The Two Andrew Jacksons

President Donald Trump has described Andrew Jackson as the "People's President, a man who shocked the establishment like an earthquake." Trump has even ventured the opinion that if Jackson had been the president at the time of the Civil War, it never would have happened. The reporter, Machael Kazin, has written that Jackson, like Trump, "stirred a fury of populist discontent directed at the country's financial and political elites and sought to refashion America's political geography -- transforming a so-called 'era of good feelings' into a period of heightened partisan and regional conflict." [1]

Trump has suggested that maybe in connection with  taking down Confederate statues and monuments, we might consider doing the same to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, because they were both slave owners. Jackson owned more than 100 slaves and favored expanding the "peculiar institution" into Texas and beyond.

Kazin writes that "In the service of pursuing Jefferson's vision of the United States as an 'empire of liberty,' Jackson conquered lands occupied by people of another race and built the world's first mass political party as a coalition that preserved chattel slavery. Yet as a self-made man who railed against the well-born, he also persuaded white farmers and wage earners --both immigrant and native-born that a lack of privilege should not prevent them from thriving." "One cannot appreciate Jackson, the tough-talking populist and partisan, without understanding that his popular appeal was as much due to his defense of slavery, his years of killing Native Americans, and his simplistic grasp of economics as it was to his rhetorical defense of white workers and small farmers."

Thus, by adopting Andrew Jackson as his presidential role model, President Trump embraces both the bad and the good.

Contrasting Education Reforms
Gary Anderson, professor of educational policy and leadership at New York University, penned an article in the June 17, 2017 Albuquerque Journal, in which he chastised the Journal editorial for applauding Hannah Skandera's "accomplishments" as New Mexico's secretary of education. Skandera was no friend of unionized teachers and was an ardent proponent of high-takes testing of students and teachers. After years of being only the "acting" secretary of education, a reluctant state legislature finally removed "acting" from her title in the past year. Skandera recently resigned, with no stated reason why.

Below are Anderson's "research-based 21st-century reforms:"
#Community schools with wrap-around services, not quasi-markets and charter schools;

#Controlled choice programs that seek desegregated schools, not market-based choice that results in schools stratified by class and race;

#Restorative justice approaches to discipline that reduce suspensions, not overly punitive, zero tolerance, suspension-oriented discipline;

#Dual language programs, not English-only approaches to English language learners;

#Authentic performance-based assessments, not high-stakes paper and pencil tests; and

#Social movement unionism, allied with communities, that fight for research-based social and educational reforms, not industrial union models that focus only on bread-and-butter issues, important as those are given teachers' salaries in New Mexico.

Footnote
[1] Machael Kazin, "The Two Andrew Jacksons," The Nation, August 28/September 4, 2017.