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Obama’s View of Education Is Stuck in Reverse

By Henry A. Giroux

Barack Obama views education as a high priority in his administration. Unlike in the Bush administration, he appears far more aware that public and higher education are important sites of struggle with enormous implications for young people, the existing social order, and the future. While President Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, have focused on public education, they have done so by largely embracing the Bush administration’s view of educational reform, which includes more testing, more empirically based accountability measures, more charter schools, more military academies, defining the purpose of education in largely economic terms, and punishing public schools that don’t measure up to high-stakes testing measures. For instance, his recent reforms aimed at higher education consists of providing 12 billion dollars to improve community colleges by developing new assessment tools and developing a standardized national curriculum. What comes to mind from this piece of reform is an attempt to upgrade bad secondary schools by adding computers and turning them into trade schools while producing an army of students prepared to take their place in low-skill, low pay service sector jobs.

As Dianne Ravitch has argued, educational reform for the Obama administration “starts with testing and ends with data and more testing.”(1) She rightly insists that Obama is simply giving Bush “a 3rd term in Education.”(2) Arne Duncan, by any educational standard, is a hard-wired disciple of free-market ideology, who largely views schools as a business and defines educational reform within the language of market-driven values and social relations. While he sometimes insists that education represents the civil rights issue of the century, his view of education is as far removed as one can imagine from the discourse of the civil rights movement. In fact, his language largely echoes the conservative market-driven values of both the Bush administration and the Chamber of Commerce. No emancipatory or liberatory goals at work in this discourse. Like Obama, he talks about education being important for democracy, but then he takes a right turn and reduces the purpose of education to preparing students almost exclusively for the workplace, with students defined largely as foot soldiers in the race for the United States to be an economic leader in the global economy. Of course, there is nothing wrong with students learning how to adapt and innovate to the demands of the world economy or learning vital work skills in general. What is wrong is when such a restrictive, instrumental goal becomes the only standard for defining the purpose of education. This is not merely a civically deprived vision of education, it is a dangerously narrow one as well. The discourse of standards and assessment dominate the Obama-Duncan language of reform, and in doing so erase more-crucial issues such as the iniquitous school-financing schemes, the economic disinvestment in poor urban schools, the ongoing reduction of teachers to testing technicians, the increasing racism and segregation of American schools, turning schools over to corporate interests, and the ongoing modeling of schools after prisons and the criminalization of young people. And these are only some of the problems.

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Today’s video of the day is one of the greatest songs in hip-hop history. Whose verse is the best?

Question to the Sexpert:

“As to the lady who found out she was engaged to a porn star: who is at fault here? {Note from Timaree: this was in a Friday Sex Link a couple weeks ago} I say that the guy is totally wrong for lying and cheating but my girlfriend says the woman had the responsibility to know the whole truth about the person she agreed to marry and if they had already gotten married then she shouldn’t have been able to divorce him. That’s craziness to me. What do you say?”

You’re both right. Ding Ding Ding! That was easy. Now I can go back to watching that Keyboard Cat versus Usher video on YouTube.

To remind ya’ll who don’t immediately recall the article referenced: a woman was about to get married when her maid of honor, while looking for some bachelorette party entertainment of the wiener-shaking variety, stumbled upon an advert for the groom himself, who, it turns out, was not only a stripper but also a full-blown porn star. The bride-to-be did not have the standard pornography story line response of wanting to get in on that action. Rather, she opted for the opening of a Cameron Diaz rom com movie response of being emotionally shattered and breaking off the engagement, hopefully to find true love with some wacky slacker heartthrob after a series of hijinks.

Now there are a few ways one can react to this story.

Sincere, slightly insecure reaction: “Holy buckets. If it turned out my boo was actually banging strange tail for a living, I’d be so devastated I’d probably stop eating or bathing and just lay on the floor in my apartment listening to the Smiths until I died.”

Blu Cantrell-style reaction: “I’d cut his cheating, lying member off and mail it back to him C.O.D.”

The kind of naked logic that only comes from people who are not in love: “Well, before she agreed to marry him she ought to have bothered to look into him a little bit. What kind of an idiot dates somebody long enough to get hitched but doesn’t bother to find out what they do for a living?”

Aforementioned Porn reaction: “you’re sleeping with other women???……without me?” cue bow chica bow wow music as she rips her shirt off.

Well, to be fair to the real people involved: he was doing a pretty bang up job of covering his side gig and they spent a fair amount of time doing their relationship long-distance. In reality, he took advantage of the trust she was required to have to maintain their connection from far away and should be shaken firmly by the testicles for potentially endangering her by having sex with other people without her knowledge.

It’s hard to know if he was deliberately dishonest or just took great liberties with revealing relevant details. In any event, Duder is being intentionally misleading and for that he gets the big Piece O’ Shit Sticker stamped right on his forehead. But his actions and the subsequent coverage of the story does bring up some important topics to discuss with partners.

1. Yep, you are responsible to tell the whole truth. There’s no two ways about it.

2. You are also responsible for keeping your Liedar, Crazydar and Skankdar on for a solid 6 months and not getting played. No need to be a snoop, but ask questions and make sure things add up. Don’t be blinded by affection.

3. When you agree to marry someone, mean it. Mean all of it, including the parts about staying together no matter what. If Girlie had already wed Mr. Sidejob, she has a case for annulment, but technically, she agreed to stick with him through whatever may come.

4. Under no circumstances is it ok to lie about your sexual history/life if it’s endangering someone by not giving them enough information to make informed decisions. You’re grown enough to have sex, you’re grown enough to talk about it.

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