A letter from my cousin, Red Robert… He teaches American history at the local State University. The links he provides are definitely worth perusing, too. This is the kind of education you can’t get online. And its also a reminder that there’s a lot more riding on the next election than Trump, abortion, and the XL Pipeline.

…a student emailed me today asking for more direction on some of the stuff I lectured on yesterday. The one thing a teacher likes more than xmas break is having a student ask something. They hardly do that anymore. Or was always like this. I remember being a pain in the ass with my hand up all the time.

Here is my response. You’ll have to infer the questions.

Note: BRT is the Business Roundtable.

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Hi XXXXXXXX,

The BRT’s STEM initiative is directed toward Pre-K right on up through post-secondary public schools, including the universities in our state. Its purpose is to create an overabundance of technically adept employees. Its immigration initiative is just another way to place downward pressure on wages and conditions.

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As an aside, know that many of the corporations represented by the BRT are multinationals and/or domestic corporations contemplating inversion, that is, moving their headquarters overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
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To impose STEM and Standardized Testing the BRT uses two organizations to distance itself from the actual points of pressure. On one front, the BRT deploys The Education Commission of the States toward the political apparatus of the individual states. Its mission is to lobby Governors, Secretaries of Education, state-level bureaucrats, District Superintendents, etc. about the necessity to fix the “broken system”. The first point ECS makes is that the problem lies with the teachers.

Along a second front, the BRT sends in the Institute for Educational
Leadership to neutralize a more formidable opponent, the parents and
educators themselves. Here the propaganda is couched in terms of
professional improvement, best practices that are most beneficial to the students.

Here is just one example of what is at stake.

Common Core standards mandate more informational reading at the expense of fiction. By 12th grade, 70% of a student’s reading is supposed to be nonfiction. Reading fiction requires intense protracted concentration and engagement. The STEM focus on nonfiction has caused the loss of the patience needed to perform a close reading of long continuous text. A study conducted by Lloyds TSB Insurance in 2008 revealed that the attention span
of people in UK had decreased by half, to five minutes, seven seconds, since 1998. And yes, the same struggle is going on in other countries.

Here is a link to a very important dissertation out of California that I used for the lecture yesterday. Take a look at Professor Emery’s bibliography and notes.

http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/Emery/Emery_Dissertation_all.pdf

Susan Ohanian is also at the forefront of the resistance to BRT.

http://www.susanohanian.org/

And this one leads to a portal with more than anybody should know if they enjoy basking in the bliss of ignorance. It is a choice we all make at times. This sort of thing can wear on the spirit.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/11/11883/taxpayer-enriched-companies-back-jeb-bushs-foundation-excellence-education-its-bu

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Just track Norquist down using Google. Follow the links to progressive websites, like TruthOut, Mother Jones, The Nation. Huffington Post might have journalistic pieces on the centrality and coordination of the “spin”. There is a reason why the Republicans are always on message.