Shawgi Tell asks if charter school advocates are even interested in uncomfortable facts or inconvenient truths about their industry.
The dictionary gives the following definitions of “perseverate:”
“to recur or repeat continually”
“to intently focus one’s attention on a thought or thoughts: fixate”
“to have or display an involuntary repetitive behavior or thought”
Charter school advocates perseverate non-stop. They continually and involuntarily repeat and fixate on the same stale narrative about charter schools and rarely abandon anticonsciousness. This brings them safety and comfort.
Charter school advocates are not interested in uncomfortable facts or inconvenient truths about charter schools. They do not engage in conscious acts of finding out what is really happening in the charter school sector. Nor do they encourage others to systematically investigate charter schools, let alone fight for a pro-social alternative. Conscious participation and research are replaced with egocentrism and ready-made answers.
Everyone is supposed to blindly accept the view that charter schools are great in 50 ways and if there are problems or criticisms these should be overlooked or trivialized. For example, when it is pointed out that charter schools fail and close every week, leaving thousands of people stunned and abandoned, a common response from charter school supporters is that this is appropriate and normal. After all, businesses open and close every day. Why, they ask, are traditional public schools allowed to fail but not be closed down? There are 10 problems with this “logic.” One problem is that the American public school system did not fail, it is being methodically destroyed by the same neoliberals who are creating failed charter schools and pitting people against each other. Why, moreover, are so many charter schools failing and closing if they are supposedly superior to traditional public schools? Why isn’t the private sector delivering better results than the public sector? Why are competition and consumerism failing so many people? Is it really possible to disguise frequent failure, closure, and destruction as something positive and healthy? How debased must consciousness become for such antisocial thinking to arise? Such is the expression of harsh class antagonisms in society.