Charter Schools and the Capitalist Way

For some strange reason, that American Indian Public Charter School article that I bitched about in my last post is still really bothering me. I can't explain why, but I suspect that it is because of my irritation with charter schools within my work context that I have been experiencing lately. I decided to look up the charter school today and it DOES say this on their website: "We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism to join our family at AIPCS." "Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply."

Puke to the highest degree. Liberatory pedagogues should be present in all inner-city schools, jackasses. It figures that rich and privileged white men would know just how to education poor black and brown kids.

This type of ignorant shit has been pissing me off all week and has set me in a mood from hell. I'm totally serious. All week long I have been dealing with fucked up charter schools who are taking advantage of our kids, basically. These business people (as in the case of the American Indian Charter School--he was in real estate I believe) come into our schools, make money off of our kids, and then the public education system typically has to pick up all the pieces when the kids are either kicked out of the charter school because they aren't performing to their expectations or the charter school crumbles. It's all a sham to dismantle the public education system, make money off of innocent kids and shove traditional teaching methods down the throats of children who live in poverty.

I was just reading in the LA Times opinion piece that many people are just as disgusted with the school as I am. In fact, the opinion piece is titled "Capitalism for the Kids". Many of the opinion pieces just reminded me of one of my favorite books on the topic written by Bowles and Ginitis "Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life" which details that schools are nothing more than institutions designed to reproduce the existing class structure in society. It's an older book, but it's a classic and a must read.

It figures that everything reminds me of a damn book. I'm beginning to think that I need to get a life outside of the bookstore.