Cloaked No Dagger

In effot to find something to write about, I think I found a trenchcoat. It appears to fit and so I will "discover," the amenities of wearing a Trenchcoat. I'm using the article of clothing to signify "embitterment." The way I see things right now, people cloak themselves in Flags and rituals, calling themselves "patriot," and "tru believers," all the while trampling the rights of others. I call this, "cloaking." It's akin to clutching a dagger and attempting to stab an opposition. I found myself headed in the general direction many times in the last eight years or so, getting wrapped up in the political mayhem that is now the discourse of identity politics. The one place I will not take the battle to is the school yard though. I sit it out when I see parents headed to the classroom to offend or insult educators because of something they read. It was in moments of anger and vitriol that I discovered that "cloaking," is a personal bias device where adults take their anger out on innocent people. You see it in the school board meetings and you sometimes hear it in voices during Parent Teacher meetings. I decided to avoid those type of confrontations for my own sake. I never want to be a person who attacks other people. I have a lot of opinions and there not all positive, but I've somehow managed to keep them to myself or write them and put them away. Well that time is coming to a close. It has to end sometime and I believe I've waited long enough. What has me willing to go out of my way to defend educators now is that all good intentions aside, things have really taken a turn for the worse. Politician have found by scapegoating the public education system that they can steal the resources and use them elswhere. You have to realize that they were doing this all along and it's how wev'e arrived at the point where the discussion is all about privatization. It's not an accident. It was the priority of the last Education Secretary. The seed has been sown and now we are looking down into the abyss. Voucher systems are just that. They take money from public education funding and turn it into education for profit systems. It's being normalized. What your not being told though is that this won't always be free. The idea is to "Dry up," the education funding pool and make it just another corporate utility. Now I ask the question, "How has that worked out for personal security, prisons and policing?" You see the thing is in the war on anything, as in the brand of rhetoric a person subscribes to, there needs to be an enemy. In prison for profit, it's prisoners. Law was made so that drug suspicion would form policies like "Stop & Frisk," which turns into racial profiling and it is the entire end that the means require. It supplies a steady chain of prisoners do be railroaded through a faux-pause court system where public defenders have a majority case load beyond reasonable so they intend to influence every defendent into taking a plea bargain. They pile on the charges and warn the individual that they could face a decade or more if convicted, so that they take a plea and serve two to five years. It's magic and it provides every insititution a quota for all the risk. Lawyers get cases, judges get decisions and profiteers get profit. It's a "Win, win," all the way around, unless of course your a prisoner. Then you get a sentence and a record. All because it was okay to "target," you because you met the description of people being targeted. Imagine being held prisoner for a few years where the main driver of the institution is profit. Now imagine the same system being used in neighborhoods and school systems where everything is poorly funded because the profiteers have already robbed the public funding resource. It's just one big viscious cycle. It goes on for years an no one does anything about it. Eventually you have generations of offenders, profiteers and enforcers. Then one day, someone points out the connection between all these things. They say words like "Prison Pipeline," or something similiar and you as a parent learn and become educated. Then you go into schools and start to work on the behalf of those students that are being targeted and pushed out. Eventually, you get to the point where you need a break because it's so overwhelming and lucky for me, I found that time. The thing that happened next though was so foreign and yet it completely made sense. People rushed in and they planted a flag in the school yard to suffice to say, "This is our war now." "We want people fired. We want to take books out of this school. This is ours!" I saw all of it and went, "okay, I'm fine with it." "Let's see how you do." The thing is though I observed a very different attitude when the educators were once back in the drivers seat handing out expulsions and once again identifying trouble makers. They were filled with glee and the parents were certainly happy with the result, but I kept wandering, "where were all these people when the real heavy lifting had to be done?" Folks never showed up to the rehearsal, but they sure showed up for the awards banquet. I became educated once again in how things work in today's environment and it's why I say, "I'll cloak myself," in the name of protecting students because these folks don't really get it. They don't see what's happening because they're to busy chasing clout in a virtual world. They want to be seen and heard, but they don't know what to say, so there parroting things that they've heard. You can tell because it's "Homo-phobic and transgender issues about the bathroom." It's about books and what type of lessons can be taught in school. It's about No safe spaces. It's the same thing you hear from politicians and trolls on the internet. It has nothing to do with real education and the things that young people are facing. So from my perspective, the attack on the public school system was effective. I believe in order to effectively "strike back," at the current narrative would be to leave the local school and administration out of it. They have yet to prove their trust deserving of public support anyway. All that happened is a few top heads were let go and they shuffled the deck. School is a learning environment with public trust that young students will be educated in modern technology and various employable skills. It's not a factory for prison supply. For this reason, we'll have to take to the legislature once again to see how the guided principles of keeping school about educating students the priority,. That has nothing to do with identity and banning books. It's about giving educators the right tools to form their own environment to inspire and educate young students. The world has changed. Much of modern technology has been around for a couple of decades and most educators are familiar with it. I know most students are definitely familiar with modern technology and communication. I believe it's the common bond that might be able to "break," the outside strangle hold of resources. All things can be done electronically, but in order to do it, you must have a "reasonable," grasp of how students utilize modern devices and by what "means," do their communications travel. In order to do that you have to have an environment for them to flourish in. Think of a modern "Google," campus or any "Start up," facility. Design and environment are important. The way that information flows and is shared among groups which include several different levels. In any strategy, there is "Buy In," to the core values represented in a learning environment. "Value," has to be easy to identify. Margins of progress need to be measured in a visible format. People need to feel productive and valued within groups. This is the way I see young people learning today and into the future. It might be wholly "ironic," that I'm saying the only way to bring in the identity of the volunteer student, is to push away the profiteer mechanism, but keep the technology driven part of the system, but I know it can be done. I've observed this everywhere but here. In other places, it's not boards and committees that decide the best setting for education, but labs & specialists. It's people who work within the realm of technology that cross over into other areas. People like me who can marry the idea that what we have and what we don't are kind of the same thing. It's not so much resources, but what kind. I ask, "what is the intent? "What are the Pillars?" and "What is the vision, we see in education?" Do you see rows and rows of desks in darkly lit corridors with locked doors at the end of hallways? Or do you see lush greenery and open spaces that lend to an openess and a sense of community? You don't get there by "banning Books," or policing bathrooms. You get there by sharing a sense of purpose. Standards are a way of ridding the education system of the wanna be "influencers," and providing a mechanism for a new era of learning. When I think about these standards, "I think about the Great Depression and what ended it. It was World War and the fact that the Industrialized revolution swept in a new era of development. Out went the old archaic, but familiar standards of education. When you look at education today, it's not that different from the 30's the 50's and 60's. We still have six period days and the physical education. Heck, I just learned that my local school doesn't even have a library, so banning books shouldn't be a problem, but the rest of the principles are still in place. Sure some of the attendance systems have been modernized and don't get me started about the automated voice messaging systems, but class is still one teacher and thirty students. That's never sat right with me. Have you ever tried to organize and keep order in a room of thirty people, much less rebelious teenagers? Learning should be fun for both teacher and student. Most systems I've witnessed are just modern day prison systems already. You have the modern day detention system. You have the incremental award system. You have the zone to zone control of what student belongs in what area. You feed them, cloth them and send them on their way, but what are you really teaching? Are you teaching that if they follow rules they will not be punished? Because that's what most modern public schools look like to me. Seems like we can break it into three distinct areas no matter what grade were discussing. You have your "Good students." These are the assimilated individuals that raise their hand and turn in assignments. They do well on tests and pop quizees because they're always being rewarded. Then you have the average students who get C's and B- grades. They could be good students, but the bribery just doesn't work that great on them. Most of the time they've lost desire to appease the reward system because they have no faith in it. Then you have your failing students. These are the "Trouble-makers," and the students identified to be put into detention and or expelled. In my experience, these three groups all start out as one group and over time, they've been identified and more or less forced in the specific area of experience. The real drastic thing that is happening here is it's "Ends justify the means," situation. What happens when you finish school? Do all the rewarded students go out in life and become "instantly succesful?" The answer is "No." Do the middle of the road students try to enter college and fail immediately? Again, the answer is no. My biggest concern is that schools fail students so they don't have to deal with them anymore and that leads to a society where you have different classes. In reality, were all in the same class in life. You have your poor middle class and your less poor middlle class. People in the top class or "rich," people, usually stay rich. Did they get there because they did well in school? Not really. Most are generational wealth recipience. They have wealth because their family has wealth. These wealthy people make up the smallest percentage of the population and yet they have all of the power in society. If you don't believe me just go outside and look at how many wealthy people are being pulled over by the police or stripped searched in public. They have no exposure to to the policing that the rest of us are used to. IF rich people have students that get in trouble at school, they go to the school and complain about how much money they give to the school. If a rich person gets pulled over for speeding they get out of their car and cuss out the policeman. If they go to court, they have their expensive attorney get them out of trouble. For the rich it's all about cost of doing business that the rest of us never experience. So when it comes to public schools that rich people do not support, why are we using old antiquated rules and philosophy driven control systems that rich people created to accumulate wealth? I believe it's time for all of us in the middle class to recognize that the system isn't created with equality in mind. It's time for us to figure out how can we start to achieve something lasting that might develop our stage in life. Does it mean your student will make it to an Ivy League college? Probably not because those institutions are meant for the Rich. I can hear it now, "But lower class people make it through those systems sometime." Your right, sometime they do, but not very often. The whole idea is to provide a record which if you want to change the way things are, recognize the structure of education, especially Public education. Rich schools don't have the same curriculum, as public education. They have elite education. They have the most advanced companies in the world on their boards and providing all of the funds and other influence to get them what they need to provide the best education. You mean to tell me with all of the big institutions in America, we can't find any that want to invest in our public education system? I find that hard to believe because most "New," companies have owners that weren't rich. They had to go out and find investors and convince them to provide funding. This what is happening with Private Enterprise Educations systems. The difference is now they need the legal pathway to overtake public education and with congress people and state representatives in their pocket, they'll get it. They're a whole lot more of us than there are of them. We're voters. We can change the people who represent us and change the way public education works. That is why I say it begins in the legislative area. We have to tell our representatives to say no to taking funds for charter and private schools because they already have the resources they need and let us use "Our," resources to do the exact same thing they're asking. It's not a super hard or complex idea. It's easy if you open your eyes. Otherwise were just going to remain where were at. Charter and Private schools aren't even that much of a step up. They're just for profit schools. They have better Teachers because they're paid better. If we had access to the same resources, public school could be the same thing. People will say, "No, it cannot be the same. It's a public school." I bet those folks that say that don't send their students to public school though. The whole idea is to recognize how these things happen and how they can be changed. It changes through demand. In World War II America needed production workers to make planes and tanks and other manufacturing goods that could be used to supply the Allied Forces. Those plants turned into manufacturing for America. It's a blue print for Jobs, economy and labor force. Well, a lot has changed since then, but American Public education hasn't. America makes virtually nothing anymore. It's all financial and insurance market. Other than Hosptiality Services and Government Jobs, all we have is the "Gig economy," and "Start Ups." If the basic economy worker is about to be replaced by a machine, then let us choose what our next economy will be based on. Right now, all America manufactures is Outrage that's why we have people going into schools and attacking people in schools. The systems always been outdated. It hasn't changed in almost a hundred years. Sure, we have STEM, so why isn't the entire curriculum built around it? People might say, "Oh we need Writers and speech delivery persons to provide messaging," so hire them. It would help a lot more than having a bunch of grass and bushes you can't use at school. You have "In house," hospitality majors right in front of you. If the jobs of taking care of the school were done by students and not some over-paid union worker, you'd have a nice looking school. Kitchen and Culinary Arts, right in front of you there is a class there. That's what they do at the Big Schools. People have such a closed mind about desks with rows and books, my god the books. Nobody even uses a book anymore because everyone has a computer. I believe most of the School functions around an economy and a production environment created in the mid fifties. Tell me I'm wrong. School literally functions like a government and we all know how unproductive that is. People will say, "Oh the Teachers Union will take you to task." My reply, "Hey guess what? without students you don't have anyone to teach to." We all witnessed that during Covid. Why do you think they switched to the remote learning environment? There are literally hundreds of ways to improve education. It's just a status quo thing. People have to be pushed out of the comfort of the status quo and if we let the maniacs and the mentally challenged adults have their way, we will see change one way or another.