Oh Tom,
I have to be one of your biggest fans. I forward your stuff all over the place. You are brilliant at connecting issues that seem unconnected. I’ve told people that in my next life I want to be either you or Jon Stewart (or Pedro Martinez in his prime). But you are just badly informed on the issue of education reform. You’re buying the whole corporate argument about our “failing schools” and the need to let corporate reformers fix them by busting the unions and privatizing them. A great place to get a different perspective is Diane Ravitch’s review of “Waiting for Superman”, the pro-reform movie now in theaters:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
There’s nothing simple about this issue, and there are certainly some bad teachers out there, and even more bad administrators. But blaming teachers and their unions really misses the point about what’s wrong with so many poor schools, and it feeds a very destructive privatization agenda that I don’t think you would support. So don’t. Please?
Oh Tom, I have to be one of your biggest fans. I forward your stuff all over the place. You are brilliant at connecting issues that seem unconnected. I’ve told people that in my next life I want to be either you or Jon Stewart (or Pedro Martinez in his prime). But you are just badly informed on the issue of education reform. You’re buying the whole corporate argument about our “failing schools” and the need to let corporate reformers fix them by busting the unions and privatizing them. A great place to get a different perspective is Diane Ravitch’s review of “Waiting for Superman”, the pro-reform movie now in theaters: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/ There’s nothing simple about this issue, and there are certainly some bad teachers out there, and even more bad administrators. But blaming teachers and their unions really misses the point about what’s wrong with so many poor schools, and it feeds a very destructive privatization agenda that I don’t think you would support. So don’t. Please?