortoise Landing, African Grasslands, and Mini and Big Farms. For example, in African Grasslands, you will see the two zebras with several ostriches.   [Read more…]

Why Johnny Can’t Read — the Future of Education in the US

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By Robert Smith

In my book “Natural Born Leader-A Tribute to the American Political System,” my character The Ronald plans to select the Honorable Reverend Jim Bob Bunker, President of the University of Enlightened Angels and leader of the conservative Christian Coalition of Saved Souls, to serve as his Secretary of Education. The Ronald promises conservative Christians a score of educational reforms, including:

  • No more sex education-all teenagers need to know is abstinence. Once they’re married, they can figure it out on their wedding night.
  • No more evolution-dinosaur bones are fakes, produced and buried in remote locations by Democrats, Communists and Atheists.
  • No more conventional history-they’ll still teach ancient history and modern history, but we might know it better as the Old Testament and the New Testament.

I thought I’d delivered enough fictional nuttiness through The Ronald, but I fell short in predicting The Donald’s actual nuttiness. I failed you and I promise to do better in the sequel (i.e. way more nutty).

The Donald’s real Secretary of Education, Elisabeth DeVos, doesn’t even have the educational credentials of my fictional character Reverend Bunker. She does seem to possess his wide-eyed — is it the Holy Ghost or another manic episode? — religious fervor. I’ll state for the record that I’m an old, white, male protestant in good standing (I’m Lutheran, and not the fun kind — my Synod has a state’s name in it). I’m also a product of the public school system from 1st grade to my B.S. (B.S. represents my degree, my initials and my personality) and I feel that system served me well.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Piercing The North County Bubble I’ve Put My Children In

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My kids experience little socioeconomic diversity – am I doing them a disservice?

By Rachel Stewart Johnson, Ph.D.

I grew up in a working class neighborhood outside Denver. It was a suburban tract housing development of “starter homes” built in the early 1970s. One could find well-manicured properties, but also an abundance of crab grass and dandelions. An apartment complex occupied a large lot behind us, blocking much of our view of the Rocky Mountains to the west.

My children have different stories than mine. Here, in twenty-first century San Diego, the school district has a week off in February known as “Ski Week.” My kids have been to countless birthday celebrations through the years, where they have jumped on many square feet of trampolines, ridden ponies, petted exotic animals, played laser tag and paintball, and visited Snow White. Fourth graders at our elementary school can take a one-day trip to the state capitol by airplane, a 14-hour excursion with a $470 price tag.

This is a bubble, most definitely. The question is whether that matters, whether the affluence my children are surrounded by is a boon or harm to their moral compasses.   [Read more…]

Subversive: How The Black Panthers Fed Kids For Free And Set A Model For The Government

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By Kelly Macias / Daily Kos

Last week, I wrote a story about how Republicans in Congress are trying to reform the free breakfast program in schools. This is not new. Republicans have been trying for quite some time to cut this and other similar programs like free lunch, citing concerns about fraud and wasted expenses. Of course, just like their claims of supposed “illegal voting” that needs to be stopped, they have no real evidence that fraud of this type exists.

If you look at their motives, this actually has nothing to do with waste and everything to do with the stigmatization of poverty.   [Read more…]

Progressives Lost The Vote On DeVos But Won Something Else

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By Jeff Bryant / Education Opportunity Network

Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.   [Read more…]

How Not to Be the Resistance: Local Democratic Party and Union Leaders Fail Early Test

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Last week I dedicated my column to outlining how, despite the emergence of inspiring protests in the streets and amongst the progressive base, many key Democratic figures in Congress and in the national leadership of the building trades unions still didn’t seem to understand what time it was. Sadly, it only took a few more days to see a couple of stunning examples of how not to be the resistance right here in San Diego.

On January 26th, Jessica Hayes, the newly elected chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party, took advantage of her presence at a forum hosted by the Democrats for Equality entitled “#The Resistance: Women Lead the Way” to attack not the dangerous plutocrats running the country, but a key element of the Democratic base: unions.

The last few weeks have also held its challenges for local labor leadership as protesters, including Donna Frye and Irene McCormack, picketed outside the monthly delegates meeting at which there was no mention whatsoever of the elephant in the room, the lawsuits filed against Labor Council President Mickey Kasparian and what this means for local labor at this perilous moment in the history of the movement.   [Read more…]

Immigrants Enrich San Diego and the Nation

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Imagine you have had a good life with a stable job and family. Then, imagine that your life turns upside down, be it from war, religious persecution, or social unrest, and you have to start from scratch in a new country with a different language, culture, even alphabet! Welcome to the world of many of my adult ESL [English as a Second Language] students. Despite all that they have gone and continue to go through, they are very grateful to be here

Some people fear the unknown and are suspicious of newcomers, so I’d like to give you a glimpse of my world. I have been both an adult and community college ESL teacher at SDCE Mid-City Center and Grossmont College for over 30 years. I have worked with people from all over the world and their resilience never ceases to amaze me. In one class, I can have students ranging in age from 18 to 65 and from different socioeconomic and academic backgrounds, but they all have a mutual goal. They want to learn English and forge a better life for themselves and their children. For the most part, it is not easy.   [Read more…]

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