Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do!
I know I'm always yammering about the "right-wing publicity machine" and similar wording. I know such an entity exists, but I still probably sound like a paranoid.
Hendrik Herzberg in the New Yorker had just the right phrase, though: "...the conservative infrastructure of think tanks and policy journals." That's what I mean when I refer to the force behind the push for privatization, charter schools, vouchers, the KIPPs and Edisons and Green Dots and White Hats and the rest of the simplistic solutions — and the notion that public schools are a disaster and doomed to oblivion.
(The title of this post is a line from the song of the Stonecutters secret organization on "The Simpsons.")
Hendrik Herzberg in the New Yorker had just the right phrase, though: "...the conservative infrastructure of think tanks and policy journals." That's what I mean when I refer to the force behind the push for privatization, charter schools, vouchers, the KIPPs and Edisons and Green Dots and White Hats and the rest of the simplistic solutions — and the notion that public schools are a disaster and doomed to oblivion.
(The title of this post is a line from the song of the Stonecutters secret organization on "The Simpsons.")
Labels: Charters, SFUSD Politics
5 Comments:
i think lots of folks turn you off when you rant about the right wing conservative whatevers re: charter schools.
that is just what happens, caroline.
ho.hum.
it just ain't so.
If you mena to deny the existence of public school abolitionists, or if you think that charters are not part of their grand scheme, then you need to pay closer attention.
If on the othr hand you think that charters have merit, and are not intrinsically evil and tools of the abolitionists, then I might agree with you.
But the right wing enemies of public schools are very real.
For anyone following this who's new to the issue, here's my definitive post on charter schools:
http://www.pasasf.org/charters/charters.html
I don't think all charter schools and their entire communities are out to eliminate public education. I do think they're unwitting tools of the abolitionists. It's not really surprising that they don't want to hear it.
You might find Lakoff interesting, if you haven't read him yet. One of the things he does well is lay out the history of this "conservative infrastructure of think tanks and policy journals" in order to survey their impact. His short book "Don't Think of an Elephant" is quick to read and provides not only this history but also a conceptual framework to understand how these deliberately crafted institutions wield so much power.
Thanks! Lakoff is one of the sources who clued me in to this whole structure, Ben. The anonymous poster here might find him enlightening.
Geoffrey Nunberg also writes about the carefully structured, well-funded project to pervade the culture with right-wing philosophy, in "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."
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