Dear Self-Anointed Defenders of Public Education,
Pack your bags. I finally found it – the right-wing corporate takeover of public education.
It was in that bastion of conservatism, the San Francisco Bay Area. The place was crawling with right-wing nut jobs and, as usual, they were masquerading as liberals on a Blended Learning Tour put together by none other than those crazy corporate pseudo-republicans know as Democrats for Education Reform.
Yes, I know that Barack Obama won the Bay Area with 74% of the vote last month. But think about how crazed those 26% of Republicans must be to keep living there. Surely they were there for just one reason: to lure unsuspecting liberals into a social justice trap.
The first sign was seeing “Democrats” meeting with representatives from the education divisions of Apple and Google. Sure, 97% of Google employees’ presidential donations this election cycle went to Barack Obama. But at Apple that figure was just 91% – imagine how much dismantling of public education is being plotted by the other 9%!
I tried to stop being so darn suspicious, but then they just threw it in my face – a visit to one of those public charter schools that gets “results.”
This school had all the elements of a corporate takeover cell. Incessant blathering about “professional development” tipped me off that they missed the memo that all adults perform identically in professional settings. Plus all that talk about making sure every kid could learn sounded like something only a Bush would say.
Those learning-mongers did their best to disguise this clandestine Republican nerve center. All those banners from traditionally liberal colleges were a nice touch, but I was not fooled.
Just when I thought it could not get any more obvious, I met some of the teachers. Their disguises were too good – many were young, well-educated, unmarried, women. Classic demographic cover for a corporate takeover spy.