Shocked, I Tell You

To learn that morale is horrible in public schools:

“I was stunned---I was stunned---that we were suspending and expelling four-year-olds,” Duncan said at a Washington D.C. elementary school, where he and Holder discussed findings of the latest Civil Rights Data Collection by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The survey showed that nearly 5,000 preschool students were suspended in the 2011-12 academic year.

“This preschool suspension issue is mind-boggling,” Duncan said. “And we need to as a nation find a way to remedy that tomorrow.”

Don't know what else he would expect after we've spent the last 30 years demonizing teachers' unions and driving away experienced educators, starving public education of funding, steering public moneys into underperforming charter schools and turning the public schools into dumping grounds for poor and underprivileged kids. Put another way: what's happening at school is merely a reflection of what's happening across a broad swath of American society, i.e., state-sanctioned violence against its own citizens. It really has got to stop, but no one should be the least bit surprised by it. It's systemic.

---Baron V