The lockup
Now Trump is hating on public schools. Naturally: schools are there to make guys like him a profit.
If for some reason you haven’t been clear about what President Trump thinks about traditional public schools, consider what he said about them in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
There was this: “For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”
That’s cute. It makes public schools sound like gulags.
Trump spent most of his education-related comments on the subject of “school choice,” which he and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have put at the top of their education agenda. DeVos has said her chief priority was expanding alternatives to traditional public schools, which she once called “a dead end.”
A dead end because they don’t make anyone rich. Every human activity should make a profit for someone.
Well, here is something to think about:
I am the product of the public schools, from beginning to end, If not for the public schools, I would probably be a wife with a dozen kids, and never have developed an interest in science, theatre, or any of the other things I am interested in. My family could not afford “choice”.
Trump, on the other hand, is a product of private schools, I imagine the most expensive money could buy.
I rest my case.
I think the Republicans are less interested in actually doing away with public schools than they are interested in diminishing the power of teachers at the polls. That, and just trashing government in general, both on the campaign trail and then when elected doing it literally. QED.
As I was watching the address I noticed the scholarship for the Philadelphia girl, who could now presumably instead of public school, “go to any school she wants”, which I took to be another slight at at the public school system. Good on her, but what about all the rest of them? Nothing about support for public schools at all…
Even Bush Jr. made a sorry attempt at support for public schools, along with the then First Lady. Now it’s more of a ‘let them rot’ situation.
J.A. @ 2 what’s your basis for thinking that? Judging by the rhetoric and the cheers for the trumpy rhetoric I think the Republicans would be perfectly happy to see the public schools starved of funding and basically left to rot, as the “schools” for black students were in the South. I don’t think they necessarily want to bulldoze them all right this second, but they certainly do seem to want to undermine them in every way they can.
They would eliminate everything public if they could, with the possible exception of freeways (but then why not have for-profit freeways and leave everyone else to walk or stay home?).
I have a more complicated and even more conspiratorial take on the Republican hate for public schools.
It’s not just that they think anything at all run by the gummint has to be bad. It’s not just that they hate anything they can’t make a profit on. It’s not just dog-whistle politics that works with their base (ooh, say “urban.” Say “Chicago.”). It’s not just that they’re still pissed off public schools don’t indoctrinate kids into Xtianity anymore.
It’s that their own kids are dumb as planks and can’t beat public school kids anymore. They hate it that their money can’t always buy their kids the best college placements. Despite their best efforts, public school kids make up 63% of Harvard freshmen now. That’s because the education at ye olde boarding schoole isn’t better than that at good public high schools anymore. If our oligarchs want to return to the days when a fancy boarding school guaranteed you an ivy league placement, they have to destroy the public schools.
Let ’em walk would be a consistent strategy for the GOP, but in Oklahoma, where I once hailed from, there are several major toll roads, and the most vociferous opponents are Republicans. The problem is, the idea of paying as you go only works for them if they don’t have to pay for things they think they are entitled to…and that means with taxes, either. Somehow these things are just supposed to happen. Or, the other angle is, I wouldn’t mind taxes if it was all about building roads, but they waste most of it (usually not referring to the number one money sink, the military, which they think is always being too starved and needs more – but they still don’t want to pay taxes).
One of the infuriating things about all that is the way it ignores the massive web of public resources that make it possible for people to get rich and stay rich in the first place – courts, police, infrastructure – even public schools and public health that sustain a population of workers and consumers. There’s no such thing as getting rich without a hell of a complex society.
Good complicated conspiratorial take, Papito, I like it.
Funny you should mention freeways, ask any SF Bay Area commuter about the exorbitant bridge tolls, at $5-7 per car and $8 for the Golden Gate per trip. Big rigs are now $18 and set to increase next year to $25! This is additional to the already federal and state taxes that are devoted to the maintenance of that infrastructure. The bureaucracy in Calif. tells people the tolls pay for the construction and maintenance, which is a lie because it never ever gets reduced or eliminated, and the ones that are interstate are federally funded. It’s literally highway robbery, because most of the bridges paid for their construction costs long ago. Here in Georgia there were tolls for the 400 freeway going out of Atlanta, but lo and behold, when the 400 was paid for, they quit charging tolls and removed the toll plaza permanently, lock stock and barrel. Anyway, so off topic, yes there already are for profit freeways, both visibly and not so visibly. Gas taxes, increases in trucking costs, etc., etc. Layers of it.
@5 Ophelia,
My basis for this is seeing what happened in Wisconsin after 2010 when the Republicans took control of the state and immediately attacked the teacher’s union as well as other public unions that had been supportive of Democrats because of their strong support for public schools. The teachers took a serious hit in terms of union membership as well as a hit in pay and health care, but the public schools are still there and there’s been no increase in charter schools because, frankly, there isn’t any money in it. (There are already private academies for the wealthy.) Many local school districts like the one I reside in have chipped in to raise local property taxes to support their public schools and the Republicans haven’t made it an issue.
As far as roads go, here’s a illustrative point for you. The Republicans have refused to raise fuel taxes because Big Oil doesn’t like that, but they’ve been perfectly happy with raising vehicle fees for residents to pay for maintaining roads. Never mind that much of the traffic passing through the state between Chicago and Minneapolis is quite happy not to pay higher prices for fuel to drive on our roads. That’s the Republican way!
Not here in Washington state it isn’t! Here fanatical destroy all taxes Greg Eyman got yet another Slash the Car Tab Fee bill passed in November and it will gut funding.
Where I went to high school, it was an extremely wealthy town. The rich people put their kids in the public school, and paid to support the public school, because the education was as good as what they would get by driving their kids to Oklahoma City to go to the private schools. And they didn’t have to pay extra for it, just whatever the taxes were. They expected to send their kids to good colleges, and needed the public school to prepare them properly.
It was tough being a poor kid in a rich school, but I rode it out, and I benefited. I saw the contrast when my son went to a different public school, an inner city school where few of the parents were college educated, and saw little reason for the schools to do more than keep their kids off the street. They weren’t likely to be sending their kids to college, so the school did not need to prep them for that.
Public schools can do a great job when they are properly funded and have support of the community. It’s interesting that many surveys show that people think the public school teachers are crappy at their job, but think that the teachers that are teaching their kids in public school are great. Which tells us…public schools aren’t as crappy as people pretend they are, though of course most of them do need a lot of work because of lack of funding. Better facilities, more teachers, better resources – that’s what they need. Not siphoning off dollars to private schools.
I wonder how long it will take before they start charging K-12 tuition at public schools, like a toll charge. Maybe I should be quiet and not give them ideas…
J.A.: I think the objection you got from Ophelia was that you’re implying that the GOP is ONLY attacking the public schools to hurt the unions. I do think that’s part of it. But they also enjoy siphoning the kids off, not just to charter schools, but to private religious schools that deliberately undermine science and history education, because that helps keep a permanent class of ignorati who can be relied upon to argue that the Earth is 4000 years old, the South was only concerned about “States’ Rights” (and besides which, slavery wasn’t all that bad, anyway), and that Global Climate Change is a hoax.
In short, their malevolence serves multiple agendas, and thinking that any one of them is somehow the ‘key’ is underestimating the scope of the harm they seek to do.
Freemage, agreed, and I think there is another thing that happens, whether intended or not. Keeping the bulk of the kids from getting a good education, while making sure their own kid go to all the right schools, has a couple of effects. It reduces the competition their second-rate, spoiled, entitled brats will have to face in getting the good jobs. And it maintains a structure where there are some people who will work for peanuts because they have to – they can’t get the education to move up into better jobs, and they will (or people assume they will) shut up and work because they are desperate and need the job.
Yup, iknklast. If you want to make your car move forward, you put it in D. If you want to make it move backwards, you put it in R.
Republicans mostly want to go back to feudalism. A tiny elite gets a good education, and the masses get taught just enough to work for them.
Papito, I think I must put that on a t-shirt.