In a spectacularly stupid editorial, the New York Times endorsed the idea that charter teachers don’t need to take courses about education or pass certification tests, because a few charters get high test scores.
The Editorial: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/charter-schools-hiring.html?_r=1
The Editorial justified this position because the State Board of Regents recently reduced the required number of tests that prospective teachers must take from four to three. Therefore, it is okay if charter teachers take no certification exams at all.
There is some special magic that enables a few charters to produce high test scores even though the climate in these schools is so toxic that teachers don’t stay for long, and they can’t recruit enough new teachers without dropping certification requirements.
Arthur Goldstein writes about the arrogance of the Times’ editorial Board here.
He writes:
“Their piece today is utter nonsense of the same variety put forth by Nicholas Kristof, who bemoaned the fact that Merryl Streep and Colin Powell were unqualified to teach in public schools. The fact that they had never expressed to remotest desire to do that, let alone take the spectacular pay cut that would accompany that decision, never entered his mind. If it did, it certainly never entered his column.
“The Times criticizes teacher training programs. I will admit that I took some crappy and useless courses when getting my Master’s. But I also took great courses in my subject area, courses that gave me a very good understanding of language acquisition, bilingualism, and the structure of the English language. We all kind of implicity understand its structure but never really have to think about it.
“The Times thinks I don’t need that sort of training even though I use it absolutely every day in my work.”
The assumption of the Times’ Editorial writer is that teaching is not a profession and no professional education is needed.
The same individual has been writing the Times’ education editorials for 25 years. It is time for fresh and informed thinking.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Saw the same editorial, and wrote to the editors of the NY Times”
Dear Editors,
YOUR OPED piece is literally saying that a week of ’training’ in a classroom is enough EXPERIENCE IN WORKING WITH CHILDREN for a PROFESSIONAl PRACTITIONER of Pedagogy (I.E ’TEACHER’) to enter a classroom and ’teach!
You support the misinformed notion that ANYONE CAN TEACH, and that enabling and facilitating the learning of complex skills and information IN YOUNG HUMAN BRAINS, is easy and does not require education in motivational psychology, or EXPERIENCE in dealing with the psychology (minds and behavior) of CHILDREN. Has anyone on your staff ever tried to persuade a child to do something? Would you send YOUR child to be educated in a school that hires such ’teachers?’’
If there is a paucity of gifted teachers in the sciences, it is because public education has been starved for funds that make it viable.
Moreover, no talented, educated person wants to enter a profession where there is not a shred of job security or financial remuneration for the skills, energy or expertise required, or support; and indeed, the opposite is true… teachers find themselves under attack from fabricated charges when tenure-time comes around.
This idea that the profession of pedagogy does not exist, and that the ‘marketplace’ should provide trained employees to do the difficult job that once fell to dedicated professionals, will end the road to income equality that a real education once provided.
The WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION and the privatization of our schools, is easily accomplished if the VOICE OF THE REAL PROFESSIONAL is diminished by replacing the classroom professional with a ’trained’ employee.
Shame on YOU for promoting such lies. Would you replace a doctor’s expertise and experience with a ’trained medic.’
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It is very easy for a school to get high test scores, just take in middle class and affluent students.
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Exactly, or choose those most likely to succeed, and toss out or counsel out those that don’t fit in. Some of these higher achieving charters have a very high rate of attrition that is not counted when they crow about the results.
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In NYC, it isn’t just the middle class and affluent students who get high test scores.
In 2017 there were over 87,000 economically disadvantaged 3rd through 8th grade students in NYC who scored proficient or above on the NY State Math exam.
87,000! And the category of “economically disadvantaged” means the VERY POOREST students!
To put that in perspective — Those 87,000 3rd through 8th grade students living in poverty who attend NYC public schools who score proficient and above is more than 4 times the TOTAL 3rd through 8th grade population of the entire Boston Public School system.
You could fill the entire Boston School System four times over with just the very poorest NYC school students and have 100% proficiency rates. As long as you cherry picked the best of them and ruthlessly got rid of the rest.
The NY Times editors are idiots. They are unduly impressed with “high performing” charters that get high passing rates because those editors are racist snobs who don’t understand that even among the VERY POOREST NYC public school 3rd – 8th graders, you can find over 87,000 who are proficient and above in math.
It is truly embarrassing that they act as if it is a miracle when a few thousand poor kids do well in charters.
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Just another clueless parent who has bought the lemonade not realizing that charters filter their students out so even if you have kids who are poor, their still are some bright ones in the pack and the charters make sure they keep them and send the others back to the public schools. Get with the program lady, its all smoke and mirrors
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smoke and mirrors parents,
My writing skills must be failing if you didn’t realize that my entire post was about how easy it was for charters to cherry pick students and call themselves “high performing”. We seem to agree.
I am providing the data to show how EASY it is for charters to filter students out. There are 87,000 high performing but very poor 3rd through 8th graders in New York City PUBLIC schools. It isn’t that there are just a few bright but poor students for charters to pick from. There are 87,000 of them in public schools for charters to cherry pick their tiny percentage.
Many people don’t understand the scale of the NYC public school system and how many very bright, very poor students there are in it. They are unduly impressed when a charter network has 3,000 poor students who do well academically because they don’t realize there are nearly 30 times that number of high performing very poor students in NYC public schools.
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Merryl Streep and Colin Powell are also unqualified to do brain and/or heart surgery, practice law …
This list could be really long. Just because someone excels in one area doesn’t mean they can excel in other areas without learning something about that profession.
I wonder if Merryl Streep and Colin Powell do their own taxes, use Turbo Tax or hire a professional to do their taxes for them. When we do our own taxes without any help, we risk making mistakes and who wants the IRS on our backs?
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So the NYTimes is saying that kids in affluent suburbs, where the demographics lean heavily towards white students, are entitled to teachers who’ve completed full masters programs, but children in poor neighborhoods, where schools overwhelmingly comprise children of color, get “teachers” just out of college with an extra 5 weeks of training (by trainers who themselves can lack post – college degrees). Hey NYTimes — separate but equal was ruled unconstitutional a long time ago — why are you urging its return?
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Great point, Lisa.
The high teacher turnover rate at charter schools, esp Eva’s, where the scores are very high, is alarming. Or should be.
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That is exactly what The NY Times is saying. They support separate and unequal quality for poor minority young people. Shameful! Frankly, we need the best and most dedicated to work with students that are the least prepared.
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The privatization of public schools with charter “schools” began with dark money supporting the Pioneer Institues of the world. That occurence was fought for awhile by the unions but with today’s editorial it is apparent to me that that the unions have thrown the towel in. With no clout to fight the NYT and dark money they should stop taking duesmoney from teachers under the name of collective bargaining.
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What kind of sense does that make? So the union leadership no longer has the clout they used to have (for various reasons). So now we say the heck with them, each one us will handle our own employment? Have we forgotten why unions were formed and what role they have played in improving working conditions and pay for everyone? It wasn’t a few union bosses who created these changes ; it was thousands of union members taking to the street. With all their flaws, I would much prefer to work under a union contract. What the unions have not done as effectively in recent years is use their numbers, and too many union members say “I paid my dues, now deliver!” as if they were buying a service rather than joining an organization.
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The point about unions not having the clout to fight the charter movement is perhaps it’s time for a new collective bargaing organization that fights and protects members rights and benefits. The charter movement is out to deunionize teachers and if the two big unions cannot put all their resources to fight big dark money then perhaps it’s time for another union to emerge.
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Bill,
93% of charters are non-union.
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And we do not need to throw out the old unions and create new ones. Labor unions are democratic organizations and the members have the power to make changes through elections. New unions are going to just end up with the same people that were members of the established unions.
Why reinvent the wheel, when all we have is a wheel that needs more air pumped into it so it will roll better?
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I will also point out that Meryl Streep sent her kids to an expensive Brooklyn private school where teachers have education degrees, experience and demanding qualifications to be hired to teach her kids. If only every school had the resources that school does. And if only every child came to school food and shelter secure. Our public school teachers must be all be held to the same standards of training- a well trained and compensated staff that is treated with professional respect is what all schools need.
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Terry,
It is my understanding that private schools are not required to hire teachers with education degrees. Is that not correct?
Meryl Streep’s children would be lucky indeed if the expensive private school in Brooklyn was St. Ann’s School and they had Paul Lockhart as a math teacher. Dr. Lockhart is the author of Lockhart’s Lament and a fierce advocate for the art of mathematics. He has no undergraduate degree at all, but does have a Ph.D. in mathematics from Colombia.
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TE,
In elite private schools, where the tuition is about $40,000-50,000 a year per child, the students obviously come from very privileged homes. They have private tutors if needed. They have books, trips to foreign countries, warm clothes in the winter, medical care whenever needed. The student body seldom includes children who don’t speak English or children with multiple disabilities or children who are homeless. To compare such elite schools with public schools is nonsensical. Children in public schools need well-prepared professional educators, who are ready for all the conditions they are likely to encounter.
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My grandson went to Newark Academy at 35,000 a year… YOU bet they were educated, experienced, talented, teacers!
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teachingeconomist,
Saint Ann’s School (which is not where Meryl Streep’s children attended) does not have to teach any students except the ones that can easily learn from a math teacher with a ph d in mathematics who may have no idea how to teach a child with learning issues who isn’t grasping the concepts the way that seems so perfect for the high achieving students that elite private schools specialize in.
And I would not be at all surprised if at least one of the students who had the “famed” Paul Lockhart as a math teacher also ended up with having a parent who hired a tutor to help their struggling student. I suspect it’s a lot more than one since I don’t know of an elite private school anywhere in NYC where tutors aren’t used by parents when their kids are learning.
Do you?
I agree with your premise that since the SUNY Charter Institute wants charters to limit themselves ONLY to the students who can learn from teachers who don’t have a clue about how to teach struggling students, then their idea of allowing charters to only HIRE those teachers is brilliant!
teachingeconomist, do you agree with me that there is a major logic fail in the SUNY Charter Institute’s statements.
SUNY says, we’re establishing lots of charters with teachers who only know how to teach students who are very easy to teach. And we’ve solved the problem of failing schools! Aren’t we wonderful?
No you aren’t, SUNY. You are dishonest and willing to throw the most vulnerable children under the bus. And then you have the chutzpah to tell the public those children must be sacrificed in order to help the “worthy” among them.
That’s the big lie. You don’t need to sacrifice some children to help others. But that is what charter schools have trained some Americans to believe is true. False choices offered by greedy little people with no morals.
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My post was in response to Terry’s suggestion that private school teachers have degrees in education. I believe this to be false, and gave an example of an extremely well known private school educator in New York City that does not have a degree in education.
Susan, no doubt the teachers at the private school your grandson attended were well educated. Dr. Lockhart’s doctorate in mathematics qualifies him as well educated, but it is not a degree in education, the standard that Terry mentioned.
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In California, teachers were required to have a BA or BS in the field they taught in. I don’t know if that ed code legislation is still around but it was for decades when I was teaching.
For instance, to teach math or English, you had to have a math or English degree or take night classes in math or English to qualify to continue teaching in that subject.
To earn a teaching credential took one full school year after earning the BA or BS and required taking classes in education. In the credential program, I was in, I also interned full time for an entire school year in a master teacher’s 5th-grade classroom and still had to take classes in the late afternoons or evenings and weekends.
On top of that, California required almost all of the teachers to take night or summer school classes after teaching in the field they taught in to keep their credential and job. Teachers had to prove they took so many units from acceptable workshops, lectures and/or classes every year to stay in teaching.
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So no more collective bargaining seems to be an acceptable outcome of the charter movement. This sad outcome not only diminishes the profession to substandard levels of teacher competency but also will mean the end of public education as we know it. And The dark money privateers win.
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Bill,
The Waltons hate unions. Don’t allow them in their Walmarts, where they have 1,000,000 employees. They love charters. No unions. High turnover.
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Re: “The same individual has been writing the Times’ education editorials for 25 years. It is time for fresh and informed thinking” — Is that Brent Staples? Whoever this person(s) is is continuing to sully the reputation of the NY Times. Doesn’t someone running that Editorial Board give a damn about the NY Times looking like a bunch of fools?
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Dorothy,
Yes, Brent Staples. Many years ago, I met with him and he made clear that he supports charter schools and high-stakes testing. Nothing has shaken his faith in either. I don’t think he has learned anything new in 25 years.
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And does Staples have children? And where did/do they go to school?
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Sully the reputation of the NY Times? How about Judith Miller? Jayson Blair? Delaying revelations about NSA spying until after the 2004 election? And to really understand the NYT’s reputation, read MANUFACTURING CONSENT by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. The NYT is a mouthpiece of Establishment power.
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Perhaps I should have said “sully the already-sullied reputation of the NY Times”? Yeah, that’s better.
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Sully – Sullier – Sulliest!
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The NY Times continues to write uninformed and shallow editorials which ignore the complexity of issues surrounding public education. I wrote a letter too. Here it is if anyone is interested:
To the editor: “Charter Schools Deserve Leeway on Hiring”
To permit Charter Schools to ignore state certification requirements for teachers, as your editorial argues, in order to improve education is like taking traffic lights away to improve traffic flow. The harm untrained ( a month and one week in class- give me a break) young inexperienced teachers can do to kids is huge. How about lowering standards for brain surgeons in order to get more of them into the field?
More important however, is the Times’ targeting only one aspect of a long suffering and steadily declining public education system. Inadequate teacher training whether by schools of education or charter schools is only one factor among many that are destroying education in the U.S.
In spite of the fact that standardized testing has been shown to reflect little except the economic status of the students who take the test, test results dominate discussions of education and the judgements about schools. The consequent need to “perform” has destroyed teacher and student’s joy in learning. Teachers can no longer bring creativity and individuality to their classes. As a consequence, few if any bright imaginative people will choose teaching as a career. Yes, Teach for America and the Charter School movement tap talented graduates from top universities, but these young people never intend to stay in teaching; rather they often use it as a stepping stone or resume line on their way to more esteemed, higher earning professions. And as with the “ practice” of brain surgery or criminal law, professionals grow, develop, and improve with experience. Moreover, the training many Charter schools provide is specific to their own culture- be it highly controlling behavior management, rote learning, or test drill. This training can be used in that charter school only and does not qualify a person to teach elsewhere.
Unless this state and this country invest in public education, our system will continue to decline. Charter schools and vouchers take money away from the public system. In addition, many charters get money from rich donors that public schools don’t have and which distorts the comparison. Charters undermine unions who have long fought for teacher rights and pay, and (with it) respect. The ingredients in good education are not a mystery: well-trained, motivated teachers, small class size, clean, well-maintained, well-equipped classrooms and school buildings, a responsible, watchful, administration, arts in the curriculum, plenty of outdoor activity, as well as help available for needy students. And of course, families who can care for their children financially and emotionally. So better teacher training can be part of a list that includes improvements to the social network, help for at-risk families, and money for public schools.
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Thank you – this is excellent.
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“New York Times endorses low standards for
charter teachersjournalists”Fixed.
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My thoughts, exactly, someDAM Poet.
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How to Submit an Op-Ed Article
The New York Times accepts opinion articles on any topic, for the Op-Ed page (Monday through Saturday), the Sunday Review, our Opinionator and other online series, and the International New York Times (which is edited out of Paris, London and Hong Kong).
Articles typically run from 400 to 1,200 words, but submissions of any length will be considered. All submissions must be original, and exclusive to The Times. We will not consider articles that have already been published, in any form, in print or online. Submissions may be sent by email to opinion@nytimes.com.
Unfortunately, because the number of submissions is so large, we have to pass on much material of value and interest, and cannot reply to all submissions. If you do not hear from us within three business days, please assume that we will not be able to use your article. You should then feel free to offer it elsewhere.
Op-Ed and You
Trish Hall, the former Op-Ed and Sunday Review editor, explains how the page works. She writes: “Anything can be an Op-Ed. We’re not only interested in policy, politics or government. We’re interested in everything, if it’s opinionated and we believe our readers will find it worth reading.”
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“We’re interested in everything, if it’s opinionated and we believe our readers will find it worth reading.”
I thought those were the standards for their investigative pieces — eg, Judith Miller on WMD in Iraq.
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Do we judge the paper by its Op-Ed page or all of its pages? The New York Times reports world, national, state and local news, offers features on a variety of topics, reports sports, and has an Op-Ed section.
Does the NYT ever report something positive and accurate about public education in any of those sections? Since I refuse to read any traditional newspaper or follow any traditional TV news outlet, I do not have the answer.
The reason I don’t follow the traditional media on a regular basis and ignore the Alt-Right conspiracy theory lying machine is that I have a BA in journalism and know how flawed the media is.
The traditional media is a profit-generating machine and without profits, it can’t exist. In the pursuit of profits, shortcuts are taken that result in crap. Is there bias, yes.
Op-Ed is a place where individuals share their opinions. Editorial decisions are made and those decisions can be biased, but has the NYT ever published an opinion piece that supports public education?
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Lloyd,
The Times has a mixed record. It’s Editorial board assigns all education writing to one person, who is a huge fan of NCLB, Race to the Top, High-stakes Testing, and charters. On the other hand, the journalists, notably Kate Taylor, have exposed outrageous policies at Eva’s charters. Others have written about the failure of charters in Detroit. The Times magazine published a ridiculous puff piece about Eva, but also published a terrific article about the profit-seeking Bridge International Academies in Africa by Peg Tyre. But last, the Times has failed to acknowledge the sustained effort by Dark Money to monetize and privatize the nation’s public schools. An alert education editor would have connected the dots in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Chicago, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Arizona, etc., but that has not happened.
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I need to know what is happening as I write at an authenticc NEWS site whose PUBLISHER’S mission is TRUTH!
PART OF WHAT I NEED TO KNOW, is WHAT THE MEDIAS IS UP TO.. INn order to grasp the scope of the current deceptions, in this era of technological transformation of INFORMATION DELIVERY I cannot ignore the chaos or the lies.
I link the most cogent analysis of things, the best writing on my stage, at OPED.com http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html ( hit the quicklinks button, or got to my SERIES ; here is one of my series:
http://www.opednews.com/Series/Charlatans–Liars-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-151219-107.html
You, Lloyd, should be a member at OEN, where at least, you can follow what is happening, and join conversations with very,bright people who are watching, too, and seeking solutions. I talk t the publisher Rob Kall, all the time about you. He interviewed Diane on his radio show.
Your voice belongs, there, it would be so easy to links to your sit (and Diane’s) , with their ‘DIARY’ or QUICKLINK features..
Have something to say about the media.
I will state it in a second comment!
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I agree that the op ed pieces are actually not the problem.
They are clearly identified as opinions.
The problem is with the “investigative” pieces that are supposed to be more than opinions.
And the Times has a very poor record with regard to facts about some of the most important issues in recent times: eg, on Iraq.
The latter is why I don’t read traditional news sources like the Times — not even on an infrequent basis.
They have shown themselves to be completely unreliable.
Unless one has access to the original documents from which Times’ stories were taken, it’s not possible to know if anything they print is true.
And if one has access to those documents, one does not need the NY Times. One certainly does not need them for “interpreting” the facts because that is little more than opinion.
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Is it possible to get the New York Times editorial staff to declare where they send/sent their own kids to K-12 school? And maybe comment on whether they would be pleased to send their own kids to those charter schools?
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The subject of training for teachers has been the basis of several discussions here at this modern Paris Salon. Many opinions have found their way here with one basic core idea of agreement. Most readers of this blog reject the idea that someone who did not accept a commitment to education while studying in college will not be prepared to teach when they get out.
The objection seems to be that it is not enough to be smart. You must also be educated with the idea of teaching in the back of your mind. I find this premise unassailable. What worries me is the way winds blow through education schools and pile dust up on this random idea or that. Studying particular techniques a teacher may use in class is good, but often there is a tendency to focus on the technique instead of the global result. Education professors often come to training sessions full of one idea, spend an hour or two trying to get teachers to understand it, then fly away. Almost all of these sessions are 95% lecture about how we should allow the children to talk more in class.
I have some concrete suggestions for those who are trying to get teachers to use better methods.
The first goal of any idea is to produce a sustainable effort toward a goal. For example, it would be a great idea if students wrote essays five times a week in my history class. If they did this, however, they would not have time to read about history. You would have robbed an enormous amount of time from one part of the class to benefit another. Piles of paper would magically appear around every teacher’s desk, only to find its way into the recycle bin unread. Teacher’s sons and daughters would appear in homeless shelters, ignored by their dedicated parents who worried more about the essays than their own families. The idea will not work because no system will sustain the effort due to time constraints.
Whatever technique a teacher wants to employ should never remove focus from the ultimate goal of the class. This is the most dangerous temptation for teachers and professors who want to see their idea employed. They fail to visualize one lesson in the scope of an entire course. They advocate spending days on an activity that delves deeper into a subject than is allowable by the time allotted in the curriculum. There is time again, restricting the way we behave.
Evaluation of technique needs to take place in a multitude of educational settings. Things that work in Bell Buckle (my hometown), will fail elsewhere. Things that work for ten years often begin to fail on the eleventh. Professors sure that one idea is the best often try to package and sell the idea. I can understand this, but they need to use the idea in a variety of settings before teachers accept the technique.
Whatever the method one advocates, the teacher should be trained in a group of subject areas and encouraged to read deeply in those areas. Ideas, not skills, should be the focus of education for the children as well as for the teachers
Without consideration of these suggestions, educational ideas will continue to blow through the profession. This brings us back to the point of this series of postings. The idea that s teacher should simply pass from a program of study to teaching without more than a few weeks of training contradicts the time premise above. Students who have BA degrees may begin the march to good pedagogy without training, but they will have to either acquire it on their own time and from their own pocketbook, or they will quit.
Obviously charter leaders see teachers as clones easily replaced. This is silly or dangerous. All my teaching career I have asked teachers when they felt like they started doing a good job. The answer is always “about five years.” The type of training I advocate takes about five years beyond a BA degree. Present policy attempts, at least in my state, to limit the number of teachers who teach beyond five years to the very few.
We get what we pay for.
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Here’s the letter I plan to send to NYT editor:
The Editorial Board says NYC charter schools outperform publics– implying they’ve earned the right to be released from the state’s teacher certification requirements: “let them avoid the weak state teacher education system that has long been criticized for churning out graduates who are unprepared to manage the classroom.”
To back up the first claim we have new CREDO stats– results still based on fictional student profiles and magical algorithmic “additional days of instruction” long criticized by statisticians.
To support the slam on state certification, we have numbers from the thoroughly-debunked NCTQ (which culls its data from commencement programs and college catalogs). And I guess the editors didn’t read their most damning cite– Arthur Levine’s “devastating report” published in 2006 (“Educating School Teachers”)– a key finding of which is insufficient field work, see p. 39 “An Imbalance Between Theory and Practice”: Levine finds consensus that a major deficiency in ed prep is a mere one semester of supervised practice teaching.
SUNY’s new regs cut required field work to 40 hours!
3 cr hrs = 45 hrs [50mins = 1 hr]
160/15 = 10-2/3 credhrs = 3-1/2 3cr classes
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Oops I’m not putting in those figs at end. I was just translating for myself the meaning of “160 hrs of classroom instruction.”
I noticed that SUNY’s new regs for its charter school teachers are very similar to NYS ‘path B’ alt teacher cert, which is for degree-holders in the teaching subject who have no ed courses.
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I am always amazed that people who do not teach are so called experts in the field. Children are our greatest resource and if we continue to degrade teachers and public schools the product we produce will continue to slip. Why would any young educator want to give up evenings and weekends to do the work needed to be a good teacher? Why would they want to work in public schools when many of the children are siphoned off to charter schools after parents read the scathing comments about our public schools? So many of the charter schools are totally inadequate and close their doors after running out of money. Money we could have used to upgrade the programs in our local programs.
Now the state of Florida is taking state money to provide buildings to these schools. Amazingly we find out later members of the legislature and their families run charter schools. The scores of most charter schools are not higher than local schools and we find exemptions given to the charter schools not allowed for public schools. People, learn the truth about these programs and the people who write ignorant editorials concerning things they do not understand or are guilty of funding for dubious reasons, none having to do with providing a decent education for all children in the United States. Can anyone teach? NO.
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This is my second comment to Lloyd Lofthouse, where I explain why I have to follow the media’s lies. I was born in 1941 BEFORE tv was on the scene, not merely he absence of cellphones and computers.
I HAVE WITNESSED THE TRANSFORMATION OF A SOCIETY BY THE WAY INFORMATON IS DELIVERED.
I HAVE WITNESSED the inadvertent consequences that accompany technological transformation.. Lies_and_the_Lying_Liars_Who_Tell_Them has become the norm long before Trump brought it to the top executive office.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/11/highereducation.news1
Lloyd, I have been a STUDENT OF THE MEDIA, since my first college degree,. I taught Media Studies in middle school.
I began in the sixties, with “The Hidden Persuaders,” by Vance Packard, — about how the advertising mad men led the way to the subtle influences that sell everything from soap to politicians by using subliminal messages!
Packard was prescient, but even he couldn’t have predicted the technological revolution of ubiquitous screens, pumping out 24/7 news mixed with lies. http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml
I read, in my studies,The book by media visionary Marshall McCluhan ‘The_Medium_is_the_Message . http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm
He was prescient, too. and wrote brilliantly at the dawn of television that the medium is the message.
“But McCluhan is dead and the age of television dominance is beginning to die before our eyes. What matters today is that the media and the message are fused together in the open and sharing communities we call social media, and not the closed shop of insider pundits regurgitating talking points on insider old media.
True politics is not a television show but a battle of ideas between alternative futures for America, offered by competing candidates and parties, in the marketplace of public opinion.”
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm
I read, in the eighties, “In The Absence of the Sacred,” by Jerry Mander; THE BEST EVER to explain WHEN & HOW our the VALUES OF OUR CULTURE changed from the beneficial ones that parents, family, neighborhoods, community, religion etc, and once passed on to society TO THOSE THAT THE CORPORATIONS NEEDED US TO PERSUE… like buy, buy buy, whatever we sell you, including candidates and memes.
http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/mander.html
Anyone reading the opening paragraphs of Mander’s book (which I read to my class each year to introduce them to WHO I AM) will grasp that Jerry Mander, predicted our present society.
Recently, television became the windows the world, at the same time that the ‘screen’ become ‘ubiquitous’, replacing books and other means of getting information— like talking!!!
This week, I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment, and I watched fascinated as every single person in the waiting room, and those walking past where I sat when I went outside the building was carrying or watching a screen.
What is amiss is the DARK FORCES which are channeling the outrage we feel by such treacherous behavior, into something much darker. Notice I do to say russia or the neocons, or the alt right , or the…
Perhaps, what I am seeing– in my mind’s eye — flows from a lifelong fascination with future histories (science-fi that is not about aliens and space monsters, but centers on the notion ‘what if this goes on…”)
Because my dear, IF this outside manipulation of the ignorant American ( or any citizens) continues, this society WILL be transformed…. has been already… so much division and hatred… affecting the children in school, sowed daily by bots, algorithms and those who are transforming our culture to conform to their Values, not the ones Mander, or the founding fathers tell us are BENEFICIAL for our society!
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The media, traditional and Alt-Right, is Balkanizing the United States and that is not a good thing at all. It is a horrible thing.
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