The new administration has sent many folks into a threaten state of emergency regarding education. Those in urban centers, former industrial strongholds have experienced policy changes over the past fifty years. America has a transformation from an industrial era to the present information-technology era. In Detroit despite the progressive downtown, midtown section with four professional sport teams the duality of education and employment haunts the final moment of a comeback. Comeback? Detroit once a city of near two million citizens is now a resemblance of The Republic of Biafra. Distinctly two separate segregated ways of life. Education, public education, is barely alive in the state of Michigan. The racial and economic disparity is beyond frightening in African-American schools in Michigan. Political pressure, declining populations leaving cities like Flint, and Detroit devastated. The economic fallout and the drastic decline of the auto manufacturing in Michigan left a void that has yet allowed poorly educated, non-skilled laborers to have wages that paid well allowing them to be part of the once strong working middle class. Ancient history that is not coming back, not never. The death of public education is soon with the new policies pushed forth by the new Secretary of Education who strongly advocates vouchers. The historical tradition giving any citizen an opportunity to improve their basic education to be able to function, vote. An informed citizen base that could make solid decisions for the nation.
Today, many Americans are waiting for the good ole days to return. They are gone, forever. Traditional public education once demanded basic skills of reading, writing and technology. The idea of brute manual work is dead. There is no automobile manufacturing to go back to in the 60s. This is a new day, new way of teaching, learning and the expectations of the common person has become fodder for political warfare. The case for unions has lost badly regardless of which side one favors. In the State of Michigan we realized that the birth place of a powerful ally of the common person has been defeated. Politicians, especially conservative Republican lawmakers defeated the unions. Teachers unions have been all but disappeared in the last decade. The employment of Americans blamed foreign workers only to learn that robots took more jobs than anyone. Unions could not stop the bleeding of jobs. The so-called Right to Work has shut off the funding of unions in their traditional way of taking dues directly from checks. Outlawed, banished, and ridiculed by a collective group of politicians, new dissent from grass root anti-union sentiments demonized unions. In Detroit once a prosperous big city the unions demanded political attention in every election especially presidential elections. With big unions, faith-based institutions and working class folks politicians courted the voting working middle class. Then the change of post industrial America gave way to the new technology, defining of a new type of education and robotics, neoliberalism, and greed began to reset American jobs, and public education.
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