The DeVos Family: Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

[Skip Zilla]

By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.

 

While there are numerous "technical matters" to be discussed among educators about best pedagogical practices and new developments in natural and cultural sciences of human development to bring into those discussions, there is a well-orchestrated movement of rightist ideologues who are gaining "legitimacy" in centers/institutes and universities fronting their political activism as educational reform. Those of you with various roles within existing school/university systems are likely to see political, not educational, gains made by rightist ideologues affecting your work in ways you have not contemplated as relevant to your work. My recommendation to you is that you inform yourselves of the "stealth assault" of corporatist big-money players in education so as to better self-organize more democratic alternatives to privatization and profit-centered control of what and how kids learn.  

[Skip Zilla]

http://freakoutnation.com/2012/03/17/wi-democrat-calls-out-alec-on-...

[Skip Zilla]

Daniel, I've been reading today Charles Eisenstein's http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/. David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and founder/publisher of Yes! Magazine, has called Eisenstein “one of the up-and-coming great minds of our time.” The following excerpt from Chapter 23, "A New Materialism," of Sacred Economics reminds me of how I've watched in my own brief lifetime the profanation of our cultural institutions and community/personal lives by monetizing what had been "sacred" material and human ways of being and relating with others in the world. I believe Eisenstein is on to something socially transformational when he writes of such ideas as establishing a new "currency of the commons" and of appreciating with gratitude the gifts our contributions are to the common good. If our educational institutions continue to be Wal-Mart-ized by corporate monies aimed at further entrenching their privatization, not only of money gains, but also of curriculum itself, then little of the "sacredness" of genuine learning and discussion will remain.

When I drive through American suburbia with its fast food restaurants, enormous boxy stores, and cookie-cutter subdivisions, or look upon the architecture of modern office buildings and residential high-rises, I cannot help but marvel at the ugliness of it all. Compared to the charm and the intense vitality that imbues older objects and structures, ours is a deeply impoverished world. I marvel, with indignation bordering on outrage, that we can live in such an ugly world after thousands of years of advances in material technology. Are we really so poor that we can afford no better? What was the point of all this sacrifice, all this destruction, if we are poorer in the finer things of life, the beautiful and the unique, than a Medieval peasant was? Looking at the artifacts of bygone times, I am impressed by their vibrancy, the intense quality of life within them. Today, almost everything we use, even if it is expensive, is cheap, reeking of phoniness, indifference, and salesmanship.

[Daniel Bassill]

Skip, the examples you post show that some people want a future that reflects their own values and they are willing to provide time, talent and massive amounts of cash to make that future a reality.  I spend most of every day looking for people who want a different future and are willing to be just as creative and commit just as much time, talent and dollars to making it a reality.

Other than people from the left and right spending billions on political campaigns I don't know of many with as strong a sense of purpose and commitment as the groups you keep pointing to, other than perhaps the Islamist radicals.

[Skip Zilla]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/154435/the_religious_right's_plot_t...

[Skip Zilla]

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/28/434196/fakegate-heartland-...

Bogus climate course “a source of embarrassment to the institution”
– Richard Littlemore, in a DeSmogBlog repost
An energy industry public relations man and lobbyist with no background in climate science has infiltrated Carleton University in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, teaching a course on climate change denial that other Carleton professors describe as “a source of embarrassment to the institution.”

[Skip Zilla]

http://forms.climaterealityproject.org/page/s/heartland

[Skip Zilla]

http://prwatch.org/news/2012/02/11272/alec-education-academy-launch...

[Skip Zilla]

http://kochbrothersexposed.com/kochcollege/

[Skip Zilla]

Thank you, Janet.

[Janet Navarro]

Just wanted to say thank you for continuing to add to this.  I've been "off the grid" a lot this summer -- taking a much needed break from the internet -- but now, look forward to catching up with what you have added.