A reader writes to add to an earlier list of “five liberal pundits”
Add NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and former Tribune editor/current Daily Beast contributor James Warren to the list.
Friedman has been wrong about almost everything he has every written about – from the wonders of global free trade to the wonders of the Iraq war.
Matt Taibbi has done the best take downs of Friedman. Here’s the most famous of those:
http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/
Glenn Greenwald points out how Friedman is emblematic of our imperial press corps – shilling for the corporate state, but wrong about everything:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/
Somehow Friedman, despite being wrong about pretty much everything, gets to continue to pontificate about the horrors of teachers unions and the wonders of standardized test scores in China (not realizing, of course, that only a small segment of children in China take those tests and thus are counted in the scores.)
If there were a value-added score for Tom Friedman, it would be in the negative.
Read something he’s written and you lose brain cells.
As for Warren, he attacked teachers for whining about air conditioning in the Daily Beast earlier this week.
Warren doesn’t seem to care that some Chicago schools are actually in session in July and August and some teachers have to work in classrooms with 40+ students when it’s a 100 degrees.
Warren also called Karen Lewis a “bumbler,” though it seems Warren’s old newspaper thinks Emanuel was the one who bumbled into – and then through – this strike by being tin-eared and sticking to his “Demonize the Unions” strategy he’s been using since NAFTA:
As the son of stockbroker, I guess I can see why Warren would side with Emanuel and the Hyatt heiress over the students and teachers of Chicago.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why are legitimate concerns about working conditions characterized as “whining”? The only air conditioned rooms in my school are the library, the main office, and the guidance office. Our school year begins before Labor Day and continues late into June. Teachers, children, and support staff often spend days at a time in rooms that reach temperatures well above 85 degrees or higher. Our windows open but we don’t have screens. Last week I worried all night about a hornet that flew into my room at the end of the day. Several of my students have insect sting allergies that require use of an epi-pen. Fortunately the hornet was gone in the morning. I have brought fans into class, but the droning does make it hard for the students to hear me and vice versa. My students are allowed to bring water bottles to class, and this helps. I turn off the lights. I pull down the blinds. I would encourage critics who NEVER have to deal with this to try out these working conditions…not just for an hour or two, but a whole season. How about the month of June? And remember, no whining!
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Remember that those who would accuse you of whining are quite literally forgetting the adage “a teacher’s working conditions are a child’s learning conditions.” They are obviously not putting “ChildrenFirst” or “StandingforChildren” or any such sound-byte nonsense.
They are using you to [literally] justify an attack on children, meaning in context, other people’s children, as in the children who can’t afford the $25,000 or $30,000 it takes for them to attend the elite private schools reserved for the offspring of the edudeformers.
Temperatures are measurable. Where are all the VAM-fanatics, smitten with measuring what can’t be measured, when they could measure exactly the degree to which children [not just school staff] are being forced to undergo unpleasant, distracting, and at times unhealthy, working conditions?
Could it be that they are writing their next teacher-bashing article in their air-conditioned offices? Or better yet, having their staff do it for them while they attend air-conditioned, catered, self-congratulatory “info-sessions” where they can push their next eduproduct?
You and your colleagues are heroes. You may be wilting on the outside in the heat, but you stand far taller than your critics.
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Thank you for your kind words!
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I would be very quick to ask all naysayers about “whining”: When was the last time you spent a summer day in the office with no air conditioning?
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One of the objections that parents and teachers had to starting school in August in Atlanta and New Orleans was that it is so hot in August. It can be 80 degrees at 7 AM and go up to 100 and stays that way until well into September. It does horrific things to the power bills. However, now they start around August 10th. The reason for this is our old friend, standardized testing, which starts in April and they want to have plenty of time for testing training. Of course if that comes after spring break they are not going to pay much attention anyway and in Louisiana, spring break depends on when Mardi Gras takes place because it ends at the beginning of Lent which is 40 days before Easter.
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In nine years of teaching in a Brooklyn, NY high school, including one extremely hot summer session, we didn’t have AC. The kids slumped over their desks and I brought water and paper towels to wet and wrap around their heads. It was against the rules to either open the windows (the noise outside was horrific) or turn out the lights, but we did, keeping one eye out for the principal. We managed to get one enormous fan which sounded and blew like a jet propellor. And this is the first time I’ve ever “whined” about it.
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My friend from Massachusetts says a lot of those northern places don’t have air conditioning. She was up there this summer. She lives in New Orleans and had to borrow one. I guess because they don’t need it most of the time. But when it gets really hot yall are in trouble. In the South we just accept the fact that the air conditioning will be running unless it gets cold. In fact at a school in Atlanta the principal did not realize that the furnace had been stolen until December when the heat would not come one. The school had been remodeled and she and the custodian went to the furnace room and there was no furnace. She was not happy.
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Re air-conditioners in schools that are open in the summer. Before air-conditioning was invented (and I was alive) Washington D.C. used to close down when the temperature got above…I forget exactly. I was working there at the time and knew that the idea of getting anything useful accomplished once it got s hot and humid was pretty slim. The Federal government announced closing, and lots f businesses followed.
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Oh, but, Deb, we can’t do that now! There is work to be done–these children must be ready for the tests! (Remember the time when we actually taught?)
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Here is the Warren piece that I referenced in my earlier comment about Tom Friedman and James Warren:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/10/rahm-emanuel-up-against-a-teacher-s-strike.html
Warren smears Lewis as a “bumbler” and a “failed comic,” criticizes her for “bemoaning” a lack of air conditioning in Chicago classrooms, insinuates she purposely disappeared from negotiations for unknown reasons (as opposed to, you know, discussing strategy with her own union leadership), and says the rationale for the CTU strike “borders on the irrational.”
As I look at the Warren piece, full of venom for Lewis and scorn for the teachers, I think this one beat out anything written by Ygleisas, Kristof, Brooks, et al. as the most vicious and dishonest attack against teachers, the CTU and Karen Lewis.
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Environmental studies of classrooms indicate that learning is extremely compromised under negative conditions. What if we used this data to drive to the store to buy air conditioners. Problem solved!
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Oh–and you know, some retired teachers in Chicago went out and did that very thing. They were volunteering at their former school during the heat waves, and were told there was no money for air conditioners. They then went out and bought some (I can’t recall how many).
Yet another example of teachers spending their own money for the good of their students…even after they’ve retired!
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Much of the frustration in the situations above relate to the pundits’ ability to command a vast audience with their vitriolic remarks and misrepresentations.
With the onset of the new Katie Couric talk show we see another highly popular talk show host with an even broader audience, if initial ratings can be believed. Although Oprah and Ellen have impressed viewers with their contributions and attention to individuals and schools in need, why not encourage Katie to take on the bigger issue of whether or not our schools are really failing- or not! She arrives in her chair from a lifetime career in news investigation and reporting. Perhaps we could flood her contact page with a suggestion that she take on the topic of the truth about whether or not schools are really failing, charters are succeeding, and public funds are landing in the hands of corporate shills. Her site asking for topic ideas is: http://www.katiecouric.com/contact/
She has stated that she wants to address topics of interest to American women- if this doesn’t fit that bill, what does? Perhaps she’d have guests who are active in the parent advocacy groups?
Just a thought about reaching an audience who could make a difference.
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This is an excellent idea! Hopefully, the network is not run/owned by a Walton (think CNN), the Koch brothers, or someone of that ilk. Find out, first, before you write. Otherwise, it’ll be a waste of time.
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I think the difference in the liberals and the conservatives in this would be, as it is in most cases, that liberals are reacting without all the facts or access to the truth. They got told that it is the teachers’ fault that there is low achievement in the schools and that the unions are the problem because they protect bad teachers. Since they are not teachers they don’t understand school culture or why teachers teach, that it is not a job but a calling. They think it is like other professions I think this is President Obama’s issue too.
Conservatives, on the other hand think in terms of dogma. We oppose unions. We oppose big business. They oppose the schools because that is what they are supposed to do, facts be damned. It’s like when someone from the Romney campaign said that they were not going to be slowed down by the fact checkers.
I think it is similar to using behavioral techniques to modify student behavior. Some teachers use it because they think of their students as balls of behavior that has to be modified. They are philosophical behaviorists. My main professor for my Masters was one of these and his justification for using behavior mod was that the student was a “retard” (back when that was not a bad word). For other teachers behavior modification is a technique, not a way of thinking about things and they use behavior modifications as ONE of the ways to teach students. I know this is kind of a special ed example, but that is the way I think.
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“They got told that….”
Who told them? And why did they believe it? Most pundits are, at least theoretically, journalists, at least they’re supposed to be. Aren’t journalists supposed to, oh, I don’t know, investigate things before publishing them? Sorry, but ignorance is no excuse.
BTW, “retard” has always been a bad word. I knew better when I was six.
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BTW, “retard” has always been a bad word. I knew better when I was six.
This is a generational issue. The word was very common and was even a student designated placement in DC until about a dozen years ago. The students were referred to as MR students.
I’m happy that you were so enlightened at the age of six. Your reprimand and my response to it are probably unwarranted, but I couldn’t resist..
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