You run England's academies and free schools under a system of one-man rule that Mussolini would have envied, so I was surprised that you have been so quiet over the last few weeks. A key part of your empire has been falling apart. Aren't you responsible for the chaos around the resignation of the headteacher at Pimlico primary, the financial irregularity at King's science academy, the disaster of Al-Madinah and your ministers juggling with the stats over free schools' supposed success?

Again, you seem to be lying doggo on a Sunday Times story that there are plans to get rid of "soft" GCSEs like law, media studies, art, drama and PE. Can I tell you how arrogant this way of launching policy looks to teachers, parents and students? I suspect that you and a tiny group of like-minded folk draw up a plan; you choose which newspaper you'll leak it to; an anonymous spokesperson – coming ideally from a sub-committee – briefs a journalist and a "policy" is launched. You'll remember you released your first ideas concerning GCSEs through the Daily Mail, though on that occasion you put yourself in the front line by doing the briefing in person. Then, when the wheels fell off, it looked as if you were in the driving seat. You've learned from that boob, so now, your GCSE revolution has been handed out through the tradesmen's entrance: Ofqual did it – looking for all the world as if you weren't indoors telling them to.

Does it occur to you that this process is totalitarian and that you behave as if the hundreds of thousands of teachers, parents, students and academics involved in education are your vassals? Parliament has betrayed us by ceding to your office the right to behave like this. The army of political scientists and journalists who fine-tune themselves in the art of analysing power seem indifferent to this coup d'état. Sad to say, your Labour predecessors were complicit in this. I detect a political immaturity here: when, at the heart of British government, unaccountable power is grabbed, provided this is done by people with the right accents and degrees from the right places, the politicians, journalists and academics who share this culture hardly blink.

So, a major change in the fabric of secondary education is enacted without a full marshalling and discussion of evidence from academics, without a full hearing of thoughts from interested parties – in this case professionals involved in arts, PE and media studies in education, without listening to the professional teachers' associations, unions or school governors – nor, of course, to the vestiges of advisers and officers in the now smashed local government education offices.

You are fond of citing the views of "the employers", along with horror stories about the significance of the international tables we're slipping down. How odd then that, on this occasion, you don't have any words for us on the views of employers in the arts, media and sport on this planned downgrading – nor indeed any kind of commentary on how "we" have supposedly sunk down any arts, PE or media league tables.

You haven't really been quiet. This newspaper told us on 18 October that you had slipped off to Boston, on a fact-finding mission. I've been in plenty of US classrooms myself, and many US schools face similar problems: people running education who have never taught, policies introduced without evidence to back them and, in the case of learning-to-read systems, a policy for which the US government's own stats (see Reading First's trials) offered no evidence that it would improve reading for meaning, ie real reading. I noticed that your itinerary did not include a school I've been in twice, the Manhattan New School, an example of an experimental "free" school, but which remained within the public system, accountable to the New York district.

In the last paragraph of the article, the real reason for your visit became clear: your speech to the Foundation for Excellence in Education, one of the many trusts that emerge in the US which are apparently benevolent but, more often than not, turn out to be channels through which major corporations flog their products to the public sector. One of the foundation's senior members, Jeb Bush – he who smoothed Bro Dubya's path to the White House by massaging the voter registrations of African Americans – was at your side. To marketise education with, say, Rupert Murdoch's school curricula, you will need schools that can be set up by any old corporation – check; run without interference from locally elected bodies – check; without interference from anyone demanding that teachers be qualified – check; with a supine central government and press – check.

You're right. These last few weeks you haven't had to say a word.

Yours, Michael Rosen