Courtesy of The Educator's Room:Truth is, the problem with the American student is the American adult. Deadbeat dads, pushover moms, vulgar celebrities, self-interested politicians, depraved ministers, tax-sheltering CEOs, steroid-injecting athletes, benefit-collecting retirees who vote down school taxes, and yes, incompetent teachers—all take their turns conspiring to neglect the needs of the young in favor of the wants of the old. The line of malefactors stretches out before our children; they take turns dealing them drugs, unhealthy foods, skewed values messages, consumerist pap, emotional and physical and sexual traumas, racist messages of aspersion for their cultures, and countless other strains of vicious disregard. Nevertheless, many pundits and politicians are happy to train their rhetorical fire uniquely on the teachers, and the damnable hive-feast on the souls of our young continues unabated. We’re told not to worry because good teachers will simply overcome this American psychic cannibalism and drag our hurting children across the finish line ahead of the Finnish lions.
Yeah, right.
Today, teachers across the land dutifully cast their seeds on ever-rockier ground. We were all told that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and we all became adamant about education; but no one told us not to waste kids’ hearts or weaken their spines or soften their guts, and we long ago abandoned our traditional cultural expectations for children’s formation. I’m not calling for picket fences and Leave it to Beaver; I’m calling for childhoods that aren’t dripping with pain and disenchantment and a huge chasm where there should have been character-building experiences from the age of zero to five. That aren’t marked by an empty space where there should have been a disciplinarian. And a gap where there should have been a rocking chair and a soft lap waiting when the child was hurting. I am referring to missing ingredients that I now recognize as the absolute essentials, things I took for granted when I was too young to realize I had won the parent lottery.
Adults—not merely teachers—have caused these little ones to stumble, but journalists and nonprofits and interloping government experts offer not a hand to the young but rather a cat-of-nine-tails across the backs of their teachers. Injustice for teachers is confused with justice for kids.
“Waiting for ‘Superman’” told teachers they were terrible, callous, and incompetent, that only magnanimous charter school operatives could save victimized children from their rapacious clutches.
NCLB told teachers they would only be considered successful if 100% of their students passed 100% of their tests.
Condoleezza Rice told teachers they were so ineffective that they were a national security threat.
Chris Christie told teachers that when two or more of them gather, they are thugs. Suddenly, the apple-themed knit sweater is a symbol of American menace rivaling the leather biker jacket.
“Won’t Back Down” actors Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhall, Ving Rhames, and Holly Hunter used their art to communicate that teachers only want union protections so they can lock poor children in closets, and that the only way to protect children from the plague of heartless unionized miscreants mal-educating them across this land is by letting their parents hand over local schools to wholly benevolent charter school operators led by the friendly Mother Teresas behind Parent Revolution.
There is more and I urge you to read the whole article by clicking the link at the top. (Even President Obama doesn't get a pass, and in many ways he shouldn't.)
I don't know about the rest of you but watching teachers get vilified in the media and by various ungrateful politicians is pissing me the hell off!
I have told you before that it was teachers who saved my life when I was on the fast track to a prison cell, and who refused to give up on me well past the time when anybody simply worried about punching a clock or collecting a paycheck would have thrown me out of school without a second thought.
I owe those teachers and school administrators EVERYTHING!
And if most of us really think back to who inspired us I am sure that the majority of you would share that feeling of gratitude
This is all about politics, and the dumbing down of the electorate, and has NOTHING to do with teachers or their job performance. Sadly they are just in the way of the Republican party doing away with one of the Democratic party's biggest campaign donors and most aggressive surrogates, the teacher's unions, and for that reason alone they have found themselves targeted for character assassination and constant attacks on their job performance.
All of this has been orchestrated by the GOP, and everybody who piles on, and yes that includes our President, is simply doing the Republican party's dirty work for them.
It is time for us to stand up for these selfless public servants by refusing to watch any movie that denigrates them, refuse to support any candidate who attacks them, and refuse stand idly by while any member of the media smears them.
I owe them everything, and everything from me is what they can expect in return.
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