Any Plutocrat worth his trust fund will tell you this whole Democratic process thing is a huge pain in the ass. Witness the egregious behaviors our fair Regents and Commissioner of State Education have endured at the hands and mouths of the unwashed masses since the "Listening Tour" took its act on the road. Instead of "Listening" like they were supposed to do these obnoxious parent proles and their clever snarky little teacher pals have assaulted the good Commissioner and his patrons Tisch and Bennett among other refined souls. They come with manifest grievance in their hearts and rage in their eyes. They speak their minds and blame the Commissioner and the Regents for a policy of inflexibility, disdain and aloofness. They question the connections to Pearson to InBloom and Gates. They harass the Commissioner for stashing his own issue far from the Common Core in a friendly nurturing Montessori school. They want answers, the want change. They want it now. In short they are being allowed too damned much rope.
For what remains of the Listening Tour the paradigm is going to be flipped. Henceforth, audience members will cheer enthusiastically for the Commissioner and his patrons. Forums will open with flowery and obsequious verbiage like this one in Brooklyn tonight where the speaker introduces King by saying: "He doesn't have to be here. He has an IVY LEAGUE degree but he CHOSE to be here with us." (swoon) Now if that don't fetch em I don't know Spackenkill. O.k. forget that one, didn't go so well. Instead of opening the doors to everyone in some misguided pose of egalitarianism the attendees will be hand picked to produce the desired effect. A good shaking of all the charter school limbs should drop sufficient damaged fruit to fill the venue with doe eyed acolytes clutching moronic signs like "Our Kids Can Hit Your Bar!" The Educlowns for Excellence tent should be emptied and all of its inhabitants will need to don their cutesy E4E lids and toddle in to take up space, be compliant and screech inane eipgrams like "We Want Your Feedback!!!" With a little planning and some blueblood luck the thing should look something like this
Onward to Buffalo where tribal warlords have run the place for decades. What they need is strong leadership and a firm hand. The best way to keep the trogs at arm's length will be simply to un-invite them. Lacking the moneyed base of NYC and its cornucopia of charters to pick from this one will take a little more careful stacking of bodies in the seats. Right off we'll appoint a notorious teacher and union hating parent and race baiter as moderator and allot him 50 of the 300 tickets to hand out to right minded friends and family. Next we'll gather in all the local Supers and tell them they each get 3 tickets. They will naturally distribute them with an eye on this year's evaluation, being careful to limit the riffraff, ne'erdowells and recidivists to an absolute minimum. That done there won't be many left over so we'll just have ourselves a little "lottery" for the remaining dozen or so. And to keep anyone from asking Montessori questions or Pearson questions or asking Tisch if her broom has trouble in the cold damp air here, we'll just pre-select the questions and none of these slobs will even get within 10 feet of an open mic. The moderators will read the questions and that, my friends will be that. We are hoping for civilized weather as several of the charters have offered to do a little dance for Commissioner King and the Regents. With luck we'll get to see something along these lines
You see these Listening Tours aren't as tricky as they appear. Once you realize the only way to hold a forum is when you've packed it with friendlies and consigned "the noisy ones" the "vocal minority" and the "special interests" to their own protest outdoors without nifty t.v. studio comforts the thing should be a breeze. Democracy is so over rated as a concept, especially when people stand a chance of lousing up some very serious profits. Here's to more friendly faces and fewer "noisies."
For what remains of the Listening Tour the paradigm is going to be flipped. Henceforth, audience members will cheer enthusiastically for the Commissioner and his patrons. Forums will open with flowery and obsequious verbiage like this one in Brooklyn tonight where the speaker introduces King by saying: "He doesn't have to be here. He has an IVY LEAGUE degree but he CHOSE to be here with us." (swoon) Now if that don't fetch em I don't know Spackenkill. O.k. forget that one, didn't go so well. Instead of opening the doors to everyone in some misguided pose of egalitarianism the attendees will be hand picked to produce the desired effect. A good shaking of all the charter school limbs should drop sufficient damaged fruit to fill the venue with doe eyed acolytes clutching moronic signs like "Our Kids Can Hit Your Bar!" The Educlowns for Excellence tent should be emptied and all of its inhabitants will need to don their cutesy E4E lids and toddle in to take up space, be compliant and screech inane eipgrams like "We Want Your Feedback!!!" With a little planning and some blueblood luck the thing should look something like this
Onward to Buffalo where tribal warlords have run the place for decades. What they need is strong leadership and a firm hand. The best way to keep the trogs at arm's length will be simply to un-invite them. Lacking the moneyed base of NYC and its cornucopia of charters to pick from this one will take a little more careful stacking of bodies in the seats. Right off we'll appoint a notorious teacher and union hating parent and race baiter as moderator and allot him 50 of the 300 tickets to hand out to right minded friends and family. Next we'll gather in all the local Supers and tell them they each get 3 tickets. They will naturally distribute them with an eye on this year's evaluation, being careful to limit the riffraff, ne'erdowells and recidivists to an absolute minimum. That done there won't be many left over so we'll just have ourselves a little "lottery" for the remaining dozen or so. And to keep anyone from asking Montessori questions or Pearson questions or asking Tisch if her broom has trouble in the cold damp air here, we'll just pre-select the questions and none of these slobs will even get within 10 feet of an open mic. The moderators will read the questions and that, my friends will be that. We are hoping for civilized weather as several of the charters have offered to do a little dance for Commissioner King and the Regents. With luck we'll get to see something along these lines
You see these Listening Tours aren't as tricky as they appear. Once you realize the only way to hold a forum is when you've packed it with friendlies and consigned "the noisy ones" the "vocal minority" and the "special interests" to their own protest outdoors without nifty t.v. studio comforts the thing should be a breeze. Democracy is so over rated as a concept, especially when people stand a chance of lousing up some very serious profits. Here's to more friendly faces and fewer "noisies."
Nailed it again!!
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After further review it appears the unnatural selection last night was even worse than I knew. These shitheads know they can't win fair fight so they are handicapping every possible angle they can think of to make it look like a Kim Jong Il parade or a Saddham Hussein election. That's how tyrants do it, they have to or they get put out of business. This bunch is still going down no matter how many tricks they play. Everyone knows the deal and they can't unring the Spackenkill Bell or even the Jamestown Bell for that matter. It's on.
DeleteAs the person who sat next to me at the forum stated at approximately 7:30 pm,"We should have made this a drinking game. Every time he passed the buck, we could have had a shot. We would have been drunk a long time ago." He managed to answer just about every question with the same answer, "That is due to NCLB or the local level." In addition, he contradicted himself. Early in the forum he said graduation rates were down, later in the forum he said they were up because of CCLS. At least the heckler provided a little excitement in this tightly controlled evening.
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