Ever since NPR and PBS got serious about fund raising among the oligarchs--Gates and the Koch Bros.--their coverage has suffered and their objectivity has been thrown to the wind. Can we imagine a more inappropriate scenario than the ecology-killing Koch Boys sponsoring PBS's most prominent science program, NOVA? Straight out the imagination of Hunter S. Thompson, may he rest in peace.
Well, yes, I can think of something as inappropriate, at least: The Gates-owned NPR interviewing Arne Duncan about the Chicago Teachers Strike last Sunday morning.
Scott Simon asked not a single question that did not focus on the pay increase of Chicago teachers, and Arne robotically pretended that the strike was the result of a personality clash. The script could have been written in Redmond, WA. Was it?
Neither interviewer of interviewee talked about the real issues behind the strike: teacher evaluation based on value-added quackery, no textbooks until Halloween, no air conditioning with 50 kids in a room, inhumane management practices and attacks on due process, the privatization of Chicago schools by turning them over to corporate welfare charter schools.
By the way, my advice to Chicago teachers: DON'T RATIFY. VOTE NO! Nothing has been done in terms of removing the inherently destructive concept and practice of evaluations based on test scores--this has only been delayed and the volume turned down slightly.
If the teacher-student relationship that has defined teaching is allowed to be destroyed in Chicago by the Gates and Broad corporate efficiency fools, this settlement, then, represents not a victory or even a draw but, rather, the death of teaching and the sacrifice of learning on the altar of more test scores.
Well, yes, I can think of something as inappropriate, at least: The Gates-owned NPR interviewing Arne Duncan about the Chicago Teachers Strike last Sunday morning.
Scott Simon asked not a single question that did not focus on the pay increase of Chicago teachers, and Arne robotically pretended that the strike was the result of a personality clash. The script could have been written in Redmond, WA. Was it?
Neither interviewer of interviewee talked about the real issues behind the strike: teacher evaluation based on value-added quackery, no textbooks until Halloween, no air conditioning with 50 kids in a room, inhumane management practices and attacks on due process, the privatization of Chicago schools by turning them over to corporate welfare charter schools.
By the way, my advice to Chicago teachers: DON'T RATIFY. VOTE NO! Nothing has been done in terms of removing the inherently destructive concept and practice of evaluations based on test scores--this has only been delayed and the volume turned down slightly.
If the teacher-student relationship that has defined teaching is allowed to be destroyed in Chicago by the Gates and Broad corporate efficiency fools, this settlement, then, represents not a victory or even a draw but, rather, the death of teaching and the sacrifice of learning on the altar of more test scores.
I always find it very fun to play on a wide baseball field drag . Good thing they introduced softball and baseball to some of schools now.
ReplyDelete