Unsafe at Any School--And How They Got That Way, Part I

Naomi Klein postulated that, by manufacturing a doomsday scenario, an apocalyptic future loomed if major policy changes were not implemented. A susceptible public buys into the propaganda of an epic but manipulated crisis. Obstacles removed, the powers-that-be swoop in and impose a self-serving, profitable policy with the veneer of an unofficial citizen mandate. There’s a reason why the Shock Doctrine is subtitled disaster capitalism.

   Public education serves as a textbook case of how the Shock Doctrine operates. Except for religious or prestigious, upper class private schools, education charged no tuition; taxes covered the cost as a public institution. For the most part, parents and communities were satisfied with their schools.  A vast fertile field of an untapped source of wealth and ambition lay awaiting, like a newly discovered oil field or unclaimed mines filled with precious pieces of raw ambition. To fulfill their version of eminent domain in education, the public’s pride and respect for America’s education system had to be destroyed. All that was missing was the catalyst to shock the system. Then it happened.

A Nation at Risk (ANR) dropped a nuclear bomb on America like test time on the Bikini Atoll. Our schools manifested “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “if an unfriendly power imposed what we have today in education, it would be an act of war.”  America panicked at the explosion’s magnitude; the Raiders of the Lost Schools swept in: For profit-public schools, tax credits, vouchers, charter schools, business management models, homeschooling, commercial curriculum writers, consultants, alternatives to professional credentials, high stakes testing, standards and programs, children’s advocacy groups, alternative discipline, left wing political agendas – oh, thar’s gold in them thar schoolyards!

Six years later, the Sandia Report offered a strong, credible countervailing report to the conservative Reagan administration’s 1983 ANR. America ignored it. Sandia did not fit the suddenly hot commodity of education as miserable failure, a nation of excellence everywhere else but saddled with mediocre schools taught by dolts and run by incompetents.  Education reporters sprang up in print and broadcast news; America couldn’t get enough bad news nor revelations on public education in America. Sandia was the inconvenient truth.

No one wanted to change the narrative, or even dare to examine it. Not the media. Not the conservatives. Not the liberals. Certainly not the Department of Education, where Deputy Secretary Kearns purportedly told the Sandia writers to “bury the report or I’ll bury you.”  

 A Nation at Risk was like Marc Antony’s speech over Caesar’s body, igniting a revolt among the citizens to bring down the conspirators’ new order: “Mischief...thou art now afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt“. Unlike the fatal mistake of the Roman assassins, the enablers and beneficiaries behind ANR would not make the mistake of letting their Antony live. To paraphrase, Kearns came to bury Sandia, not praise it.

The fallout still poisons the air 40 years after its release. NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican conservative, rose to national fame bullying a female teacher at a town hall meeting in 2015. The respect for teachers wore away. Students carried into the classroom and hallways the same contemptuous disdain they learned from parents, television, the culture, and word of mouth.  Teachers were the most educated people students would know, yet they mock their intellect, abilities, income, status. School authority could now rightfully be challenged, their persons menaced, bonus points earned in street cred, the MVP in the cafeteria, prestige far more coveted than good grades. From nonstop harangues, threats, verbal abuse, belittled teachers were the one subset of adults students felt justified, even encouraged, in their disobedience and defiance. Classrooms became battlegrounds. Discipline was no longer a given, but a pre-1983 anachronism increasingly eviscerated and impossible to sustain. It got so bad, New York City districts took control of suspensions for insubordination, usurping a principal’s prerogative for a building level offense. Suspensions themselves, after being on life support, are having the plug pulled across the country.  

 To the political, economic, and social forces, the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism has worked perfectly for decades. Public education is considered a failure and in perpetual crisis. All aspects from teachers to curricula are under constant fire and threats. The more their children’s safety and academics appear at risk, the greater the parental demand for alternatives. Wielding A Nation at Risk like Bible Belt preachers waving the Good Book, they succeeded in destroying the bonds between community and school, kids and teachers, students and subjects, parents and staff.  After four decades, with no end in sight—the number of speculators has been greater than the 1849 Gold Rush.   

Eidotr’s note: The tile is a paraphrase of Ralph Nader’s book, Unsafe at Any Speed, about the marketing and coverup of the Corvair, a car known to be dangerous to drive.