Deconstructing Dr. Diane Ravitch

Dr. Diane Ravitch has had some recent influence on teachers as the trade union leadership of NEA, AFT have been busy hosting her speeches across the country. I contend that Dr. Ravitch has no clear idea of why these horrible attacks happen to our teachers and the public education system. She has, throughout her long career, attempted to understand history by living it. In the beginning of that process, she has been one of the ardent attackers on teachers and public education in general. When the process of privatization that she supported turned specially vicious and vindictive, and the hoped for success of that process did not readily materialize, Dr. Ravitch has turned a new leaf and is going around the country educating us with her new found wisdom.

Anyone can make mistakes and the fact that Dr. Ravitch seems capable of a partial learning from hers, is to be commended. Her description of how the savage beast of corporate control with direct government help has ravaged the public school system is noteworthy. However, her inability to see the reasons for these attacks in turn renders her solutions inadequate. To change the world, one must understand it first. That is her folly and I will attempt to show the readers why her outlook fails based on various remarks she makes on "Death And Life of the Great American School System".

From page 203:

Some left-wing critics think the Waltons are pushing privatization so they can make money in the education industry, but that does not seem credible. It simply doesn't make sense that that a family worth billions is looking for new ways to make money.

This notion that rich people are not out there looking for new ways to make money should then imply that executives and share holders of Google, Amazon, Microsoft not worry about the share values of their companies and simply "do the right thing". As the profit rate drops, Google should not move into developing Chrome OS, that being the traditional domain of Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft should not decimate its engineering work force from the Windows Operating System development to grow its "Bing" search engine and a variety of online services - again the domain of Google.

It should imply that rich people, rather than trying to shelter their income from taxes, should simply pay their fair share. It should imply that rich people from Medina (since we are talking about Bellevue) stop writing the sub-laws of education in the Bellevue School District to deprive the poorer communities from adequate facilities.

Contemporary America with its stark levels of inequality and entrenched class interests is enough to convince anyone but the most naive reader that rich people will do whatever it takes to make more money, resorting to outright violence against the poor if the situation warrants that, in their terms. Monsanto, one of the word's largest monopolies use its legal clout to force farmers to buy seed from them creating an unneeded dependence that results in bankruptcies for the poorest farmers. Melinda Gates Foundation owns shares in Monsanto.¹

Dr. Ravitch follows this "rich people are good" argument by her next fancy, that they are indeed "good but mis-guided"

But why should it be surprising that a foundation owned by one of the richest families in the United States opposes government regulation and favors private sector solutions to social problems?

In other words, the tycoons of the world's largest sweat shop are clearly only misguided in their attempts to bring private sector solutions to the public space. Dr. Ravitch contends that there are these two distinct spaces - public and private - and warns that private enterprise encroaching on the public space is misguided. But how do we recognize this line in the sand? Where, in theory at least, does the private space end and the public space begin (or vice versa)?

Dr. Ravitch is characteristically not too concerned about such theoretical questions. She does not explore how the private enterprise of sweat shop labor in China and low skilled labor in USA have direct attributions to the education system in both countries. Indeed, as the Walmart machine expands to every suburb in the United States, it requires an obedient work force to be de-skilled enough to accept near starvation wages. Walton Foundation's deliberate policy of destroying public education today, builds for it tomorrow, that servile worker force to be shackled to its profit machine.

Why should it be surprising that a global corporation that has thrived without a unionized workforce would oppose public sector unions?

Here, the implication is clear that unions, at least, are not required for the private sector in their unbridled hunt for profits on the backs of increasingly destitute workers. But there is an insistence that this should not be the case for the public sector. However, the attempt is to move education completely into the private sector as Dr. Ravitch agrees. Thus what is the argument she makes here? To the careful reader she is not making an argument except detailing the methodical way a public instrument is stolen by the corporate machine over to the private sector.

Her earlier failure to demarcate the line between public and private enterprise exposes her argument to be a confused attempt to say something without full understanding.

Dr. Ravitch follows thus, in conclusion of that section of her book on "The Billionaire Boy's Club":

Nor should it be surprising that the Walton Family Foundation has an ideological commitment to the principle of consumer choice and to an unfettered market, which by its nature has no loyalties and disregards Main Street, traditional values, long-established communities, and neighborhood schools.

Her insinuation that Walton Family is only attacking public education as a matter of ideology is a most dangerous illusion. Students, teachers and the wider community need to appreciate fully that ideologies do not spring out of the ether - every ideology supports certain conditions in society, and the particular ideology of "unfettered markets" supports the plundering of labor of the many for the vast enrichment of a few. As this system needs to continually expand, it has no choice but to "look for new ways to make money". When enough money can be invested in research, this expansion is possible in the later years. However, on an economic downturn, it becomes impossible to collect enough capital to conduct further research and the profit machine starts breaking down. In this situation, driven by desperation, corporations are forced to use any and all means to enter into other fields of existing business (as opposed to new lines that are not being created due to lack of research funding) including the ones long held in the public domain.

Dr. Ravitch would thus disagree with my article on privatization. History, I believe, will tell who is right.

Footnotes:

1 http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1166559/000104746910007567/a2199827z13f-hr.txt