Creeping Edufascism

Webster defines fascism as, “A way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.”

Alternatively: The State is everything. The State knows what is best for you. Nothing outside the State is good. Nothing can ever be said against the State.

Now apply the definition of fascism to education.

Replace ‘dictator’ with the cabal of big business and educrats.

Think about Common Core, how it was developed, by who and with what money and consider the smear campaigns waged against parents who oppose it.

Think about the high stakes testing, the various assaults on parental rights and the ‘all your kids belong to us’ mentality of educrats, think tanks and school boards.

What this country is arguably experiencing today is edufascism. Education is no longer about learning, it’s about whatever the powers-that-be dictate that it shall be about. Right now, that dictate is all about “workforce” and our kids are the “human capital”.

A little bit at a time, the powers that be chip away at education – in the name of the greater good, usually. A regulation added here, a law added there, funding from ‘generous’ non-businesses trickle into non-profit, some federal grant funds drizzled on top… resulting in public education morphing into a total bureaucracy and controlled, not by the people, but by a select few.

Jonah Goldberg, in his book Liberal Fascism, has a quote that resonates here.

“If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Now, go read Know Your History and You Can See What Education Reform Really Means. It’s Not ‘For the Kids’. It’s long, but I guarantee you it is worth it.

The article ends with this paragraph, emphasis added:

It is important to know the history of the architects supplying the blueprint for the Federal Government to control education. We can see it by adopting/implementing the Common Core States Initiative and the creation of unvalidated tests designed for students to fail so schools must close as being ineffective. Then private companies can step in, sans school boards, and create the educational blueprint that the private companies deem appropriate, and all the while, your tax money is funding such a plan. As Taylor writes When big money shapes national policy, especially the policies that govern the education of America’s children, the nation is out of balance.

The creation of ‘Education blueprints’. Another way of saying that is “Strategic Plan“.

I’ve been asking the question for a while now: Who is directing education in North Carolina?

So who is it? The Department of Public Instruction? No, it took me less than 6 months to determine the department is collection of education fad followers; one only has to look at the number of contracts the department has racked up to know very little comes from inside North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction.

In the last two decades, it is a similar set of private companies who form non-profits and ‘think tanks’ in order to direct and control education, that’s who.
This control and direction includes Education ~~Public Relations~~ news outlets.

To name a few:

Wake Education Partnership
BEST NC
Public Schools Forum NC
Friday Institute
Hunt Institute

Business having input and aiding local education is not inherently evil, mind you. As I’ve said before, business having a seat at the table is desirable, however we’re at a point now where they own all the chairs and the table itself.

UPDATE: A reader emailed me this — Bingo.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” ― Benito Mussolini

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