Disaster Captialism (The Shock Doctrine) Meets Education "Reform"

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Jack Welch, Klein's selection for leading new principals, was proud of and known for creating a climate of fear at GE by firing 10% of employees to keep the others on their toes. This kind of culture is the exact opposite of what we need in our schools. The fact that Klein chose Welch to set the tone for the principals' training school should have sent alarm bells throughout the school communities.

As a social studies teacher I make it my business to study larger trends of societal transitions. There’s a new book called the “The Shock Doctrine” by journalist Naomi Klein (http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine) that may be informative regarding the goal and intentions of the NYC DOE's plans for the schools. While the goal in The Shock Doctrine theory is to create a new order, it must do so by placing the population in a state of shock, much as a psychiatric patient is through electro-shock therapy, to make him/her pliable to change. The shocks can be contrived or provided by nature. An example of the former would the coup in Chile, and the destruction of the Soviet economic system to introduce radical free market capitalism (referred to as "Disaster Capitalism"). Hurricane Katrina provides and example of the latter, allowing the push through of charter schools and gutting of the teachers union there. Klein goes on to mention in her book numerous other examples.

I think it’s plausible that what Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg are trying to do is an adaptation of that Shock Doctrine light policy on our schools. Welch setting the tone for fear and intimidation, teachers losing due process rights and seniority transfers, new budgeting rules that will discriminate against experienced teachers, the summary firing of BOE staff to erase institutional memory, the movement toward merit pay schemes (currently in the school bonus phase); when taken collectively have put teachers in a state of shock. For the kids we have seen the end of social promotion, increased testing in the name of “accountability”. Parents have never seen an education regime that was as unresponsive. Add to this an effective PR machine of the DOE of cooking graduation numbers and having phony town hall meetings where the Chancellor is not taking questions and parent/teacher feedback is ignored and you have the softer side of this policy of destruction.

It’s apparent to this teacher that a new education paradigm is emerging for NYC kids. Not all kids, as those in the elite schools will be protected. It’s a paradigm that fits a nation with a shrinking middle class; where the new schools system of scripted teaching temps and test-driven curricula are to produce citizens without the capacity to think critically but instead follow orders and carry out narrow specific tasks to fulfill the roles of: clerks, ground level law enforcement, military and other lower-level technical jobs. You won’t see such a paradigm shift in the affluent suburbs, nor for our elites in Stuyvesant High School or the other institutions elites send their children to.

What will be interesting to watch is if the new regime that will take over from where the Mayor has left it will continue this march toward developing a lower caste educational system; where the assault on the teachers union and weakening of the public school system will produce a mechanistic and reductionist “free market” model of education. Could this happen under a Democrat mayor?

I think this leads us to the obvious conclusion: Mayoral control cannot be "fixed" (as the AFT tries to call for NCLB), it must be replaced with a democratic system of control.

Proposition: NYCDOE is implementing a form of the Shock Doctrine

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Only a crisis actual or perceived produces real change. Milton Friedman

It's the premise of Naomi Klein, in her new book, The Shock Doctrine, that radical change can be applied to whole societies or communities when they are in a state of shock, much as an individual reacts from electric shock therapy treatments. The subject, individual or community, is reduced to a pliable state in which they are highly suggestive and can be manipulated. This Shock Doctrine has been a method employed by governments for decades.

Its techniques on the uses of shock to gain compliance from prisoners have been documented in a CIA handbook. Radical "free market" economist Friedman's "shock treatment" was applied to Russia under Yeltsin to push through radical economic changes. Other similar applications include: in China after the Tienanmen Square massacre to prepare it to become the world's sweat shop, Sept. 11th to push through Bush's neoconservative agenda, the invasion and devastation of Iraq to put that nation and its resources under U.S. control, and to push through charter schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. In either case, the shock producing event could be contrived or just taken advantage of when the opportunity presents itself.

Have the faculty, students, staff and parents of the NYC public school system been put under a similar shock pattern to pave the way for "culture change" as Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein want it?

Is the No Child Left Behind Act of the federal government designed to create a crisis? Surely, we know that this unfunded mandate, with its unrealistic expectations represents a new form of federal intervention in school districts designed to wreak havoc and pave the way for privatization (see Alfie Kohn, Test Today, Privatize Tomorrow, in the Phi Delta Kappan, April 2004).

What of the impact on kids with the increasing number of exams and discontinuance of social promotions? You can see how the experts are advising parents and kids to cope with the stress: http://www.nymetroparents.com/newarticle.cfm?colid=7334 if you aren't convinced.

Take a look at how teachers' professional lives in NYC have been shocked:
1. Loss of due process rights in grieving a disciplinary letter in the file.
2. Hundreds of teachers put into limbo status (known as Absent Teacher Reserve) when there are no jobs for them.
3. Loss of seniority transfer, forcing more experienced and higher-paid teachers to have to compete with younger and cheaper teachers for jobs under new budgeting rules.
4. Numerous school closings that dislocate at least half of the faculty of the school.

Add to this two massive school reorganizations in four years and you have the recipe for putting the NYC school community in a state of shock.

Naomi Klein says the resistance to such shock treatment is to gain information about what is happening to you and why, then pass it on.

School "Progress" Reports: An Excuse to Wreak Havoc

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Here are some interesting numbers I was able to crunch out of the Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein's school "progress" reports for NYC schools:

80% of the schools that got an F or D on the progress report were rated "profecient" or better on the quality review.

37% of the schools rated unsatisfactory in the quality reviews got an A or B on the progress report.

10.5% of “proficient” or better schools got an F or D.

This only highlights the unreliable nature of using "improvement in test scores" as the sole measure of a school's performance. With the mayor threatening to fire principals and breakup schools over this it shows just how loose and free-wheeling these guys are.

And what of the children of the failing schools who are doing well? It can only diminish their accomplishments. Where are they going to go when there's no room at the inn? Our school is already at 130% capacity.

The UFT needs to fight the breakup of any more schools. Maybe it's Bloomberg's excuse to wreak more havoc (ala The Shock Doctrine of culture change, brilliantly illustrated in the book of the same name by Naomi Klein- I hope no relation to you know who.). After all, too many of our kids' parents are oblivous. All we have are pundits and the few good parent organizations out there fighting.