She read the “tale of two farmers” yesterday and reacted:
This is what no one wants to understand about education. It’s a growing process and conditions matter. I know it’s en vogue right now to say that the teacher is the great equalizer, but that’s garbage. It’s as if observers are willfully ignoring the quality of schools across economic lines and willfully ignoring how community plays in to the student. No one can reasonably tell me that a child born to a teenager in a dilapidated neighborhood in North Philly full of crack dens is on equal footing to the child born to college educated parents in Bucks County. It’s not realistic. The refusal to accept that there is a difference between these two should be horrifying. But, it’s not. Instead, we expect the child born to the child in North Philly to find some bootstraps and pull himself up by them.
And if they don’t. Well, obviously it’s because their teachers didn’t care enough and we’re lazy.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, here. I just get really, really angry when reality isn’t acknowledged. Obviously, I’m angry a lot.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s almost willful ignorance. But policymakers ARE aware, and they have enlisted “reformers” to help them with this misdirection: placing responsibility on public educators for healing the wounds of bad social policy. To admit that social conditions have great impact would place responsibility on policymakers. They have artfully dodged that bullet since the financial crisis and do not plan to really “share the sacrifice”.
good.
It’s willful, but it’s not ignorance. They know exactly what they’re doing, because when you point out what this teacher is pointing out, they then turn around and twist your words as if you’re saying that poor kids can’t be educated. It’s a debating tactic that seems to be taught in right-wing circles – no matter what you say, they score the point. The actual content or merit of the argument is irrelevant. Read the book “Raised Right” for an excellent description of how this debating style works – it’s written by a young woman who was home-schooled in a fundamentalist/evangelical family. (Note, the book as a whole isn’t all that – check it out of the library.)
from the book “Gag Rule”, Lewish Lapham, 2004, page 45:
a quote attributed to Donald Rumsfeld in August 2002 —
“Begin with an illogical premise and preceed, perfectly logically, to the illogical conclusion.”
I tend to think that it’s more willful than innocent. To admit that academic performance requires looking at both teacher and student means that the factors that affect the student are relevant to the quality of education. The factors must include the student’s physical and emotional well being; that means understanding that hungry and sick kids can’t learn easily. Poor kids are more likely to be hungry and sick. Now poverty and income inequality are factors in education, which our financial overlords don’t want to admit.
And as Dienne points out, you have to be careful when arguing against the right’s intellectual dishonesty. What she describes is not so much a debating tactic as old-fashioned sophistry. But why not agree with the critic–Poor kids can’t be educated as well as rich kids, precisely because the poor kids don’t get a fair chance. And why do the rich always want to deny the poor kids a fair chance? Who would be so foolish as to think that a hungry child can do the same work as a well-fed child, and then be so heartless as to blame the hungry child for failing? Would any sane parent really send her own children to school hungry and then expect the same performance as the well-fed children? This is just magical thinking.
A quick follow-on to my comment: The real question issue is whether the poor are WORTH education. I believe they are, which is why I favor giving them what they need, i.e., eliminating their poverty. Those who play the sophist’s game really are saying the poor are not worth the trouble.
I am sick and tired of hearing that “poor kids can’t be taught, and rich kids have it made.” Reality check..we will never eliminate poverty. We have programs that provide meals and we have teachers who bust their butts trying to teach all kids equally. The REAL problem is the environment these kids live in BEFORE they come to school. That is the parents fault. Period. Raise responsible, moral, ethical kids, and no amount of wealth or poverty will derail their course. Too many parents consider school an 8-hour day care center and the kids have little, in any, incentive to succeed. I have seen smart parents with little money raise some of the brightest, most teachable kids. And I have seen wealthy parents with their noses so high in the clouds produce the laziest monsters ever to walk into a classroom. We need parents out there who know how to be parents!
It’s like sending aid to another country. Sometimes the govt grabs the aid and it never gets to the intended. Same thing with poverty. Try to save the kids from starvation means keep the manna from the corrupt who prey on such interventions. It’s never easy, but we have to try. Or not try, do, knowing the risks and pitfalls.
Garbage, indeed! And so small-minded and dangerous. We need to talk more and more about poverty. Even Ira Glass (This American Life), whom you think would know better, skirted the issue in his recent back-to-school special. “It’s not poverty that’s the problem, it’s stress.” Duh! Here’s my recent rant at my blog, ECE Policy Matters: http://www.ecepolicymatters.com/
It is hard to pull yourself up with your bootstraps when you are so poor you have no boots
Or a strap!
Wow, watching Morning Joe and the director of Won’t Back Down says his family is full of teachers and part of why he made this movie is to honor teachers. Killing me. He says people are tired of this divisiveness and this movie is about people coming together. He wishes he could have sat down with randi weingarten to explain to her that this movie is really about that…hope and bringing people together to do something. I am thinking myself that if you have to sit down with someone ahead of time to explain what a movie was intended to do, you have failed at making such a movie. Shouldn’t the message be apparent? He smiles a lots and has a fresh-faced, “sweet” appeal, which may be why they picked him to direct and be a spokesman. Well, I guess a guy needs a job…who would turn down the opportunity to direct a movie?
He also said teachers are our heroes, and there is no harder job in America.
I know this sounds like conspiracy theory, but everything on TeeVee is a lie. Everything.
Interesting how money and laws are no object in Hartford, CT, when it comes to pushing charters:
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-Helping-kids-or-helping-charter-3884366.php
In Chicago, we clicked through millions of dollars in heavy-handed ads by DFER’s ERN. The ads strongly anti-union. But 66% of parents supported the teachers. and 75% found the mayor was not doing a good job handling it.
So they have shifted their messaging: the focus will be to laud teachers now, and attack the union and the poor teachrs it protects..
Sounds confused to me.
And that is what I see going on behind the friendly chat between Morning Joe and Won’t Back Down.
Also, I suggest everyone stay away from Won’t Back Down.
I think you’re wearing the wrong hats when you think about those chucking around the blame.
You’re wearing your teacher hat, and you’re trying to figure out how to redirect wayward children or adolescents. Ummm… we’re dealing with adults who are purposely avoiding blame for systemic problems by blaming those of us with the least influence on how messed up the system is. This is not by accident. These adults are selfish, and are rotten to the core.
I think you’re also wearing a liberal political hat. The hat that gets you thinking that community issues need to be rationally analyzed and trade offs need to be sensibly discussed. The adults blaming us are living on 6 figure a year salaries blaming us – or, they’re aspiring to those salaries. This is not by accident. These adults are selfish, and are rotten to the core.
Now that the evil work of the lying deformers makes more sense, don’t you feel better 😉 ?
rmm
You are so right! How is the child who is hungry, doesn’t know where he will sleep tonight, or hundreds of other scenarios we could come up with going to have the chance to be learn in the same way as the child who goes home to dinner, a place to study, a warm bed and parents who care? They don’t have to be rich, but those parents provide the necessities including being involved in their children’s lives. Then the teacher has a fighting chance. Education is about teamwork, it is so much larger than the teacher.
People don’t like reality. Reality sucks! Hang in there and keep teaching!
Yes, Carrie, there was a shift in the messaging. The director of wont back down worked really hard to avoid talking about the chicago strike and to say nice things about teachers. All the while giving his sweet little boy smile. They are so disingenuous.
Lower income area schools demand far more from a teacher. The rewards are great but the demands from the students in many ways take a heavy toll on the teacher. From my personal experience (Canadian), it has been by far easier to achieve high scores with students in middle and upper middle income areas. I would rather be judged on test score achiebvements from my work in a higher income areas but I know I made a difference in the schools where teaching was far more demanding of my patience and teaching skills.Good teachers make a difference bt not all teachers can teach everywhere.
An experiment was conducted in New Zealand with the aim of reducing the gap between kids of educated and non educated parents. The result was that the gap actually got bigger. The kids of uneducated parents did improve quite a lot. The kids of educated patents improved even more!
Despite popular opinion, it IS possible to set standards too high. Standards should be attainable by all, with some form of recognition for those who perform well above standard. Failure to recognize this will ultimately lead to the failure of all American public schools when measured by our current yardstick.