The Arizona Pricksters … And the Future of American Education

Get ready for some pissy-anger … the Pricksters are here … and they’re not a happy crew.

Nasty is the new mad.

Does anyone have the feeling that anger is the emotion “du jour” … because it’s gettin’ harder and harder to find a happy moment … anywhere? Especially in Arizona.

Colleges have made free speech not-so-free … and it’s best not to speak about it. Gender ain’t what it used to be …. and it’s better to play along.  Borders aren’t really borders … they’re  dream crushers … and it’s wise not get in the way of dreams.

So it’s no wonder that all of this madness … and outrage … would seep into the most important feature of a successful society … education. 

It’s all over, folks. It’s bygone time for education in America. The flash-point is here.

And right now, Arizona is the epicenter.

The old guard teachers … the Gray-Heads… have vanished. Gone extinct. Bum-rushed into retirement by reform madness. 

This is the day of Hipster-teachers The Pricksters. The new genius class that’s mad at stuff they don’t even understand.

And the irony is extra-thick because … they aren’t really teachers at all. They’re twenty-somethings.  Just over the teenagehood horizon.  But they’ve bull-horned themselves into curious positions of power … to lead a more curious crusade that’s not really about teaching at all.

Education is the new militancy battlefield.  And they’re The Pricksters. The new Snot Class. The Hoggites.

 

The NEA and the AFT are about to be conquered by a sparky batch of young agitators tutored in universities that specialized in upheaval and tradition-wrecking.  They’re going to do for education what they’ve done for scholarship …  gender … sexuality … free speech … and postponed adulthood. 

They’re going to wreck it. 

The old guard unionists  … the leaders of the NEA and the AFT … they’re in for the same fate as the classroom teachers they abandoned. They’re toast.  Because this new mob has no reverence for legacies or traditions. Or them.

The all-too-comfortable union leaders … like Randi Weingarten and Lily Garcia … politicized education. Now the Pricksters are here to radicalize it.  To apply some Saul Alinksy and change the face of public education forever.  Or until it collapses … along with the rest of society.

And this new militancy isn’t about scholarship … or the art of teaching.  Not about the magicians in the classroom. It’s not about kids … or parents. Or learning … or curiosity. None of that stuff.

It’s a about being mad. Outraged. And indignant.  Because  … well … that’s what they’ve been practicing for so long. It’s how they grew up … and what they majored in at college. And now it’s the only thing they’re very good at.

They’re not into creating anything at all.  They wouldn’t know how.

They’re into bashing and smashing … and tearing down. Because what’s existed before them is never good enough. Not for the new Know-It-Alls. Not for the Pricksters.

These beginner-adults … barely 300 months old … claim unusual wisdom. Hip-wiseness. A special intuition as to what education should become. Without giving it much thought at all …  because they’re really not teachers. They’re pretend-teachers.  And they’ve never thought much about teaching at all.  Because they’re Pricksters. 

And what is it they do best?  They wreck.

The reformists set the stage … and now the Pricksters are here to take over. 

Math has already been ruined … reading, too. Recess is dead. The arts are forgotten. Testing is the new Baal.  Childhood has been transformed.  And parental regency has been replaced by village idiocy.

And so The Pricksters have arrived to finish the job … to turn it into a militant moment.

Children are now tutored by touch-screens …. and assessed by computer programs that look like video-games.  Schools are totally scripted. And it’s not just about learning any more … its about accepting this and that … and feeling this way and that way. And thinking this and saying that. And doing this and not doing that. 

Programmed education. Down-loaded pedagogy. Socrates in a box. 

But none of that reform lunacy concerns The Pricksters.

No, no, no, no, no.

Their intent is to infiltrate, irritate, and instigate … and to rubble public education.

And they want  every teacher in Arizona to hand over their professional futures to 23 year-old snots like Noah Karvelis … the noisiest microphone-hog of the #RedforED Movement. 

And it’s happening in other places, too. West Virginia. Kentucky. Oklahoma. Breaking News! … add Colorado to the list! 

It’s an “Educational Spring” in lots of “red” states that seem targeted by the Progressive Left. To pry open noggins and bring new zealots into the liberal swarm. And education is the crow-bar.
Noah Karvelis … the post-pubescent Hoggite …. has carpet-bagged himself into the Arizona teacher pay-dispute and claims, “I’m not a Democratic plant “ …  Methinks, he doth protest too much.

“I’m an educator advocating for educators and students, so that we can have an open dialogue on solutions.”  No. He’s not an educator.

He thinks he is. But he’s not. There’s no such thing as a twenty-three year old educator.  If you’re a twenty-something, you’re an apprentice. An amateur. A trainee.

Noah Karvelis is  a twenty-three year old pain-in-the-ass … imported from liberal Illinois …   to hijack a cause in the name of … something. In reality, he’s just another Saul Alinksy poster-worshipper with a Che Guevera t-shirt collection. A progressive punk-ass.

Maria Syms nailed him perfectly … “Noah Karvelis and comrade Derek Harris, are political operatives who moved here within the last two years to use teachers and our children to carry out their socialist movement … ” 

Oh!

And it seems young Mister Derek Harris is especially pissy-mad: “… sharing pithy social media pearls such as ‘Republicans are the true sodomites’ and ‘Ronald Reagan — still dead’.”  Be sure to jot that down … and send it off to Socrates. 

Arizona teachers have been punked by a pair of post-pubescent smart-asses.

But they’re leading the chants in Arizona … telling teachers that they’ve been bashed and trashed. That they should be pissed because they’ve been dissed. And they’re both rhyming their way into the Hogg Hall of Fame.

And they screech that the last place teachers should be is back in their classrooms … because, well … that’s really a plantation  … and they’re the slaves. Where have we heard that shit before?

Karvelis has the lingo down pat. Corporations gotta pony up.  Twenty percent across-the-board pay hikes. Annual raises. More money poured into classrooms. And don’t forget about the bus drivers … and the ladies with the hair-nets in the cafeteria.  Gotta pile that equality stuff high and deep. 

And never a worry about who’s gonna pay for all of this. Not a second thought about rummaging through every pocket in the state … NOPE! … ’cause money grows on trees. That’s what he learned in that expensive college someone else paid for.

Got the picture?

The fist-pumping … the activist lingo … the seething antagonism. It’s like Berkeley comes to Phoenix. How chic-rad.

But the Pricksters are not the popular Robin Hoods they imagine themselves to be. 

Lots and lots of teachers aren’t falling in line … and the paying public has wisened up fast … because they already ponied-up very generous pay-raises.

But … enough is never enough. Not for this crowd.

Now, it seems, they’ve over-shot the moment. Went too far. And their hyper-indignation has revealed who they are … and their real agenda.  And no one should really be surprised.

So the newest hashtag gag-fest has begun … and some Arizona teachers are being ordered around by a 23 year-old college punk who is a year or so removed from midnight pizza runs with his dorm buddies.

How long will it be before the AFT and the NEA are commandeered by Karvelis and the Sesame Street gang? Not long at all. Not in this weird moment in American education.

There’s no sympathy here for Randi Weingarten or Lily Garcia … or any other sell-out unionistas who let this reform madness careen out of control.  They set stage for these Pricksters. And it seems fitting that they’ll be eaten by their own. 

But now they’re our problem. 

And there’s great anxiety for Arizona … and beyond … because this could be zero-hour for American education … and what The Pricksters have in store for education … and for our children …  is extra scary stuff.

We know what a mess they can make.  We’ve seen this act before.

Denis Ian

H/T Sandy Hume