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United States: Where will the struggle lead Kentucky teachers?

United States / April 14, 2018/Socialistworker

Resumen: Las protestas representan la continua urgencia del recrudecimiento que ha convertido a Kentucky en otro sitio de las rebeliones de los maestros que barrieron al oeste de Virginia Occidental a través de estados que anteriormente se consideraban conservadores como «el país Trump»

Pranav Jani talked to Kentucky teachers on a visit to the state about how their struggle has developed–and what this weekend’s plans for more protests will bring.

KENTUCKY TEACHERS, education workers and their supporters will gather once again on April 13 and 14 for rallies at the state Capitol in Frankfort.

The protests represent the continuing urgency of the upsurge that has made Kentucky another site of the teachers’ rebellions that swept west from West Virginia through states formerly considered to be conservative «Trump country.»

At the same time, the demonstrations today and tomorrow highlight some of the dynamics and debates that teachers need to consider for the movement to succeed.

At the start of April, an estimated 12,000 teachers and supporters descended on Frankfort, sparked into rebellion specifically by a disastrous attack on public employees’ pensions passed late on March 29 under the camouflage of legislation about sewer construction.

The next morning after this late-night legislative sleight of hand, teachers–led by the grassroots group #KY 120 United–shut down schools in 20 counties through coordinated sick-outs, and many traveled to the capital to send a message to lawmakers.

The tactic of the sick-out was used effectively again on April 2 as politicians considered anti-worker budget and tax legislation. Schools that weren’t closed because of spring break in most of Kentucky’s 120 counties were shut down again, and the turnout in Frankfort was the biggest yet.

Though some educators continued sick-outs or other protests in that first week of April, many looked ahead to April 13–when the legislators’ recess ended and lawmakers would convene again–as the next date for a mobilization.

Developments between April 2 and April 13 highlight the questions that need to be addressed if the movement that shook Kentucky at the start of the month is going to be able to break the stranglehold on public education that is choking teachers, education workers, students and parents.

Above all, the need for a united mobilization of teachers–which was the basis for putting pressure on the legislature last week–is clear.

IN MY trip to Kentucky on April 9 and in conversations over the last two weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with teachers who are in the thick of the struggle, parents and activists who are building solidarity, and supporters who understand its historical impact.

These individuals’ dedication to local organizing and the long-term struggle bodes well for the movement. At the same time, people spoke of the challenges they face–from the actions of politicians and school officials, but also debates within the movement–as they try to continue a struggle that has been months and months in the making.

All this has made for a complicated picture in the period between April 2 and April 13–when work stoppages have been attempted, but not continued; when the politicians have been forced to shift, but have slithered into new positions; and when grassroots groups have been built, but have had to fight hard to stay unified.

As we know from history, no movement or struggle ever develops evenly, going from advance to advance.

The situation in Kentucky is complicated by dynamics that will be familiar from past struggles: debates over what to do next when pressure on lawmakers isn’t enough; discussions about whether or not to strike; the complications of people in different communities with different considerations needing to figure out how they can speak with one voice.

As in all struggles, there’s an ongoing debate about the politics and aims of the movement.

As James Miller, a teacher at duPont Manual High School in Louisville said, some people are fighting only to stop the attack on teachers’ pensions or head off measures to undermine public education–whereas others, including himself, want:

to seize this opportunity to demand significant improvements to public education instead of merely defending the status quo. We want to protect our students by demanding the elimination of legislation that would further criminalize Black and Brown youth and an end to zero-tolerance policies. We want to protect our students’ families by opposing regressive sales taxes and flat taxes.

More than 3,000 people have signed a petition created by Miller that ties the fight for schools to the larger struggle for social justice.

Teachers of all views are still in motion to put forward their grievances–and they know they have the support of many people around them.

Krystal Spencer, with Save Our Schools Kentucky and one of the organizers of the rallies on April 13 and 14, says she’s confident that the rallies will be big, «hopefully bigger than [April 2].»

Citing the many groups that are coming together–including Indivisible, Planned Parenthood, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and university groups–Spencer noted how many of these organizations don’t represent teachers, but are participating.

Meanwhile, I heard reports of radicalized teachers who are calling off work this Friday and sending delegations to Frankfort–while working patiently with local groups in their schools who aren’t ready for a strike and have never heard the word «wildcat,» but remain very curious about the strategy.

THE LEGISLATIVE details in Kentucky are complicated, but they are important for understanding the strategic obstacles that teachers have to face.

Even as protesters were leaving the statehouse after their biggest demonstration on April 2, the Republican-led legislature passed a budget bill and a tax «reform» bill that are anti-worker and anti-poor. Yet the GOP claims the balance between the two would benefit education.

The legislature put these bills on the desk of Gov. Matt Bevin, a Tea Party favorite, and then left for a short recess until April 13.

Several teachers’ groups aimed to continue the momentum generated by April 2, with calling sick-outs, grassroots food drives and marching through their towns. But the Kentucky Education Association (KEA) send out a memo to members saying that the union didn’t support work stoppages at this time, and everyone should look to April 13.

On April 6, for example, the union issued a statement that, unfortunately, echoes some of the rhetoric that education bosses use against all teachers’ strikes: «Our students need us to show up for them in classrooms and schools. We urge educators statewide not to allow our united efforts to be compromised by continued calls for action that deprive students, parents and communities of the educational services we provide.»

Meanwhile, between April 2 and April 13, crafty Republican politicians and their ruling-class masters were busy creating a lose-lose situation for those seeking a legislative solution to the attack on education and the social crises in Kentucky–while adding lots of confusion to the process.

On April 9, Bevin vetoed the budget and tax bills put forward by his own party, stating that he wants more «comprehensive tax reform» and a «balanced budget»–code words for deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity for the 99 Percent. This set up a challenge to the legislature to try to override the vetoes on April 13 and 14. Bevin signed the pension bill that sparked the teachers’ uprising.

The Democratic minority in the legislature, which has religiously opposed Bevin, supportshis vetoes and will vote against overriding them, on the basis that they are opposed to the budget and tax bills that passed.

On the other hand, the KEA and its affiliates have called for Bevin’s vetoes to be overridden–a de facto defense of the Republican legislature’s bills.

The logic of the position was explained in a statement from the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA), which contended that, while the union «does not agree with some of the regressive ways the revenue bill generates new revenue, but without a revenue bill, Kentucky will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for public education.»

The unions are right that Bevin vetoed these bills from the right, not the left. But it seems problematic to accept the original legislation, which are clearly regressive and harmful in various ways, as a kind of lesser evil.

Indeed, as so many teachers and supporters expressed in face-to-face discussions, what galvanized them to take action is the general and ongoing attack on education in the midst of a deep social crisis in Kentucky–not a dispute between two versions of budget cuts, two versions of tax cuts for the rich, and two versions of tax hikes that hit poor and working people.

EVEN ACTIVISTS who have organized outside the KEA have debated what path to follow in this confusing situation.

Internal discussions within the #KY 120 United this week revealed disagreement about whether or not to call for work stoppages, and whether or not to settle for the legislature’s original budget and tax bills.

Most of the teachers and others I met remained sympathetic to both the KEA and KY 120 United, even if they disagreed with the positions they have taken regarding the legislation.

After Bevin’s open and disparaging attacks on KEA as «a problem,» there was no question about this–even when one teacher defending the KEA against Bevin said she wished they would be «more of a problem.»

Thus, people who are part of KEA, KY 120 United and school-specific groups, many at the same time, are seeking for teachers to figure things out together as part of a longer struggle against a tough set of opponents. Perhaps some of the momentum of April 2 has fallen off, and no one wants to be pushed into choosing between Republican Plan A and Republican Plan B.

Plus, if we look at what teachers and supporters did accomplish in the «in-between» period, it’s clear how powerful the movement is at the grassroots level. With many teachers not being sure about an ongoing strike, a preparation period may have been exactly what was needed.

In Jefferson County–the state’s most populous county that includes Louisville and the surrounding area, there was an attempt to close schools through sick-outs on April 9, though participation wasn’t strong enough to shut down the schools.

In Pike County in eastern Kentucky, along the border with West Virginia, teachers laid out a week of actions leading up to April 13, including pressuring the Chamber of Commerce for supporting the pension bill.

FOR TEACHERS and activists I met from Northern Kentucky and Lexington, the «in between» meant local meetings with activists, talking to parents about the importance of taking action, and working with others to discuss building solidarity.

«Teachers in my building are hungry for info and action in a way they haven’t been before,» said Molly Seifert, a teacher at Beechwood High School in Northern Kentucky. Seifert noted that the organizing meetings she was part of now drew about 10 times more people than KEA meetings months before.

«I’m advocating for ‘the Pike County plan’ for the rest of the week: local action and then Frankfort on Friday,» Seifert said. «I’m also advocating for a long-term group like this that meets regularly and builds on this momentum.»

Laura McMullen, a teacher at Holmes Middle School in Covington, said: «We were ready last week, and we’re still ready.»

McMullen described the impact of the social crisis, especially in poor schools like hers:

Our class sizes are already at cap. So with all of these resources being pulled, and teaching a group of 31-32 kids, how can I ensure that all their needs are getting met, that their IEPs (Independent Education Plans) are being followed…Our school has a very high rate of special needs kids, and our transience rate is very high, with so many kids homeless at any given time.

So when they cut funding for those kids, for after-school programs, for extracurriculars, what are they going to do? We feed kids breakfast, lunch and dinner–where are those kids going to get that? Busing is very expensive–we have no way to bus these students. If the goal isn’t to bankrupt public schools, then I’m not really sure I know what it is.

Rose Curtin, a parent in the Newport Independent Schools system and member of a local School-Based Decision-Making Council and a Family Resource Center board, explained how poorer, non-white schools would be particularly devastated by the legislation being considered:

I’ve served on hiring boards, and I already know how hard it is to hire teachers to come into a high-poverty, urban school where there are a lot of challenges, and I strongly believe that this is meant to target those places first.

Because Fort Thomas schools are not going to have a hard time, with a wealthy tax base and a lot of extra support. They’re not going to struggle to get new teachers the way that I suspect we in Covington and Newport are going to in order to get people to come in, especially if there’s no pensions and they have significant student debt burdens.

THE EFFORTS of Kentucky activists to build solidarity is inspirational–and exactly what will be required to combat a social crisis with no real legislative solution in sight.

In Seifert’s region, KY 120 United made «plans of reaching out to parents in meetings at local libraries,» she said. «For the first time in my 17 years of teaching, activists from Boone County, Kenton County, Dayton Independent, Beechwood and Covington Independent are working together on a project like this.»

Curtin, who is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Metro Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky branch, heads up the Kentucky Teachers Strike Fund, to organize concrete solidarity should educators decide to walk out.

From the experience of a family member who lost her job after participating in a strike, Rose is aware of «just the amount of work that a work stoppage is [and] the financial and emotional effects that it has.» The fund, organized jointly by four DSA chapters across Kentucky, was formed after consulting with DSA members in West Virginia who had set up a similar fund for a coalition of groups.

Drew Van’t Land, an organizer for the Kentucky Workers League in Lexington, talked about organizing solidarity through helping working-class parents who might have trouble with childcare, and helping to «combat the narrative that their interests are somehow not aligned with those of the teachers.»

Everyone I talked to, even if skeptical about the future given the difficulty of the task before Kentucky teachers, underlined the gains that the struggle had already made.

Geoff Sebesta of the Lexington DSA said that teachers’ self-organization and solidarity had contributed to «the legislature being clearly scared as hell.»

«The floodgates have been opened by what’s happened in West Virginia,» said Drew Gerbel, the sibling of a teacher and an activist in his own right. «The example has been set. Look what power exists in the working class. But I don’t think people realize it 100 percent yet.»

It does take time for people across a whole state and with so many different circumstances and ideas to realize that strength–and there are no guarantees that the teachers will be able to win what they are fighting for.

But with all that remains to be done, something fundamental has already been gained. As Miller said to me:

There are too many unknowns to predict the future….But one thing will not change: Kentucky teachers are angry, and they will not be easily placated.

Already dozens of Kentucky educators have registered to run for state and local offices in campaigns specifically targeting incumbents who voted in favor of the governor’s anti-public education agenda. Already hundreds of Kentucky teachers have repeatedly swarmed the state Capitol in rowdy protests. Already thousands of Kentucky teachers have participated in a wildcat sick-out strike.

The future is unpredictable, but it will belong to us.

Fuente: https://socialistworker.org/2018/04/13/where-will-the-struggle-lead-kentucky-teachers

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United Kingdom: Special needs children ‘paying price’ for education funding ‘crisis’

United Kingdom/April 3, 2018/By: Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk

Thousands of children with special needs are paying the price of a «crisis» in education funding, a union has claimed.

Official figures show the number of youngsters with special educational needs plans or statements that are awaiting school places has more than doubled in a year.

The National Education Union (NEU) claimed that local councils are being «starved» of the money they need for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with youngsters forced to stay at home because authorities do not have the cash to provide a suitable education.

Overall, as of January last year, there were 287,290 children and young people, up to the age of 25 in England, that had an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or a statement of special educational needs.

Of these, the vast majority (279,582) were aged 19 or under.

The year before, there were 256,315 children and young people with an EHCP or statement, and again the vast majority were 19 and under.

The government data also shows that as of last January, 4,050 youngsters with an EHCP or statement were «awaiting provision» – effectively waiting for a place in education.

This is up 137% compared with January 2016, when the number stood at 1,710, and up 372% compared with 2013 (858 children).

The NEU argued: «Children facing some of the greatest challenges are paying the price for the crisis in education funding.»

NEU joint general secretary, Kevin Courtney, said: «It is an absolute disgrace that the Government is starving local authorities of the resources needed for children with SEND.

«Children are at home because local authorities don’t have enough money to provide suitable education.

«Local authorities are being placed in an impossible position. They have a legal duty to plan high quality education for every child with SEND, but cuts have taken away the resources they need to educate children with complex needs.

«Extra money is urgently needed for SEND but it must be new money and not come from the already challenged school budgets. Parents and teachers are in despair. The Government is failing thousands of children and families and must act now to resolve this critical situation.»

Meanwhile, a separate survey by NASUWT union has shown more than a half (59%) of all special educational needs teachers said they had been attacked by their pupils in the last year.

Staff among the 1,615 polled said they had been head-butted, punched, kicked and spat on – including, in a handful of cases, on a daily basis.

Almost three-quarters (74%) said they experienced verbal abuse in addition to physical assault. Some 7% said they were not encouraged to report such incidents to their school.

One respondent said: «I receive more abuse as a teacher than friends of mine who are in the police force and prison service.»

Speaking from the annual NASUWT conference, union general secretary Chris Keates said: «No one should go to work expecting to be assaulted, yet all too often teachers who are attacked are told it’s all part of the job.

«Pupils with special needs who exhibit violent and disruptive behaviour need more help and support and all too often their needs are not being met.»

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: «Core schools and high needs funding has been protected in real terms per pupil and will rise to its highest ever level – over £43 billion in 2020, 50% more per pupil spending in real terms than in 2000.

«The budget for pupils with special educational needs is £6 billion this year. Local authorities now have more money for every pupil in every school.

«Our new Education, Health and Care Plans are putting the views of young people with special educational needs and disabilities and families at the heart of the process so they can help shape the support they receive.

«This is a hugely significant reform but local authorities are rising to the challenge and have reviewed almost 222,000 cases with initial inspections showing positive outcomes for young people.»

Source:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/01/special-needs-children-paying-price-education-funding-crisis/

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EEUU: Martin addresses special education advocates

EEUU/March 21, 2018/Source: http://bristolobserver.com

State Senator Henri Martin (R-31) March 14 addressed special education teachers, administrators, students, and supporters at the state capitol.

“I am happy to say that society has recognized the value of education for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We now know that the right education can help these students live productive, fulfilling lives. We recognize the tremendously positive impact that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have on society and in our own lives,” Martin said according to a press release from Senate Republicans.

“Every person in this room has value,” he continued, according to the press release. “Intellectually and developmentally disabled children, like all children, have a right to an education that will help them live as productive and independent a life as possible.”

Sen. Martin represents the communities of Bristol, Harwinton, Plainville, Plymouth, and Thomaston.

Martin is also running for reelection.

Source:

http://bristolobserver.com/2018/03/15/martin-addresses-special-education-advocates/

 

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United States: No Advisory to Close Schools Today – Education Ministry

United States / March 17, 2018 /jis.gov.jm

Resumen: El Ministerio de Educación, Juventud e Información reitera que las escuelas NO deben cerrarse sin la aprobación previa del Ministerio.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information is reiterating that schools should NOT be closed without prior approval from the Ministry.

Information reaching the Ministry is that some teachers who turned up for work and in some cases principals had told students that there would be no school tomorrow. This is in contravention of the Ministry’s instructions.

Seventy-five of the 466 schools checked today had classes in the earlier part of the day up to just before mid-day. Others had classes up to the end of the normal school day.

In the meantime, the Ministry will be deploying additional personnel tomorrow, March 13, to support the schools.

This support includes Regional Response Teams (RRTs) comprising officers from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, selected tertiary institutions, Secondary Schools Student bodies and the National Parent Teachers Association of Jamaica.

Fuente: https://jis.gov.jm/no-advisory-to-close-schools-tomorrow-education-ministry/
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Killing Children in the Age of Disposability: The Parkland Shooting Was About More Than Gun Violence

By: Henry A. Giroux

Donald Trump may have startled Republican lawmakers with his sudden and unexpected support for background checks and other gun control measures, but a closer look at his comments to lawmakers reveals his continued adherence to the core of the pro-gun script that he has been following all along.

At his meeting with lawmakers on February 28 Trump buckled down on the idea that the real problem is the existence of gun-free zones, arguing that eliminating gun-free zones «prevent [mass shootings] from ever happening, because [the shooters] are cowards and they’re not going in when they know they’re going to come out dead.»

The president’s repeated efforts to disparage the idea of gun-free zones fit with the earlier call for arming teachers made by Trump and one of his most powerful financial and ideological backers — the dark knight of gun violence, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre. Meanwhile, Trump has shown no interest in preventing school shootings by hiring more guidance teachers, support staff and psychologists. Trump’s call for a comprehensive gun bill may have made for «captivating» television, but it rattled NRA lobbyists and initiated a tsunami of calls to their allies on Capitol Hill. Nothing surprising to this reaction. It gets worse. Chris Cox, the top lobbyist for the NRA, met with Trump a few days after Trump made his remarks and suggested in a tweet that the president had backed away from his apparent embrace of gun control.

Moreover, there is little confidence following Trump’s remarks that Republicans would even remotely endorse legislation for gun control. The NRA «paid $5 million to lobbyists last year» and there is no indication that the time and money spent buying off cowardly politicians will prove ineffectual.

Trump’s proposal to arm teachers suggests that the burden of gun violence and the crimes of the gun industries and politicians should fall on teachers’ shoulders.

The deeply troubling call for eliminating gun-free zones and arming teachers comes at a time when many schools have already been militarized by the presence of police and the increasing criminalization of student behaviors. Suggesting that teachers be armed and turned into potential instruments of violence extends and normalizes the prison as a model for schools and the increasing expansion of the school-to-prison pipeline. What is being left out of this tragedy is that the number of police in schools has doubled in the last decade from 20 percent in 1996 to 43 percent today. Moreover, as more police are put in schools, more and more children are brutalized by them. There is no evidence that putting the police in schools has made them any safer. Instead, more and more young people have criminal records, are being suspended, or expelled from school, all in the name of school safety. As  Sam Sinyangwe, the director of the Mapping Police Violence Project, observes:

The data … that does exist … shows that more police in schools leads to more criminalization of students, and especially black and brown students. Every single year, about 70,000 kids are arrested in school…. [Moreover] since 1999, 10,000 additional police officers have been placed at schools, with no impact on violence. Meanwhile, about one million students have been arrested for acts previously punishable by detention or suspension, and black students are three times more likely to be arrested than their white peers.

Trump’s proposal to arm teachers suggests that the burden of gun violence and the crimes of the gun industries and politicians should fall on teachers’ shoulders, foolishly imagining that armed teachers would be able to stop a killer with military grade weapons, and disregarding the risk of teachers shooting other students, staff or faculty in the midst of such a chaotic moment.

In addition, the proposal points to the insidious fact that mass shootings and gun violence have become so normalized in the United States that, as Adam Gopnik points out, «we must now be reassured that, when the person with the AR-15 comes to your kid’s school, there’s a plan to cope with him.» Such statements make visible a society rife with the embrace of force and violence. How else to explain the fact that, at the highest levels of government, horrendous acts of violence, such as mass shootings involving school children, are now discussed in terms of containing their effects rather than eliminating their causes.

Protecting guns and profits have become more important than protecting the lives of young people.

In this logic the underlying causes of mass shootings and gun killings disappear and the emphasis for dealing with such violence reproduces an act of political and moral irresponsibility in its call to curtail or contain such violence rather than address the underlying causes of it.

We live in an age in which the politics of disposability has merged with what Jeffrey St. Clair has called the spectacle of «American Carnage.» The machineries of social death and misery now drive a mode of casino capitalism in which more and more people are considered waste, expendable and excess. The politics of disposability now couples with acts of extreme violence as pressure grows to exclude more and more people from the zones of visibility, justice and compassion. This is especially true for children. Violence against children in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. As Marian Wright Edelman points out,

Pervasive gun violence against children is a uniquely shameful all-American epidemic. Consider that since 1963, over three times more children and teens died from guns on American soil than U.S. soldiers were killed by hostilities in wars abroad. On average 3,426 children and teens — 171 classrooms of 20 children — were killed by guns every year from 1963 to 2016. And gun violence comes on top of other major threats of global violence that threaten our children.

A culture of cruelty, silence and indifference to the needs of children, built on the backs of the conservative media politicians and the gun industry and lobby, has become a central and ethically disturbing feature of American society. This is a culture of political corruption and social abandonment that «has a remarkable tolerance for child slaughter, especially the mass murders of the children of others.» This culture of violence has a long history in the United States, and has become increasingly legitimated under the Trump regime, a regime in which lawlessness and corruption combine to ignore the needs of children, the poor, elderly, sick and vulnerable. In the age of neoliberal brutality, protecting guns and profits have become more important than protecting the lives of young people. As is apparent from its policies, our society no longer views young people as a worthy social investment or the promise of a decent future. On the contrary, as John and Jean Comaroff note in Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy, instead of becoming a primary register of the dreams of a society, youth have become «creatures of our nightmares, of our social impossibilities, and our existential angst.»

Viewed largely as a liability, the institutions that young people inhabit have been discarded as citadels of critical thinking and social mobility. As a result, such institutions, including schools, have become zones of social abandonment — often modeled after prisons — that appear to exist in a state of perpetual danger and fear, especially for students marginalized by race and class, for whom violence operates routinely and in multiple ways. Children are now defined largely as consumers, clients and fodder for the military or the school-to-prison pipeline. As a result, their safety is now enmeshed with the weaponized discourse of surveillance, and security personnel and police patrol their corridors. Horrific shootings boost the ratings and profit margins of the mainstream press, undercutting these news outlets’ will and ability to use their resources to address the culture and political economy of violence that now amounts to a form of domestic terrorism in the United States.

The message to students is clear. They are not worth protecting if they threaten the profits of the gun industries and the purses of the politicians who have become the lackeys for them.

As Brad Evans and I have argued in Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle, violence has now become the defining organizing principle for society in general. It is also worth noting that the spectacle, marketing and commodification of violence powerfully mediates how the American public both understands the relations of power that benefit from the production of violence at all levels of society and how the visceral suffering that is produced can be neutralized in a culture of immediacy and «alternative facts.»

Of course, this logic is part of the politics of distraction that has become a trademark of the Trump administration. At the same time, it creates more profits for the gun industries and makes clear that most people, including children, have no safe space in the US. The message to students is clear. They are not worth protecting if they threaten the profits of the gun industries and the purses of the politicians who have become the lackeys for them. It gets worse. Rather than engage young people and other gun rights advocates in a debate about gun control, some conservatives mimic the discourse of humiliation and lies used relentlessly by Trump in claiming that «bereaved students were being manipulated by sinister forces, or even that they were paid actors.»

As objects of moral and social abandonment, young people are beginning to recognize that the response to their call for safety, well-being and future without fear is cruel and cynical. In addition, their struggle against gun violence makes clear that the Trump administration, the NRA, and the industries that trade in instruments of violence and death, are waging a war against democracy itself. The call to arm teachers also speaks to the Trump administration’s efforts to further militarize and expand the weaponization not only of the armed forces but also of spaces in which large numbers of students congregate. In his call to arm 20 percent of all teachers, Trump is suggesting that 640,000 teachers be trained and given guns. The Washington Post estimates that the costs of training teachers sufficiently could reach as high as $718 million while the cost of providing teachers with firearms could amount to an additional $251 million. According to the Post, «the full-price, more expansive training and the full-price firearm … creeps past $1 billion.» Furthermore, putting 640,000 more guns in schools is not only a reckless suggestion, it also further enriches the profits of gun makers by adding millions of dollars to their bottom line. Why not invest this amount of money in providing support staff and services for students — services that could meaningfully support those facing mental health issues, bullying, homelessness and poverty?

When combined with a culture of fear and a massive government investment in a carceral state, the politics of disposability eerily echoes the damaging legacy of a fascist past in the US, with its celebration of violence, concentration of power in the hands of the few, massive inequities in wealth and militarization of all aspects of society. There is no defense for weapons of war to be sold as commodities either to children or anyone else. Gun violence in the US is not simply about a growing culture of violence, it is about the emergence of a form of domestic terrorism in which fear, mistrust, lies, corruption and financial gain become more important than the values, social relations and institutions that write children into the script of democracy and give them hope for a decent future.

When the only self available to the public is rooted in the discourse of entrepreneurship, it is not surprising for a society to produce generations of people indifferent to the effects of mass violence.

A war culture now permeates American society — extending from sports events and Hollywood films to the ongoing militarization of the police and the criminalization of everyday behaviors such as violating a dress code or doodling on a desk. War has become a permanent element of everyday life, deeply etched into our national ideals and social relations. And those responsible for the bloodshed it produces appear immune from social criticism and policies that limit their power.

This debate about school shootings is not simply about gun violence; it is about a neoliberal order that has tipped over into authoritarianism, one for which the highest measure of how a society judges itself ethically and politically is no longer about how it treats its children. Violence on a grand scale certainly has produced a high sense of moral outrage within the US public at times, but not over the fate of young people.

People in the US need a new language to talk about violence in order to capture its many registers and the threads that tie them together. Under such circumstances, school violence cannot be understood outside of the deeply inordinate influence of money and power in US politics. The call to model schools after prisons would have to be examined against the rise of the punishing state and the Trump administration’s celebration of a «law and order» regime. The anger fueling what might be called white rage would have to be analyzed against the gutting of jobs, wages, pensions, health care benefits and the massive growth of inequality in wealth and power in the United States.

US society has become an abyss in which violence, disposability and the logic of social abandonment and terminal exclusion work against the interests of most children and for the interests of the rich and powerful. Weapons now operate in the service of what might be called the necro-power of casino capitalism. How else to explain the fact that there are more than 13,000 homicides a year in the United States, or that on average, seven teens are killed with guns daily. Yet the response on the part of politicians is either silence and inaction, or a more aggressive push to put more guns in circulation?

A cult of militarism has dragged extreme violence into the very soul of the US and has become a source of pride rather than alarm and anger. This depraved transformation is accelerated by a crisis of agency in which every relation is reduced to an exchange relation, one in which, as political theorist Wendy Brown has argued, «everything from learning to eating become matters of speculative investments — ranked, rated, balanced in your portfolio.» When the only self available to the public is rooted in the discourse of entrepreneurship, it is not surprising for a society to produce generations of people indifferent to the effects of mass violence, unsympathetic to the growing multitudes of disposable individuals and groups, and unmoved by a culture of deepening collective cynicism. Casino capitalism has numbed large segments of the American public into moral and political callousness. One consequence is an indifference to a society in which the killing of children is routine.

Mass shootings and gun violence in the US cannot be abstracted from what I call the death of the social, which involves the collapse of an investment in the public good, the ongoing destruction of democratic values, and the undermining of the common good. A toxic mix of rugged individualism, untrammeled self-interest, privatization, commodification and culture of fear now shapes American society, leaving most people isolated, unaware of the broader systemic forces shaping their lives, and trapped in a landscape of uncertainty and precarity that makes them vulnerable to having their anxieties, anger and rage misdirected.

The students from Parkland, Florida, are fighting back, embracing new forms of social solidarity and collective struggle.

All too often, the only discourse available for them to deal with their problems is provided by the disingenuous vocabulary of fear and security delivered in the call for gun ownership, the allure of violence as an antidote to their individual and collective anxieties, and a hateful appeal to racism, Islamophobia and demonization.

The hijacking of freedom and individual responsibility by extremists is corrosive and rots society from within, making people susceptible to what C.W. Mills describes as «organized irresponsibility» in his book The Politics of Truth. The right-wing attack on the welfare state, community and democracy functions to dissolve crucial solidarities and bonds of social obligation, and undermines mutual responsibilities. In the absence of the discourse of community, compassion and mutual respect, fear and violence have become the new currency mediating social relations at all levels of society. In a society in which the war of all against all prevails, the call for more guns is symptomatic of the shredding of the social fabric, the hardening of society, the evisceration of public trust, and a ratcheting up of a political and economic investment by the ruling elite in the machinery of cruelty, inequality and militarism.

Violence in the United States is part of a wider politics of disposability in which the machineries of social and political death accelerate the suffering, hardships and misery of children. For too long, youth have been written out of the script of justice and democracy. Gun violence, mass shootings and state violence are simply the most visible elements of a society that organizes almost every aspect of civil society for the production of terror and fear, and which views young people within the specter of uselessness and indifference.

Fortunately, the students from Parkland, Florida, are fighting back, shunning the coarse language used by apologists for systemic violence while embracing new forms of social solidarity and collective struggle. These young people are refusing to privatize hope or allow the ethical imagination and their sense of moral outrage and social responsibility to be tranquilized. They are not only outraged over the brutal actions of the defenders of gun violence, they feel betrayed. Betrayed, because they have learned that the power of the gun industries and the politicians who defend them do not consider their lives worthy of protection, hope and a future free of violence. They recognize that US society is unusually violent and that they are a target. Moreover, they are arguing convincingly that mass shooting in the United States have a direct correlation with the astronomical number of guns present in this country. But there is more at stake here than an epidemic of gun violence, there is the central idea of the US as defined by carnage — violence that extends from the genocide of Native Americans and slavery to the rise of mass incarceration and the instances of state violence now sweeping across the US.

At least for the moment, young people are refusing to live with a modern system of violence that functions as a form of domestic terrorism. Engaged in a form of productive unsettling and collective dissent, they are fighting back, holding power accountable and giving birth to a vibrant form of political struggle. The distinctiveness of this generation of survivors is clear in their use of social media, their willingness to speak out, their planned marches, their civic courage, and their unwillingness to continue to live with the fear and insecurity that have shaped most of their lives. Hopefully, this moment will transform itself into a movement.

Source:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43732-killing-children-in-the-age-of-disposability-the-parkland-shooting-was-about-more-than-gun-violence

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England: ‘Crisis brewing’ as rising number of teachers quit the classroom

England / 19.02.2018 / By: news.sky.com/.

A crisis is looming in schools across England because the Government has failed to get a grip on the rising number of teachers quitting the profession, MPs have warned.

The Department for Education has been accused of being «sluggish and incoherent» in tackling the problem – with the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calling for a detailed plan as a «matter of urgency».

Despite this, the Government has said there is a record number of teachers in schools, and retention rates have been «broadly stable» for 20 years.

According to the PAC’s report, a particular source of worry is the fact that the number of secondary school teachers has been dropping since 2010.

The MPs said this had been exacerbated by how only half of vacancies in 2015-16 were filled with qualified teachers who had the requisite experience and expertise.

Allegations of misplaced priorities have also been levelled at the Government, amid claims it has spent £555m a year training new teachers but just £36m on retaining and developing them.

Pupils in class ahead of GCSE results day, 2017

Video:Teachers don’t feel ‘valued enough’

MPs say the Government should take action to eradicate the wide variations in the quality of teaching across the country.

According to the report, more than 20% of pupils in the Midlands and the North were in secondary schools rated as «requiring improvement or inadequate for teaching, learning and assessment».

The committee said: «The quality of teaching and the level of teaching vacancies vary significantly across the country.

«However, the department does not seem to understand the reasons for the variation or the different challenges that schools in different regions face.

«The failure of the department to get to grips with the number of teachers leaving puts additional pressure on schools faced with rising numbers of children needing a school place and the teachers to teach them.»

Rear view of high school students on a class in the classroom.

Video:December: Schools failing to raise standards

While the overall number of teachers increased by 15,500 between November 2010 and November 2016, secondary school posts dropped 10,800 over the same time frame.

MPs raised concerns over DfE forecasts which show pupil numbers in secondary schools will increase by 540,000 – almost 20% – between 2017 and 2025.

Figures show the numbers of teachers quitting for non-retirement reasons increased from 22,260 in 2011 to 34,910 in 2016.

The workload was a cited as a big factor, according to the PAC, as well as living costs.

New initiatives to help teachers with housing costs in expensive areas was suggested by the MPs as one potential solution.

A school pupil

Video:November: Hammond pressure over schools funding

PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier said: «A crisis is brewing in English classrooms but government action to address it has been sluggish and incoherent.

«It should have been clear to senior civil servants that growing demand for school places, combined with a drive for schools to make efficiency savings, would only build pressure in the system.

«Instead they seem to have watched on, scratching their heads, as more and more teachers quit the profession.»

Labour’s shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said the Government was presiding over a retention «crisis», with «demoralised teachers leaving the profession in record numbers».

Ms Rayner claimed the problem had been exacerbated by the cap on public sector pay, which has made it «impossible» for schools to keep desperately needed staff.

A DfE spokesman said teaching remained an «attractive career» and the department was continuing to work to help schools recruit and retain the best teachers.

From: https://news.sky.com/story/crisis-brewing-over-number-of-teachers-quitting-profession-mps-say-11230194.

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Nigeria: State Of Emergency To Be Declared In Education Sector – Minister

Nigeria/January 30, 2018/Source: https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com

Malam Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education on Monday said  the Federal Government would declare a state of emergency in the education sector in April.

He made this disclosure when he received Gov. Abubakar Sani-Bello of Niger and some members of his cabinet at the Federal Ministry of Education Headquarters in Abuja.

Adamu requested the support of all states governors to do the same in their respective states.

“By the end of April, we are proposing there will be a declaration of state of emergency in the education sector all over the country.

“We request all the state governors to do same in their states and we hope that once this is done our educational sector will improve.

“I will also meet with the governors to appeal to them to give special emphasis to address the problem of low standard of education especially at primary level,” he said.

The minister said the ministry was planing to present a proposal to the National Council of State for graduates of education to henceforth be employed on Grade Level 10 of eight.

He said the proposal would also include offering employment to students studying education in tertiary institutions.

Earlier, Bello, said that the state government was revamping the educational sector through provision of good infrastructure in schools and training of teachers.

He said that the state government planned to establish three teachers professional institute in the three zones, adding that one was already being established in Munya Local Government Area.

The governor solicited the support of the minister on the development of the institutions.

Source:

State of emergency to be declared in education sector – Minister

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