Education and Class

In the State of the Union Address last night, Bush proposed a new “Pell Grants for Kids” program that would provide $300 million for poor chidren to attend private and religious schools, just as the “regular” Pell Grant program has enabled poor college students to “reach their full potential” via tuition support.

And the blogosphere has begun to weigh in:

The Mirror of Justice applauds the program as potentially stemming the closure of inner-city faith-based schools due for “financial reasons”, schools that he sees as providing vital alternative to children in chronically under-performing schools.

Other bloggers are far more critical:

The Carpet Bagger Report notes the obvious: that this is a voucher program that can’t be called a voucher program because the term “vouchers” does not poll well. He continues:

it’s ironic that Bush talked about the success of the Pell Grant program in helping “low-income college students realize their full potential,” given that his administration has repeatedly scaled back funding for regular ol’ Pell Grants.

The International Reading Association draws on the NYT’s reporting (as does The Education Policy Blog) that critics of the proposal wonder why, if NCLB is so successful, poor kids would need a program like this.

Greg Palast notes that given that there are 15 million poor children in this country, the $300 million for this program would provide only $20 per child. Accordingly,

George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

And The Engaged Intellectual asks whether this new initiative is intended to divert attention from the failures in NCLB in her scathing critique of each.

I’ll compile more here as bloggers continue to weigh in.

All eyes are on Iowa caucuses this week. I’ve read for years about the homespun democracy of the caucuses, where neighbors sit down together to deliberate face to face.

I had no idea that the process disenfranchises entire groups of citizens.

According to this article in today’s NYT, only those who can be physically present in the early evening can participate. Left out are night workers in restaurants, convenience stores, WalMart, or hospitals; parents without childcare; active military; or the elderly who find the frozen winter streets of Iowa treacherous. All of these are excluded from the process of selecting presidential candidates (and, if we trust the pundits, from the process of “building momentum” for the next primaries or even ending a campaign outright).

How is it that we can teach the children of night-shift workers — many of whom are likely to be workers in low wage service industries — that their voice also matters in a democracy, when formal processes so casually exclude them?

Robin Toner’s essay in today’s NYT suggests that economic populism will be a key theme in this presidential campaign. At stake, argues Toner, are questions of who stands with “the people” against the powerful elites in these times of growing inequalities and stagnant wages.

Republicans have charged that wealthy Democrats can’t vow to change the economy while simultaneously profiting from the status quo.

Toner reminds us that Ted Kennedy faced similar charges when he first ran for the Senate:

[W]hen Mr. Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1962, he was attacked by his opponent as being privileged, unaccomplished, and for having “never worked for a living.” A burly worker approached him one day and said, “Ted, me boy, I understand you’ve never worked a day in your life.”

He paused, then added, “You haven’t missed a thing.”

Toner concludes: “Champions of the working class, in short, are often made, not born”.

But are any of the current candidates honestly champions of working class? What exactly does it mean to be a champion of the working class in the new service and knowledge economies? What education policies are now in the best interests of working class kids?