The Chicago Tribune would have advised American troops to lay down their arms when defeat seemed certain. They would have advised appeasement in the 1930s. This is an editorial board that cares not a whit for 40,000 children (not their children, after all) or for public education.
The Chicago Tribune editorial board is composed of Quislings. This is their advice to teachers:
**************************
May 22, 2013
When a vast tornado ripped into an Oklahoma elementary school, some teachers threw themselves on top of their students to shield them. They put their students’ lives before their own.
Some quick-thinking teachers huddled children into a bathroom. Though the roof blew off the school, the kids survived.
Some teachers were the first rescuers to pull surviving kids from the rubble, to comfort them, to keep them safe.
We’re sure we’ll hear more stirring stories about Oklahoma teachers who kept calm and protected their students during Monday’s tragedy. Guiding and protecting children is what teachers do. Not just in Oklahoma. Everywhere.
Parents who send their kids off to school every morning take a leap of faith: They trust that a teacher will care for their child with passion, with dedication, with patience and love. Parents place great value on their teachers, and with good reason.
We point this out on a day when the Chicago public school system will make a gut-wrenching decision. The school board is set to vote Wednesday on whether to close 53 elementary schools. Chicago teachers and parents have been protesting, trying to save those schools.
No one revels in closing a school. Chicago faces this decision because of some undeniable facts. The number of students has declined. That decline has been concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods. Chicago has a school infrastructure designed to support more students than it has enrolled. Chicago has to put its money toward the education of students in full, thriving schools. Money spent to light, heat and maintain half-empty school buildings is not money focused on educating children.
After months of planning, months of debate, the school board members will make a tough, emotional decision Wednesday.
They may spare a handful of the schools, based on the reports of arbitrators who questioned the efficacy of closing some schools. But barring a last-minute change of direction, most of the schools will be closed. That will be the right decision. Students won’t be served by pushing off these decisions, by continuing to misdirect education dollars.
And that brings us back to the teachers.
They have fought intensely against these closings. They’ll continue to challenge the board’s decision in federal court.
But their complete cooperation in the months ahead will be essential to ensuring a safe, successful transition for their students. Many teachers will follow kids to new buildings. Those charged with shepherding kids safely to school will depend on teachers to help, to speak up if they see dangers.
The teachers may not agree with every closing or any closing. But it will be up to them to make this work.
And far beyond that: The teachers will be key to restoring Chicago’s focus on building a much better public school system, on graduating students who are prepared to succeed in college and the workplace.
That can’t be achieved if Chicago’s teachers fight every effort at reform, if they are in a perpetual war against those who lead Chicago’s public schools.
Teachers, be heroes.
Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
Words fail me … where’s that emeticon …
I’m not sure if the writer is a propagandist or a moron.
Sometimes the two overlap.
So, as teachers it is either assumed that we know nothing and are blamed for or accused of all failure OR it is expected that we must know everything, be held accountable for and responsible for everything (and I mean everything). Which is it?…are we part of the problem or the solution? Are we given a fair chance when we advocate for a solution or are we then slammed for being the problem? Fight for public education and the injustice of school closings? What a noble idea…someone has to! Who better than the teachers who try to teach and instill the foundation
of democracy and the golden rule to their students every day and who still believe in these concepts even though they are often not modeled for us professionally. Oklahoma and Chicago (and might I add Louisiana) have some of the bravest and best teachers. They know what public education used to be, what it should be, and what it can be again. They put their students first, protect their best interests, and advocate for their rights. When educators do that they ARE being a positive example for their students. Isn’t that the exact lesson we are supposed to be teaching? We should not be told to close our mouth right along with the closing of our schools and if we do speak up we are labeled and assessed with the grade
of an F…if that’s the case, then I guess I fail.
M Schneider: there is a difference between a “propagandist” and “moron” only “sometimes”? The person in question seems to have wedded the two together.
Albert Einstein anticipated this writer: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
🙂
But there are deeper purposes at work. One of them: notice how the success or failure of the school closings is all on the shoulders of the—TEACHERS! Not the educrats who are in a position of authority over them?!?!?
So let me get this right. When it comes to education and national security and economic competitiveness and the like: the leaders will get all the credit if things [miraculously] go right, and the workers will get all the blame if they aren’t fabulously successful carrying out the deeply flawed policies the leaders cram down their throats?
Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at this is that the editorialist is just a pr flack for the edufrauds, and like them just “A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other” [Jerome K. Jerome]
🙂
Remember who owns this paper now and who wants to buy it and the L.A. Times and that is the Koch Brothers. This is right in their world of desires and destruction for their own uses.
Yes, Rahm is a radical conservative, we told you!
Once again, pearls of pedagogical wisdom from people who have not once stepped foot in a classroom. I teach in an urban school in Rochester, NY. It wis difficult on the students and the community when they close 1 school. 49 is unfathomable! Congratulations Chicago School Board. You won. But wait until you see the prize!
Because the writer is not a teacher, he does not understand that we will always do our jobs, but can fight injustice too. Doing our job is to always look out for the best interest of the child and community.
Add all these new requirements of teachers to the longest list of miracles to perform! EdReformers, society, Gates & his Band of Brother$, Dems in Sheep’s Clothing, etc…keep adding more job requirements to raising test scores% and pressures to keeping their jobs.
May need to ask help from the Pope, and all Spiritual Leaders & Long Island Medium to assist teachers to dig out of this giant crater.
Un-f****ng believable!
Good one! I’m with you!
Becky Gilberto
Chicago’s Teachers will protect their students as all Teachers. Whether it is protecting their students from intruders or storms or political bureaucrats wrongdoing, Teachers will continue to protect their students from HARM!
WTF? Teachers are just people, not superheroes, some are wonderful and some just are not. these sweeping generalizations of grandeure do not hold water, and are rediculous. Lots of ordinary people will protect other people, young and old, so what is your point?
OMG…this is why I get into trouble,because I simply can’t resist. I would like to make a point… about capitalization in the beginning of a sentence and about how to spell “grandeur” and “ridiculous” (although superheroes IS spelled correctly!) but you will probably just put the blame on your past teachers for that. But, then again like you stated, teachers are just people, not superheroes..we can’t be expected to teach everyone to spell, can we? Yes, lots of other ordinary people deserve recognition and respect but teachers are extraordinary in what they do and put up with regularly. They are selfless and put many others before themselves (it is practically part of the job description–whatever it takes 24/7).
All they ask for is some appreciation for the WORK
that they do. It can be a thankless job thanks to people like you. Yet they continue to protect, serve, and love anyway. Teaching tolerance, diversity, character, even ordinary lessons like spelling and having a small part (not taking credit for the whole) in developing a future productive citizen who helps
make the world a kinder place… That’s the point.
Don’t this just beat all?
Trib writers inhabit a universe crafted entirely by Rahm’s pr people. Like the famous monkeys, they see, hear and say no evil.
Trib writers chose to ignore the danger that 30,000 children face crossing gang lines.
They ignore the fact that the Chicago Police Dept. is down 2,000 officers while the murder rate is going up and up.
They ignore
— research showing children do worse on standardized tests for two to three years after they are forced to leave their schools.
— CPS’ poor track record in managing much smaller school closings.
— CPS closing schools for turnaround yet again even though it has already closed those schools for turnaround once before.
— overcrowding at the consolidated schools.
— CPS’ formula saying 36 students in a classroom is efficient. But their own young children never sat in a classroom of that size.
— deep flaws in the CPS formula to assess school utilization — flaws that ignore the smaller class sizes for special needs students.
— coming lay-offs of hundreds and hundreds of teachers.
— the huge costs of closing schools. (CPS issued a $329 mln tax exempt bond at 7.5% to pay for closings. This requires Chicago to pay $25 mln in interest payments a year for 30 years. A total of more than $1 billion. And CPS is taking another $160 mln in TIF funds for school renovations.)
— the thousands of parents — and readers — who pleaded for justice in a closing process that appeared to be a charade.
The writing is manipulative and duplicitous. This is the journalistic equivalent of taking advantage of a crisis, isn’t it?
First, a little lip service and an appearance of honoring Oklahoma teachers who gave their lives trying to safeguard children.
And then they insist that Chicago teachers go along with CPS’ terrible, ill-considered plan, and equate their ‘cooperation’ with the Oklahoma teachers’ sacrifice.
No ethics on view here. Just bald pandering to an all-powerful mayor and his mega- wealthy backers.
They’re not ignoring all that – they’re counting on it. School closing are only failing if you think the purpose is to improve education for all students. Once you understand that the purpose is to move as many poor people, especially people of color, out of prime or soon-to-be-prime areas of the city and marinalize them on the periphery (if you must suffer them at all), then you understand just how successful they can be.
Dienne: exactly so.
Otherwise it is incomprehensible to grasp why educrats think they deserve applause for being such profoundly incompetent leaders. The only possible explanation is failure by design—in support of the leading charterites/privatizers that the educrats serve and aspire to become part of.
In other words, from their POV your priorities are both totally misplaced and wrong.
But take heart: you are not alone in what you advocate.
Keep posting.
🙂
Hard to imagine but it could get worse if the Koch Brothers buy up the paper.
http://us-mg205.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.partner=sbc&.rand=e96458uibqmap#mail
“But their complete cooperation in the months ahead will be essential to ensuring a safe, successful transition for their students.”
Follow our orders and no one will get hurt. Freedom has left the building….
I’ve been teaching in New york State for nine years. Our current novel in 7th grade is Orwell’s Animal Farm. Reading the editorial this morning (May 22, 2013) I couldn’t help but see comparisons between it and Squealer’s appeals to the gut instincts and prejudices of the masses. The editorial is a perfect example of the power of propaganda; it’s the the basest commentary I’ve read regarding the school closures and teachers. The editorial simply bends reality to suit the interests of the enemy — big money, cronyism, PR goons, technocrats, and autocrats.
The perpetual war exists because teachers have been painted as the enemy for years. The current educational reforms have come down on top of us as a dictatorial mandate (an overabundance of standardized tests, an overemphasis on data-driven instruction, and farcical teacher evaluations). With measurement after measurement, there will always be a need for improvement. Schools will always be in a state of struggle. They will always be looked upon as under-performing.
Like Snowball, in Orwell’s novel, we have been misrepresented by those in power, simply so their agenda can be implemented. The current reform agenda will not improve Chicago’s public school system or any public school system in this nation.
Teachers know this. We are pushing back in droves. The rebellion is coming. They will surely not have our cooperation. They’re right that it’s our moment.
By the way, who is leading Chicago’s public school system? Rahm Emanuel? Pearson? Bill Gates? The Koch Brothers?
Really? I keep seeing a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update in my mind. I am hoping here in LA we will be able to start pushing back and throw the bums out. It is tearing the schools apart.
Why does this article in the Tribune have no Comments section? (That’s a rhetorical question, naturally. :P)
Methinks an email directly to the paper is in order….. maybe a landslide of them…. heh heh heh.
Be thankful there’s no comment section – it would be a Hallelujah chorus. Reading comments on most of the Trib. articles is a bit like taking a swim in the city sewer system.
Good point…..
Idiot! Teachers are being heroes in advocating for their students and their communities. When out of touch, out of town money thinks they know what’s best for the local school community, then you have stupid decisions like this. This is not reform, its deform. These inner city schools were not underutilized. It seems to me that the Chicago board of education has been hijacked by moneyed interests and Rahm. That the President of the U.S. has nothing to say about the largest public school closing in history is disturbing. Under the first black President, the largest closing of public schools is happening in his home state, with more to come. Let me speak the truth to this stupidity, fire the board, fire the superintendent, hell, fire the mayor. Should Chicago teacher’s union continue to fight, absolutely!
DePaul professor corrects the record, which the Trib editorial board can’t seem to do.
http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=2745&DateTime=5%2F20%2F2013+9%3A41%3A05+PM&Term=DePaul&PlayClip=TRUE
“There are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten them. Second, demoralize them.” … “They’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and therefore they think perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best.” Tony Benn , former member of UK Parliament in a 2006 interview.
This is why the Trib editorial page is important to the mayor, and why no one on its editorial board will ever write an honest editorial on the privatization of our public schools.
The Trib serves the 1% unabashedly.
Well the Koch brothers are trying to buy the tribune. Maybe they are just trying to look like their kind of paper.