Jeff Bryant writes that TIME has lost prestige and readers and now recycles rightwing cliches.
On Salon, Bryant says that TIME has become an “embarrassing Internet troll,” with its cover story slamming teachers as the latest example of supermarket sensationalism.
TIME put Michelle Rhee on its cover un 2008 and implied that she knew how to transform America’s schools. She fired hundreds of teachers and principals without transforming DC schools.
And now we have another sensational anti-teacher cover, this one privileging tech millionaires as knowing how to fix teaching. Bryant writes:
“Astonishingly, since 2008, Time has learned nothing about the problems besieging teachers and their schools and the much-ballyhooed promises of “education reform.””
“The article (behind a pay wall) is written by a journalist who seems brand-new to the scene, reporting about a Silicon Valley tech tycoon, David Welch, who is behind a lawsuit, Vergara v. California, that seeks to rewrite teachers’ job protections. Nothing new here.”
“The article quotes all the usual suspects: Beltway operatives from right-wing think tanks – Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Michael McShane at the American Enterprise Institute. Why no teachers?”
Wouldn’t it be appropriate to interview teachers for an article about teachers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not long ago (2010, I think), Time Magazine included Rhode Island’s Deborah Gist in its list of 100 Most Influential People.
I wondered at the time what connection Time might have to the corporate reformers. I’m wondering it again.
Do they get money from Eli Broad or someone cut from the same cloth? Are they OWNED by a corporate reform tycoon?
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I’ll add that Gist was the ONLY “educator” (and I use the term loosely) to make Time’s list in 2010.
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The campaign directed against teachers and unions is a strategy to build resentments among community citizens. The war, undeclared by multinational corporations, is against the cities, towns, and rural areas where Americans live. Walmart eliminated middle- income store owners, The Koch’s eliminate middle-income union members. Pete Peterson eliminates Social Security income. Broad, Bloomberg and the DeVoses eliminate middle-income education salaries. Bill Gates eliminates local economic multiplier effects, when Microsoft/Pearson bills for high-stake testing/curriculum. ALEC eliminates middle-income public service jobs. Multinational corporations drive down minimum wages and offload social costs to the beleaguered centers where we live.
The war is won when communities are left penniless and dependent on oligarchs.
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A very succinct summary of transnational corporate suckitude.
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Yep
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Sinister and true. A collection of elitists who are “investing” (betting) big money on the ignorance of the public to push a deliberate and twisted agenda. Our communities must wake up and realize they are being manipulated for huge (infinite) profit. Education is an untapped market and corporate America wants to capture it.
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Yep
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But isn’t it that teachers know nothing about teaching? Isn’t that the premise of these arguments?
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Yep
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Time needs to fix itself before dispensing ‘advice’. Seems everyone is an expert on something. Teaching. Medicine. Foreign policy. Jeez… I know how to teach. I wonder what my second area of expertise will be? Any suggestions?
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Time has a problem it can’t fix. The magazine abandoned people who think, in favor of plutocratic dollars. A targeted audience, sympathetic to and, dittoing, the world view of the 1%, doesn’t read.
The people who read and think, switched to The Nation, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and websites IBT, Pro Publica, PR Watch etc.
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Yep.
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I ‘m 73 and just finished a hard stint helping mailings brochures for my Representative and Senator. Now I know what my next career after teaching could be. Most people there working are just volunteering every day for their communities when there isn’t an attack on our beloved schools by ignorant writers who have never walked a mile in any teacher’s shoes. At least, volunteer in a real public school for a week before casting the first stone. For shame, Time Magazine!
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Time has disgraced itself. Time/Life once exposed Southern Racism with
superb photos now takes the side of the oligarchy with reporters seemingly taking
marching orders from internet tycoons. Reporters should be steeped in their
subject rather than be hired guns for hatchet jobs.
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Time writers are judged by a stack rating system. One of the rating criterions is writing that will be of benefit to advertisers. No wall of separation between editorial and advertising. That is the “new” journalism for mass audiences. There are small niches in the ecology for whistleblowers and informed criticism. This blog is one of those places for citizens who are learning how to speak truth to power. Thanks Diane and all the others who are doing trhis work.. value added for certain, and not just in the metrics.
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Laura H. Chapman: a timely reminder re “stack ranking.”
😏
For TIME, it’s Value-Added for their advertisers [the very few], it’s Value-Subtracted for citizens & taxpayers [the very many].
So for the $tudent $ucce$$ crowd where counting up the Benjamins and hitting the highest metric is the be-all and end-all of their efforts, change of course and of opinion seems absurd. Makes no ₵ent¢. Why?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” [Upton Sinclair]
For those not invested in ROI/MC [ReturnOnInvestment/MonetizingChildren] the bottom line is something much more powerful: a better education for all.
Y’all know, the kind of education offered at Lakeside School [Bill Gates] and Harpeth Hall [Michelle Rhee-Johnson] and Delbarton School [Chris Christie] and U of Chicago Lab Schools [Rahm Emanuel] and Sidwell Friends [Barack Obama] and the like.
Facing an existential threat to the USA—economic, political, military—because of the current state of public schools, whatever it takes to make it right.
Excuses permitted? Holding back on monies and resources of any kind? Giving less than 100% to make public school everything they can be and should be?
“I reject the mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Even a broken clock is right two times a day.
😎
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One idea I keep coming back to with the reform movement is the movie Clerks.
That’s who they see us as. Some of us may be dedicated like Dante others might be goofoffs like Randal, but in the end we are just some slubs minding the store.
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Time magazine on education… the following infomercial has been paid for by the lords of finance and technology.
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Thanks Diane!
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see my comment at oped where I cross posted it. It would be great if you added a comment there, because Rob Kall, the publisher. needs to see people who grasp the conspiracy to eradicate public education:
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Jeff-Bryant-TIME-Is-an-In-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Fired_Problem-141030-749.html#comment517729
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CROSS-POSTED AT
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Jeff-Bryant-TIME-Is-an-In-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Fired_Problem-141030-749.html#comment517729
The TIME MAG COVER comes the same week that at The NY TimesFrank Bruni touted the book that Joel Klein just wrote about ‘teaching.” Klein was a businessman who was made chancellor of NYC schools by Bloomberg, where he emptied the schools of the teachers we all remember, the real educators, so the schools would fail, and charter schools would become the magic elixir.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
The irony of these major media stories, is so excrutiating in the light of observable reality, because it is the deprivation of basic due process!
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
THIS is THE process which is used across the 15,880 school districts in 50 states, to end the careers of wonderful Americans…who just happen to be teachers. It is that division , plus the MEDIA’S COMPLICITY in subverting the national conversation,
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
that makes it impossible for the average Joe, Jane, Maria, Jose, Shanequa and Leroy, to grasp the complex process that IS the way the human brain acquires skills… what we call learning!
It is so easy for Time and The Times to bamboozle them
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
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“To everything, troll, troll, troll” (apology to the Byrds)
To everything, troll, troll, troll.
There is a reason, troll, troll, troll.
And a TIME for every business under heaven.
A TIME for Rhees, a TIME for VAMs.
A TIME for charters, a TIME for scams.
A TIME for a gavel, a TIME to smash.
A ruby red apple, a teacher to bash.
To everything, troll, troll, troll.
There is a reason, troll, troll, troll.
And a TIME for every business under heaven.
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SomeDAM Poet: you outdid yourself!
😎
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hee, hee. well done… but NO time for the hundred thousand veteran teachers who were thrown out of their careers by the PROCESS, that no one talks about, because the first thing everyone says, (and Dan Rather said to me, because he knew my reputation
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
when he heard my story is: “but that is unbelievable…. WHERE WAS THE UNIONS!”
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
Where indeed, troll, troll, troll,
Were the unions , troll, troll troll.
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But for you and me, it’s time to Vote!
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In 1917, J.P. Morgan bought 25 newspapers and inserted his own editors at each one in order to control U.S. media and sway popular opinion. This is in the congressional record. It is fact not conspiracy.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread754597/pg1
The Council on Foreign Relations was set up to create the “policies” that would be propagandized through these newspapers. JP Morgan’s lawyer, Elihu Root was the first Chairman of the CFR. The CFR is still very much operational. Hillary Clinton on the CFR:
If you think the oligarchs of today are less bold, savvy, or able to purchase and manipulate media and popular opinion….think again. Time is only one of the vast majority of mainstream “news” publications that are bought and paid for and should be regularly scoffed at by intelligent people. We recognize that Russia and China have government controlled media but we do not recognize our own plight.
Only independent journalists who accept no money from advertisements can be trusted…with great discernment there as well.
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