Racist school openly rejects "liberal" teachers

I guess America's schools have finally decided there's no point in trying to hide their right-wing bias anymore. Now a charter school in Oakland, California, is coming right out and admitting it.

Typically, a charter school is a school that is publicly funded but otherwise operates as if it is a private school. Although charter schools aren't exclusively conservative-themed, the movement gained height under conservatives trying to "prove" that private schools are superior to public schools. So far, however, charter schools have failed to prove anything of a sort, as the success of charter schools varies wildly from school to school.

American Indian Public Charter School is a school in Oakland that in the early 2000s was taken over by some right-wing nobody. This man has used racial and ethnic insults to refer to students of various backgrounds. (The San Francisco Chronicle once reported that he called a student a "lazy Mexican.") One parent called this school's harsh regime "a dictatorship."

The school recruits teachers that (in the school's words) "believe in free market capitalism." The school's recruitment pitch is that "ultra liberal zealots" are among those who "need not apply."

One of the school's selling points is that the staff "does not preach or subscribe to the demagoguery of tolerance." One student was punished with extra schoolwork because he watched President Obama's inauguration.

Well, at least this school isn't hiding its right-wing orthodoxy like so many other schools do.

This school is getting public money? In California, no less - a state with a budget deficit so deep that the governor is about to shut down the welfare system and most state parks.

Instead of cutting off important programs, why doesn't the state stop giving public money to ridiculous schools like this one?

Probably because the media appears ready to whip itself into a frenzy favoring the school. Trust me, it's a longtime pattern.

The school's unbending discipline is in some ways little different from some private schools - such as its use of detention for students who skip questions on their homework. The school seems to perform well on standardized tests (America's national religion) - but the school admits teaching to the test, not to the student.

These are features I'm all too familiar with, and to say that I'm unimpressed by schools with a similar environment is an understatement. I attended a Catholic school that had some similar practices but just wasn't as flamboyant about it. And believe me, I have nothing but bad words for my experiences there.

At American Indian Public Charter School, the Oakland school in this story, students are required to monotonically recite a mission statement in which they vow to be "productive members in a free market capitalist society." This sounds as cult-like as anything I experienced in school.

If I lived in California, I'd be furious at my tax dollars funding a cult that was run for most of the decade by a man who regularly used a racial slur to refer to students. Especially when state parks are about to be closed for lack of money.

And to think this school is just a few miles from Berkeley and San Francisco. If schools have become so right-wing in the Bay Area, think what it's like elsewhere.