A reader reacted to an earlier post about TFA by noting how upset the media are about an inexperienced referee. She sees an important parallel:
Isn’t it ironic that the news stations and many fans are more upset about a second-rate referee making a bad call in a football game, but they are not so worried about untrained, novice TFA teachers practicing on our kids for 180+ days and then ditching the profession?
No wonder the teaching profession is doomed.
Will the politicians and corporate reformers be working to dismantle the referees’ union as fiercely as they are the teachers’ union?
It gets even better: Governor Scott Walker says it is time to bring back the referees’ union so there will be competent referees on the field.
Why is it more important to have experienced referees in NFL football games than to have experienced teachers in our nation’s classrooms? Why is it okay for referees to have a union but not teachers? Is sports more important to the future of our nation than education?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is anyone surprised? Americans have always valued sports above education. They value entertainment, especially when it can be used as a metaphor for moral and economic struggle with winners and losers, far more than any intellectual pursuit. Intellectual activities are morally and economically ambiguous, and, far worse, are seen as feminizing.
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We not only value sports over education, we also care more about sports than we do about poor people…
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Look at it this way- If Common Core falls all the current reform schemes come apart- Both Corporate (Jeb Bush) and Obama (Bill Ayers) educational schemes depend on Common Core to make them work.
Romney has come out against Common Core
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Not just any media outlets, but right wing ones like the NY Daily News and the NY Post.
And right wing politicians too – like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.
How ironic that these outlets and pols who usually support union-busting and who always frame a labor negotiation from the management side suddenly see the side of the union and the union member.
I’d say this is a teachable moment except that it probably isn’t.
Walker and Ryan watched the scab refs cost their Green Bay Packers a game.
Had the professional unionized refs been present, that bad call would most likely not have been made.
But the union-busters at the Post and News, the union-busting pols like Walker and Ryan (and Duncan and Obama and Jeb Bush and Rahm Emanuel, for that matter) will not equate this to schools because they do not see teachers as professionals or TFAers as scabs.
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Oh the hypocracies in the football referee CRISIS….experienced ones we need….not so much in teaching though. Amateur second stringers are hurting the game…not so much in teaching though….I wonder if Billy G and Rupert and Joel and Mikey B. are football fans…maybe not…unless or course they can cash in somehow.
Yes, we surely have our priorities straight here in the U.S.A.
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If you are upset about this comparison…here is a worse one…on NBC/MSNBC they present Education Nation which is extremely biased against unions and current teachers. So who does Ed Schultz bring on to defend the teachers and the unions: Howard Dean. Dean’s son is TFA and operates charter schools with all NON union teachers. So if you are concerned about the NFL using “scab” inexperienced refs, then you should protest to Ed Schultz about who he brings on to defend the teacher unions and the teachers. Tweet him @edshow
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Refs For America:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/09/refs-for-america.html
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It reflects the overall values of people in our country. If you compare how much pro athletes are paid compared to teachers, or how much tax money is spent on sports stadiums and arenas but not on our schools, you get a sense of what is important to us as a nation and unfortunately it is reflected in the state of our schools.
Time and time again in Southern California, people voted down school bonds but built the Staples Center.
What we value in the US is where we put our money.
The tallest and most expensive buildings that we build in the US are corporate towers, it used to be churches and schools. I teach a history of architecture class and if you look back at what is important to people in different cultures, it is reflected in what are the largest built forms. At one time, it was the pyramids because the after life was of greatest importance, then cathedrals and castles because religious beliefs held a society together on many levels and castles were a source of protection for the rulers as well as those who lived in the villages, then in early America, churches and schools, now…take a look around and you can see what is really important to us as a nation.
Dora
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I can’t help but think of the Colosseum…
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Yep. Bread and circuses. That’s all some people seem to want today. And it’s certainly how the “leadership” sees us.
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I should expand a bit on the largest, tallest and most prominent buildings along any city skyline in the US and include banks as well as corporations.
In Seattle, our sports stadiums come in second. (If you don’t include the Space Needle which at the time stood for the promise of our future).
Dora
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Listen to commentary about the strike on DemocracyNow!
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/26/botched_nfl_call_sparks_wide_support
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BAM! “Great call”, Diane!
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“Is sports more important to the future of our nation than education?”
What does it say about this country when it becomes necessary to ask such a question?
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While I understand your intentions with this post, it is not an accurate analogy. The coaches of a team are the teachers. The referees are not teachers. The refs have no influence on what the players are taught, how they are trained or how they prepare for the game.
If anything they are more like the testing which is used to determine success. When this isn’t done by people who know what they’re doing then chaos ensues. And this is a major issue in education today…
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And yet we want experienced refs. Even Scott Walker, the union busting bully, wants a resolution quickly…..maybe because Green
Bay lost?
So experienced refs are needed, but schools can get by with TFA scabs who will slum as lowly public school teachers for a few years and then we just keep the teacher churn alive so we can save on high salaries, health care and pensions.
Dedicated, professional, competent teachers will slowly fade away.
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Brilliant comments & well said!!!!!
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It’s really sad that these are people who are making decisions that affect so many lives. They don’t even seem to be aware of the hypocrisy. Gov. Walker tried to make an excuse on Twitter – he said something about how PRIVATE sector unions are often partners in economic development. Not sure how that would be any different from public sector unions.
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The refs make $150,000 for 6 months of part time work. They want $200,000. I haven’t seen those numbers thrown around in the media. Every time they talked about the teachers in Chicago they threw out the bogus $74,000 average salary. Then some pundit would always add they only worked 8 months out of the year as well. Everyone bemoaned the greedy overpaid teachers.
I was watching Morning Joe yesterday and Joe Scarboro, who couldn’t get enough of trashing the teachers in Chicago last week, was up in arms over the greedy NFL owners refusal to pay for experienced refs.
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Thanks for this information.
Diane
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Good Morning — I totally agree. When did our country become more concerned with sports than it is with the education of our children?? Parents are taking their child out of school early and allowing them to be absent because they are on a travel hockey team. Really, you expect your fourth grader to become a professional hockey player?? I don ‘t understand why parents are not more concerned with having their child learn to read and write at least on grade level. Why should poor parental priorities enter in to a teacher’s evaluation ?? Here’s a thought, let’s have Pearson create a test for athletes. If Football players and hockey players do not show growth on these tests their coaches get fired . If they get injured during a game, their coaches get fired. Are coaches like teachers? Do they actually teach the players anything?? Are they responsible for a player’s score at a game ?? Or wait a minute , I get it, athletes and coaches get paid much more than a teacher ever could get paid in his/ her entire career. How foolish of me —-
Marge
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E.J. Dionne has an interesting take on the strike that may be useful to our teachers.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/replace_this_greed_20120926/
Dionne notes how the NFL owners showed absolute contempt for the referees, quoting Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations: “You’ve never paid for an NFL ticket to watch somebody officiate a game,” But, as Dionne notes:
“Let’s parse this. What it leaves out is that the game people pay to watch cannot be played well without highly competent and trained referees. The human beings Anderson relegated to insignificance matter after all, especially to the health and well-being of the players fans very much want to watch.” He goes on to quote Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers: “The game is being tarnished by an NFL [that] obviously cares more about saving some money than having the integrity of the game diminished.”
Dionne also notes how the NFL owners now often refer to the game as “the product”, and the response of the Executive Committee of the NFL Players Association: “As players, we see this game as more than the ‘product’ you reference at times. You cannot simply switch to a group of cheaper officials and fulfill your legal, moral and duty obligations to us and our fans.”
The public outrage has been so great that even such stalwart anti-union Randians like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan have taken the side of the referees.
Can we do the same thing for our teachers and public schools? Can we cast the reformers as nothing more than the cold, joyless, greedy NFL team owners, who are so robotic as to destroy an important institution just for a few more bucks? Can the teachers point out that all TFA and charters will produce are teachers who are just like the “lingeree league” incompetent scab referees?
Time to put on those Green Bay Packers jerseys!
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And that my friends is the sad state of the nation……
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