Obama's Unfortunate Hoop Dreams
"I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history." So said Barack Obama upon naming Arne Duncan his nominee for Secretary of Education.
There is no doubt that when it comes to hoops, Duncan has game. The man stands six feet, five inches. He was an Academic All-American baller at Harvard University and played professionally in Australia for four years. Long before becoming "Chief Executive Officer" of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan put in time in the United States minor league hoops circuit with teams like the Rhode Island Gulls and New Jersey Jammers.
No question, if I was on the court choosing teams, I'd pick Duncan in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, we aren't selecting a pick up squad. What is at stake is the future of public education. And when it comes to our schools Duncan's record brands him as a scrub. Take this critique as something who taught in DC Public Schools for four years and whose wife still slogs through the crumbling infrastructure of our schools. If you believe that "we can't just throw money" at schools, that unions are a block to reform, that the military should have open access to our kids, and that charter schools are the greatest thing to happen to education since corporal punishment, then you will probably disagree with what will follow and Arne Duncan should warm the cockles of your heart.
Duncan might not have fulfilled his dreams of scoring twenty a game, but he has converted roughly twenty Chicago public schools a year over to private operations. He has rejected many of Chicago's "Local School Councils", loves the stultifying test taking used to judge national standards, and stands firmly with the notion that teachers at poorly-testing schools should be canned. Duncan has also turned a blind eye to addressing a study from his alma mater, Harvard University, that Chicago's Public School's are "only a few percentage points from an experience of total apartheid for Black students."
But the experience of Chicago teacher Jesse Sharkey are more damning that anything I could write. Sharkey teaches at Senn High School where students, parents, and teachers organized together in a high profile campaign to keep the city from installing a Naval Academy inside the school. As Sharkey wrote, "We asked Duncan to postpone the decision to put the military school at Senn. Duncan's answer was a classic. He said: 'I come from a Quaker family, and I've always been against war. But I'm going to put the Naval Academy in there, because it will give people in the community more choices.' "He's just the kind of person who will look at you with a straight face and tell you that, as a person with a pacifist background, he supports a military school."
Well, at least we know Duncan will fit in well in Washington, where personal conviction means little when up against political objectives. (See Warren, Rick.)
Make no mistake about it: I like the fact that hoops will be part of the culture of the new White House. Duncan, AG nominee Eric Holder, National Security advisor General James Jones and ambassador to the UN nominee Susan Rice all have a serious basketball pedigree. And as someone who grew up in New York City playing hoops only slightly less that I breathed, I strongly relate to the passage in Obama's 1995 book Dreams From My Father, where he wrote, "I could play basketball, with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited ability. . . On the basketball court I could find a community of sorts, with an inner life all its own. It was there that I would make my closest white friends, on turf where blackness couldn't be a disadvantage."
For me as well, in a divided New York City, the basketball court was where walls felt like they could come down. But I have far more faith in the sacred power of hoops than I do in an education secretary who presides over an apartheid system and attacks teachers and public education in the name of reform. If Duncan tries to bring that into my lane, I won't be the only person ready to smack that junk back into the third row.
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Dave
Outstanding article - and another clear-cut example that when you look beneath the surface on many of Obama's selections-decisions-stances-and beliefs you find another corporate centrist on the road to kingdom come. He has taken the reigns of the Empire and continues the never-ending march of Manifest Destiny.
As an avid basketball fan and pickup player nothing would please me more than to see the blowling alley in the whitehouse converted to a presidential parkay, it would be yet another signifier of Obama's uniqueness as it pertains to his socio-cultural experience, which is parly due to his ethnicity, as well as relative youth. The president of the United States KNOWS WHAT HIP HOP IS, think about that, it is a watershed moment in and of itself. However cool he may be though it has become readily aparent that he is not the closet progressive the left had hoped for. His appointment of Duncan is a prime example. Notice that they both went to Harvard, a fact which appears to pre-qualify people for office in the United States. You don't go to Harvard and Yale to learn how to undermine the system but how to function sucessfully within its confines. Noam Chomsky described the ivy league as the "finishing schools of the elite" when he went there the the 1950's and changes have occured but mostly on the superficial and not fundamental level.
PS - jskillz, i'm sure the peer article is forthcoming, and even if it isn't Mr. Zirin can write about whatever he pleases, so chill.
Yes, the Peer article is certainly on its way but I can't imagine JSkillz will be happy with what I have to say.
I warned people from the outset that it would be impossible for President Obama to live up to the grand expectations. Beneath the platitudes and flowery oratory, he gave little in the way of specifics during his campaign. Whatever it was you thought he'd do was probably your wishful thinking and not a specific promise on his part because he gave few specifics. (As any good politician would have.) I've always had a wait and see perspective and now, thanks to Dave, I know a little more about his choices. But what the heck, he's still preferable to Bush or McCain/Palin.
By the way, what the heck is Steve talking about? Can somebody clarify that comment for me? I need to know if I should be pissed off or offended.
The public school system in the U.S. is fatally flawed...there is no question about that. President Obama's campaign was like a diet pill commercial, we thought that if we bought the product, the weight would just go away. Well it's certainly not true, if we read the fine print, we have to couple it with diet and exercise. So although, many may criticize his choices as not being fit, as Americans we have to dig a little deeper. What we gained from Mr. Obama is faith and hope...now we must work together to get the results, stop looking for Washington elites to "show" us the way and realize WE ARE THE WAY.
Did our President have a magic wand? No. Did our School systems get better after he was elected? Hell no. But are we having open dialoge about issues? Yes. Are we finally as a nation concerned with equal education opportunities and with leveling the playing field? Yes.
Thats the change the matters, now we have to get to work!
Can't wait for the Shahar Peer article.
That was a stand up move by UAE. It has nothing to do with the Jewish aspect J-no-skillz....it's got everything to do with the actions of the country.
I am a teacher at a continuation high school whose students have been kicked out of all the other schools in the area and I don't disagree with all of Duncan's points. Actually, I don't really think there should be that much federal control anyway, but I doa gree with some of Duncan's points. I don't think standardized testing should affect a teacher's job, but I do think tests help us know where a student is academically. You should be at a 4th grade level when you get to 4th grade. Although I do disagree about teachers being fired due to low scores, teacher unions do have too much power and there are many incompetent teachers who have no fear for tehir jobs. That is a fact. Also, although more money helps, that is not the only answer to better education. There needs to be better leadership in administration. Once there are better leaders and ideas for a school, then money can go to the right places. During the campiagn, Obama's education plan was the main thing I disagreed with him on, so this really shouldn't be ashock to anyone. the point is, some of what this guy believes is wron, but he does have some decent points as well. One mroe thing, concerning the chomsky quote, didn't he go to Hravard? so isn't it contradictory for him to criticize his own education which opened many doors? As Ben Franklin once said, you go to Harvard a boob, you leave Harvard a boob. So I dont disagree with chomsky, I jsut think its funny the message is coming from an ivy leaguer.
Conspiracy Brother - What comment are you talking about? My post seems fairly self-explanatory...
Great post! Just wanted to let you know you have a new subscriber- me!
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