Gaslighting & Turnaround Schools
I am currently working in a turnaround school. A turnaround school is a public school that has been deemed "failing" by policy makers. The policy makers inflict draconian, fascist measures on such schools in an effort to turn them around - aka - increase test scores. If they don't increase test scores they bring the hammer down harder by firing teachers, handing the school over to a charter, or closing the school, and so on.
Turnaround schools are not failing. Rather, the truth is that the policies are the failures. The racist, classist, sexist policies are based on lies and false realities meant to create compliant worker bees who do as they are told to increase test scores, while ultimately allowing the corporate reformers to push forward other measures which increase profit, increase the privatization of our public schools, and finally, increase the power of the privileged. That's it in a nutshell.
However, the factual process of turnaround in no way reveals to the public how this brutal takeover goes down. How to articulate the process has been at the forefront of my mind for the last five months as I found myself thrown head first into this madness. And indeed, it is a madness like no other - a combination of insane asylum and prison. As I tried to articulate it to a dear friend of mine, she said, "Peggy, you are being gaslighted." I had never heard the term gaslighting. I immediately began to read about it. I owe much gratitude to Peg with Pen: Gaslighting & Turnaround Schools:
