A long long time ago,
I can still remember how
The teachers used have a prayer
And I knew that Betsy Devos
Was more than just a deadly foe
And the senate didn’t seem to care
But February made me shiver
With every tweet the twit did twitter
Nazis on my news feed
Stories so bad I couldn’t read
I can’t remember if I cried
When Pence broke the vote that had been tied
But something rocked me deep inside,
The day Education died.
Bye, bye PS 145
Children in the inner cities will need money to thrive
But folks with dough, or at least those who are white
Sayin’ my kids are gonna be fine
My kids are gonna be fine
Did you go to a public school
And did you grow to vote for an Orange fool
Did bible really tell you to?
Should we separate the church and state?
Should the banks control the country’s fate?
Does Steve Bannon really want to cleanse all of you?
Well I know it’s bad and getting worse
When science’s replaced with bible verse
The nation was confused
Alternative facts were used
I was CIS gendered privileged white guy
With a steady job and a happy life
But others would struggle to survive
The day the education died
I started singing
Bye, bye PS 145
Children in the inner cities will need money to thrive
But folks with dough, or at least those who are white
Sayin’ my kids are gonna be fine
My kids are gonna be fine
Now for four years we’re stuck with this clown
And if we are not all to drown
Then all united we must be
For while out country’s torn apart
A stiff resistance we must start
To again be the la-and of the free
So while he tweets of SNL
And dooms his voters straight to hell
Our message must be yelled
Our freedoms can’t be felled
And while Conway talks of Bowling Green
We fear attacks that can’t be seen
And Sean Spicer says we all are mean
The day educated died
We were singin’
Bye, bye PS 145
Children in the inner cities will need money to thrive
But folks with dough, or at least those who are white
Sayin’ my kids are gonna be fine
My kids are gonna be fine
Brilliant, fantastic, and painfully true.
So disheartening that $9.5 million in donations and no experience — zero, none — puts you in charge of the nation’s educational system.
Now she’s eager to destroy it.
The senate should be ashamed.
Excellent. Sad but excellent. Plan to repost. Thanks for sharing.
Very well done and painfully true however I’m not sure it belongs on a Mets forum.
Brian saw my post on Facebook and wanted to put it up.
Thank you…excellence
David,
My respect for you, your writing and your insight keeps growing. And a special thanks to the great Mets360 editor(s) for allowing this post.
The times they are a changing. Get on board or you’ll be left behind!
Editor’s Note – Dear Milo or Mookie or Jerry K or Popeye or any other alias you’ve used – I don’t care what handle that you use but please pick one and one only and stick with it.
Well said. Well said.
The only good thing about this is that her appointment will drive Education in America towards being a central (galvanizing) election issue in this country two years from now.
can only hope.
#resist
Hear, hear Mr. Groveman. Well said. Several years ago, probably around 2009, my son asked what it would take for me to renounce my allegiance to the Mets, which has been profound and resolute since about 1960. Even as a six-year-old, I was following the creation of the organization and two years later attended my first game at the Polo Grounds. In those dark days of 2008-2011, the name Trump was thrown around a bit as a potential buyer. I told my son that Trump ownership of the Mets would end my relationship with the team I have rooted for all my life. However, my loss would have proven far less costly to the country as a whole than what we are currently seeing demonstrated each day. The truth has all but disappeared. To make matters worse, on the very same day the substantively unqualified DeVos was confirmed, the McConnell-led Senate shut off a speech quoting Coretta Scott King. We all better stand up, take notice and get proactive like we did opposing the Vietnam War. Time is of the essence.
The strawmen are coming out everywhere today. I bet you wouldn’t be saying these things if you lived in an urban ghetto and were forced to attend a school that has been failing for generations.
Stick to baseball Dave. Leave this stuff to the economists.
Amen. How utterly ridiculous to use this site for a political rant. I used to like coming here, but I’ll be sure not to return. Enjoy your snowflake safe space.
Isn’t this a Mets Blog Site? Do we really need to see another “political hack want to be” ramblings? Are you really that happy with our current education system or are you still just upset that Trump won the election and anything he does or who he appoints you will take to social to complain about.
Dean, I can see your point about the website and while many regular contributors to this site didn’t want Trump, everyone has an opinion. Although I don’t know enough about Betsy DeVos to have an opinion on her, many of the teachers I know that we’re fanatic Trump supporters are bemoaning this lady.
I don’t know why, and asked one of them on Facebook to explain, but no reply yet. I actually would love to hear all the reasons this lady is making even a couple of Republicans jump ship.
Its self-preservation. Teacher unions and public school districts feel threatened by school choice because it will end their monopoly on education. Like any other industry, a monopoly foments complacency and lack of accountability to the consumer. Any accusation that school choice is malicious toward those in poverty is evidence of total ignorance on the topic; in reality, school choice disproportionately benefits the poor. Under the current system, rich people already have school choice!
It is important to note that this is not an issue that is evenly divided along party lines. Many Democrats, especially those with urban origins like Cory Booker, are advocates for school choice. But because the wealthy WASPs in the party mainstream (Blumenthal, Schumer, Warren, etc.) need to appear as anti-Trump as possible, pro-school choice Democrats need to be quiet for awhile.
Honestly, I was very surprised when Trump nominated DeVos, because most of his cabinet selections are crap. Knowing Trump’s history, it would not surprise me if she is used to implement a cronyist agenda rather than one of genuine school choice. But blind partisanship should not take priority over good policy, especially in a “no risk-high gain” scenario like this. Because most of the relevant policy decisions in education are made at the state and local level, DeVos can’t do much damage even if she turns out to be bad.
Anyway, I mean no disrespect toward David or anyone else. I have been reading this website for years, and the quality of writers like David make this website stand out among the rest. I’ve never made a comment because I didn’t think that my knowledge of baseball was strong enough to contribute anything to the conversation, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that my first posts on this site are about politics.
I appreciate you making a very thought provoking and dignified response. I would like to take some time to put together an equally well thought out response sighting arguments on the other side of the issue. I will try to find some time to put these together.
David and 1999, thank you for taking time to educate me on the current chaos. I, too, am a product of the NYC public education system and upon coming to Texas at 38 years old, I was appalled. The students here, or maybe now, don’t seem to have a solid foundation – people raised here say that we are 49th of 50 in testing for a good reason. When I interview cashiers and ask them to add 3 numbers, add 8.25% sales tax and give me the change from a $50 bill, the answered make me run away. Not to mention the spelling on the applications…
I don’t have children yet either and have a niece and two nephews so far, 14 and 1 yr. old. I would like to hope that the system gets fixed rather than overhauled because I heard tons of complaints a few years ago over this “Common Core” teaching method.
Thanks again gentlemen for the explanations!
The first problem with charter schools is exclusivity. A charter school, good or bad, can only take in X number of students. If you have more applications for the school than seats, the school must choose who gets to go. Some charter schools decide by academic merit (like colleges), some by need and others by lottery. If the charter school is the better place for your son or daughter to be educated and your child is not accepted, why is that? Some charter schools cherry pick their students, avoiding students with disabilities. That’s another issue all together.
Public schools must provide facilities that can accommodate everyone. Elevators and chair lifts for the physically handicapped and special education services for the learning impaired. Charter schools aren’t held to the same requirements and therefore get to be selective regarding who gets to go.
“School choice disproportionately benefits the poor.” Assuming you put charter schools in neighborhoods with failing public schools you are only exacerbating the problem. That charter takes some of the students from that district (the educationally elite, the physically fit or randomly) and they take the allotment of federal funding per student from that district as well. The students that are excluded from that charter school have less money for their teachers, programs and facilities and those failing schools only get worse.
Next point, teachers. Those districts that lose students to charter schools, cut budgets and thereby cut teachers. Well… those teachers can just get jobs in the charter system, right? Sure, only the charter system doesn’t need to abide by the messy contractual obligations negotiated by teacher’s union for years. They are their own entities.
Wait David, why should teachers not have to live in the same awful cut-throat world that corporate America has left us with? Why should they get summers off? Why should they get pensions? Why should they have unions? Perhaps we all should have those things. I digress.
So charter schools kill unions and hurt the public schools greatest in the areas that are at greatest risk. They can cherry pick students and are not scientifically proven to actually benefit students.
The root of the issue is that Betsy Devos wants to treat schools like a business. America needs to remember that business people caused the last major financial problems and stop trying to run everything like a business. John Kasich equated charter schools and school choice to choosing your pizza parlor. John Oliver pointed out the problem with this, “Give a kid a s—– pizza, you’ve f—– up their day. Treat a kid like a s—- pizza, you could f— up their entire life.”
I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not a parent, I don’t plan to become one. I feel this way because I credit my fine public education for much of my success, I feel this way because I fear for my nephews and niece, I feel this way because my parents were educators and school administrators and I feel this way because I love my country and feel that what Betsy Devos wants is not what is best for it. I also try to always support every school budget vote that I can possibly vote for.
I hope that I was clear and didn’t misspeak or come off incorrectly. I don’t really want to get into a debate. I’m simply trying to lay out some of the points from the opposite side of the argument. I hope I did as good a job as 1999.
Just read some articles from credible news sources.
To respond to a couple points:
1) This was not written for Mets360. I posted this on my personal Facebook page in response to Betsy Devos being confirmed and Brian Joura asked if I would mind it being put up on the site.
2) This isn’t a political rant. This is a parody of a song. I’m a creative writer (published), playwright and screenwriter. I express myself creatively.
3) I am still upset Trump won. I am upset he was the Republican nominee, I am upset he was a legitimate candidate and I’m upset that enough of the elecorate seem to agree with him. I have been horrified by almost every action he has done. That said, as the child of educators, I find Devos particularly repugnant in her new role. She is not qualified for the position, she proved that in her hearings, and she is against the very body she now controls.
4) It is really humorous to me that someone would throw a temper tantrum about someone else expressing their feelings and leave… then call them a snowflake. Do you not see the irony?
5) TexasGus, I can get you pages of reasons if you like. I’d prefer to do that without adding it to the comments section.
6) 1999, I am not an economist. I am still going to continue to write what is in my heart. If Brian or anyone else wants to share that on the blog, I won’t stop them.
It’s just a song parody, and a good one at that. Original Met could choose not to read it, not to visit this appropriately separate section of the site, or he could made reasoned arguments. Instead he called you a snowflake and ran off.
This is “Amish Paradise” all over again
Devos appears unqualified to me, but I can’t get too charged up about an Education Secretary. I don’t know the date the education died but i’m old enough to know that for public education in areas that are not wealthy (at least solidly middle class) the expiration date is over 40 years. And over that time this country has seen Liberal, Conservative, and Moderate federal governments – and no change.
Devos won’t help, but you can’t kill something that is already dead.
Overall I see a lot that scares me (we have a batshit crazy Commander in Chief!) but an unqualified Education Secretary is low on the list.