"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all"
- Mario Savio
These chapters really open up the eyes of Diane Ravitch and see how little progress our public school education system has succeeded. When you implement a free market business model like many of the hedge fund managers, business executives directors, and even former Mayor Bloomberg from New York City has done, the failure is exposed for all to see.
Diane Ravitch recalls when she was child how teachers like Mrs. Ratliff put so much love, dedication, and efforts making learning fun. Teachers back then were not so pressured on getting students to meet state requirements. Standardized testing really put teachers to the brink of quitting or getting fired. Like any corporations today, they focus on busting up teachers' union and started to cut their salaries and the school's budget if performance is lacking. Other issues when relying on companies to run the school can bring other issues. For example, corporations like Ford Motor Company and the Carnegie Corporation came up with the idea of putting the control of the school system in the hands of local parents to help loosen tensions caused by race discrimination in the New York City School System. This caused quite a bit of problem including increasing tensions between the African-American and Jewish communities in New York but allowed the school system to be decentralized and put in control of localized school boards. Though some issues were slightly resolved, other problems emerged as the quality of the education within certain districts decreased.
Professor Linguist Noam Chomsky said, "The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on - because they're dysfunctional to the institutions." - Schools on Trial
Professor Chomsky was referring was the constant ranking and sorting students based on their performance in school. His assessment is based on continuing of standardized testing and even characterize it as a form of indoctrination to embrace an economic and social system that has little use of thought, let alone resistance.
I strongly agree 100%
Reference: Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Education Malpractice by Nikhil Goyal
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