The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum: The High Price of Education Reform (Episode I)
Thursday, 31 May 2012 14:49 By Dan Archer and Adam Bessie, Truthout | Graphic Journalism
"Education is the civil rights issue of our generation," presidential hopeful Mitt Romney announced in a recent press conference, where he also claimed that our public schools are in a state of "national emergency." Former Governor and former Bain Capital CEO Romney is now portraying himself as a civil rights hero, fighting against systemic racism and inequality that provides American children a "third world education." And the cause of this emergency? It's not the foreclosure crisis, persistent unemployment, nor the 21 percent childhood poverty rate - after all, the multimillionaire, who made $27 million in 2010, is "not very concerned about the very poor," as they're already taken care of. Rather, this grave civil rights injustice has been inflicted by excessively powerful "special interests" and "union bosses" that put their needs in front of the poor, minority children. And Romney plans to be the 1 percent's very own Martin Luther King Jr., a "champion of real education reform in America."
Welcome to other side of the looking glass, and into the Bizarro world of so-called "education reform" - an upside-down universe in which up is down, left is right and multimillionaire CEOs are civil rights heroes championing social justice, while public school teachers are corrupt fat cats, maintaining a status quo which oppresses students in poverty and racism.
Romney's speech on education would be hilarious - that is if anyone seemed to get the joke. Indeed, Romney's topsy-turvy view has become so commonplace in the corporate media - stated by both Republican and Democratic politicians, along with countless pundits and reporters themselves - that it verges on the cliché.
And so, we thought, what better way to capture the Bizarro world of education reform than with a serious work of journalism, disguised as a comic? Our three-part series - published over the next three months - is not intended to be funny, but rather, to pull back the progressive propaganda disguising the neoliberal, corporate nature of education reform. Our goal is to expose the free-market policies that really make up "education reform"; how these policies threaten our public education; who supports these policies; and, ultimately, what we might be able to do about the "Disaster Capitalism Curriculum."
After reading, we hope that you get the joke.
Adam Bessie
Adam Bessie is an assistant professor of English at a Northern California community college, where he teaches reading, writing and literature courses, including one devoted to the graphic novel. Before this, Adam was briefly a public high school teacher (and his wife currently teaches social studies in a public high school). He has published essays on education, comics and culture in a wide variety of sources, including Truthout, The Washington Post's "Answer Sheet" and Daily Censored. Though Adam has written about comics, including interviewing Dan Archer for a Truthout story on graphic journalism, this is his first comic. He is also finishing a chapter on fighting against the corporate takeover of public education in "Project Censored 2013" (Seven Stories Press), to be published this fall. Follow him on Twitter: @adambessie
Dan Archer
Dan Archer creates nonfictional, journalistic comics to offer a new perspective on human rights/social justice issues and give voice to stories that wouldn't otherwise be heard. In 2010, he was awarded the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists at Stanford University - the first comics journalist ever admitted to the program. His journalistic pieces have been published by American Public Media, Cartoon Movement, The London School of Economics, The Huffington Post, AlterNet, The Guardian UK, Yes! Magazine, Eye See magazine, Graphic Novel Reporter, World War 3 Illustrated, Presente, Operamundi (Brazil), Expressbuzz (India) and Independent World Report, among others. They have also been distributed by the International Organization for Migration, The Coalition for Immokalee Workers and Sparkplug comics. He has also worked with several publishers, including Penguin, Atlantic Books, Abrams Comic Arts (on a collaboration with Harvey Pekar), Random House and Harper Collins. He received his MFA in cartooning from the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont and currently co-teaches the graphic novel project through the Creative Writing Department at Stanford University.
- Romney's speech on education would be hilarious - that is if anyone seemed to get the joke.
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