Kohut: Bridgeport An Education Lab Rat For State

2011 mayoral candidate Jeff Kohut, in a commentary, does not hold back his observations about state and local political leadership. From Kohut:

The State of Connecticut has become the national policy laboratory for the debate over the remediation of the US public education system, with Bridgeport serving as the principal lab rat in this regard.

While there are many problematic–that is to say “symptomatic”–education “hot spots” around the country, Connecticut has been chosen by our state leadership (who just happen to be, collectively speaking, lackeys of the Gold Coast-based leading edge of the US plutocracy) to serve as the institutional prototype in the building of a lucrative education-industrial complex. Bridgeport, politically powerless to resist, has been chosen as “ground zero” in this regard.

Indeed, while it might be argued that corporate for-profit, or private, non-profit bases for the production of positive educational outcomes in our public school system are intrinsically inappropriate and likely to result in failure and fraud in regard to learning outcomes in the classrooms, it must also be realized that the origins of this “education-industrial complex” are based in the determination of the US plutocracy to maintain the status quo in regard to the maintenance of the insidious US class system.

Does the above statement seem outrageous and contrived? It certainly might to those of us who were raised with the belief that US society is a meritocracy that rewards diligence, hard work, and honesty with a decent standard of living and the possibility of significant upward mobility.

But, if we look back on the period of time during which we experienced the trauma of the assassination of those greatest proponents of the modern American Dream–JFK, MLK and RFK–we are forced to realize that our nation/society, at that time, was thrust into an era of class warfare disguised as an era of positive social change. Predatory, robber-baron capitalism was stealthily rising from its 19th-century ashes, hidden by a fog of faux social progress. We, as a people, have since been sociologically restructured, through deliberate economic policy (i.e., “globalization”), into a rigidly segmented society, the vast majority of us living from inadequate paycheck to inadequate paycheck, hypnotized into docility by media-manufactured delusions of economic opportunity and democratic political prerogatives.

The overt, unapologetic discrimination based on race and gender of pre-1960s America has been replaced by its equally as evil twin, albeit politically-sanitized, economic disadvantage. Who can effectively raise their voice against something as democratic as equal-opportunity disadvantage and exploitation?

Indeed, it is during the aforementioned period to the present that we have seen the consistent decline of the US middle class, the rise of the multinational corporations, and the ruthless exploitation of labor in the third world against a background of bloody and wasteful wars for the control of the material resources and labor of the world by US-led multinational corporations. It is also during this time that the prosperity-creating, manufacturing-based US economy was deliberately replaced by a faux US domestic economy (a deregulated, “supply-side” economy) created for the sole purpose of redistributing wealth to the US plutocracy and their lackeys. The US public was sold a false promise of world peace and prosperity if they would just buy into “deregulation” and nurturing the “supply side” at home while we feeding a bloated military-industrial complex that was creating “freedom and democracy” for the whole world by fighting the “evil empire.”

Well, we can see how much peace, prosperity, and democracy that brought to the US and the rest of the world!

But not to digress from the issue of the “education divide/income divide” in Connecticut and the rest of the US; it must be realized that the whole “education debate” in the US, definable in terms of how to produce a truly “educated” citizenry capable of competing in a global workforce, is reducible to a debate over the distribution of wealth and opportunity in our country.

Truly, it can be seen that where there are reasonable expectations of education-related opportunity in our society (access to good jobs, professional/business opportunities) there is high achievement in the classroom. In this regard, it will be seen that high-achieving students have stable family situations, with parents earning living wages–or better–in environments that provide encouragement and the means for their children to pursue higher education and professional achievement. This is true for students in the best and worst of school systems. That is to say, children from solid, middle-class families who attend less-than-optimal urban school systems still manage to succeed academically and professionally, despite the deprived educational environment. (This is not to say that under-funding of schools isn’t a huge problem; it certainly has a significant impact on the realization of the potentials of all students, even to extreme degrees, where security/the physical environment are concerned.)

It is no secret to educators and sociologists that the ultimate success of children, almost without exception, derives from situations of economic security and family stability, both of which derive from the availability of living-wage jobs for households.

The US has not provided a truly viable economic environment for families since the late-1960s, hence the erosion of the US middle class and the decline and turmoil in our (formerly) middle-class metropolitan areas and their educational, governmental and social institutions.

Before the US plutocracy subverted the rise of the US middle class, good school systems in our urban centers were the rule, not the exception. This was reflected in the school system of Bridgeport during our days of bustling manufacturing concerns and full employment (see LIFE Magazine archives, June 21, 1968, pages 56-62/62B).

Presently, Bridgeport and much of the rest of Connecticut, in particular our urban centers, is in its economic death throes. No real effort is being made by our local, state, or federal leadership to reverse this trend beyond defining it terms of “education” and awarding contracts to “fix” the education system and close the “education gap” through the use of private educational concerns. For-profit as well as “non-profit” concerns that have little or no connection to the community and no real interest in “fixing” Bridgeport (or our other urban centers).

These “education corporations” are connected to powerful, moneyed interests and politicians–the “plutocracy” that runs this country–and produce, at best, dubious results at high costs to the stressed taxpayers of Bridgeport and Connecticut’s other cities. Indeed, the plutocracy sees abundant opportunities for corporate profiteering in the educational morass that they have created through the economic dislocations in US urban areas wrought by their drive to create a “global” economy.

The “remedy” that this “education industrial complex” provides is actually only a distraction from the real, underlying problem of the lack of jobs and tax base in our cities. The insidious effects of unrealistic expectations on children’s learning by the dubious methods of these firms, and the competition-wrought divisions among fellow urban dwellers created as a result of the contraindicated redirection of limited public-education dollars in regard to the use of these firms versus traditional public-school approaches, are truly dangerous and undermine the ability of our urban centers to ever regain their political and economic footing.

But this latter effect is, no doubt, an effect that the plutocracy deems desirable; it maintains the status quo while enriching the plutocratic players and their cohorts.

So; how to close the income/education divide? It is obvious that only a revolution at the polling booths and a reversal of the economic policies implemented during the past 40+ years in the US can accomplish these twin goals.

In Connecticut, we have the chance to lead the way for the nation by offering candidates opposed to the status quo and ridding ourselves of our present, entrenched Democratic and Republican leadership.

Are there potentially viable counter-plutocracy candidates available to run for statewide office in Connecticut in election-year 2014?

There probably hasn’t been a better time for democratic, political revolt in this state or in this country in many years. With dying cities (Detroit, et al.), a failing national education system, an increasingly chaotic healthcare system, an eroding economy, and no clear political direction, there are excellent possibilities for the rise of dark-horse candidates for high state and federal offices throughout the country. With Connecticut serving as the poster child for economic decline and dysfunctional government, there has never been a better time for political change on a statewide level.

Will a gubernatorial candidate with a genuine concern and real plan for the economic redemption of Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, et al., step up to the plate in 2014–or will the people of our cities continue their long plunge into the abyss of the great Connecticut income/education divide? (Steel Pointe/Bass Pro Shops will not even make a dent in Bridgeport’s jobs/revenue needs. In the final analysis, power plants–no matter how “green”–and residential development result in negative revenue for host cities. Only massive reindustrialization can resurrect “post-industrial” Bridgeport.)