Duncan gets ideas from China

We love you, Mr. President. But it looks like you may have another Cabinet member to fire.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan now says the United States should add yet more days to its ever-expanding school year.

Because we've all seen how well that's worked over the past 25 years. (That's more sarcasm, everyone!)

Actually, Duncan's rationale for his stance is that...China has done it already. Well, China has busted labor unions and imprisoned journalists too, so I guess that's next.

Nice to know America has an Education Secretary who takes cues from authoritarian overseas dictatorships.

The issue runs deeper though. The most vocal proponents of the idea are Big Business - whose primary concern is creating cheap, docile labor to be exploited in the gloBULL marketplace. Duncan complains that American children are "at a competitive disadvantage" - but one has to ask why the hell we're competing against oppressive regimes in the first place.

I also find it interesting that prior to the Reagan revolution, we learned more in school even though the school year was 5 weeks shorter.

It takes a lot of gall for Arne Duncan to have grown up in the era of the 9-month calendar only to try to deny it to future generations - just so Corporate America can Make more Money off their backs. Somehow I doubt Duncan's proposal would include any more civics classes. If it did, children might actually learn what the "standards" chase is really about.

Already, 30% of American high school students are pushed out of school before graduation - and there's a direct correlation between the burgeoning pushout rate and the increase in the number of days in school. Thus, Duncan's proposal doesn't just foster raw greed. It also heightens exclusion.

Expanding the school year would also be a grave setback in the fight against bullying. Given America's filthy school buildings, it would also increase disease.

It's hard to see how anyone expects to be taken seriously when they demand a longer school year. It's even harder to see why anybody actually takes them seriously.

I think it's time for a federally imposed cap on the number of days in school, because there's already too many states and communities that have in effect made our young people mere cogs in the corporatist wheel. Our children have a right to be free of exploitation - and a right to an education system that empowers, not enslaves.

In the meantime, my support for a nationwide boycott of school grows. I'm almost 36, and I'm less enchanted by the state of American schools now than I was in grade school.

(Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/27/education.school.year)