Gary Rubinstein teaches high school mathematics in New York City. He is also a husband and a father of two young children. As he describes in his post, he and his wife must monitor their own children’s education at home while he is responsible for teaching his classes online. He is chagrined to see a new round of attacks on teachers in the midst of the pandemic. The teacher-bashers never take a holiday, even in the midst of the pandemic, when teachers are stressed by their own circumstances.
He writes:
Every teacher in the country is struggling to find a way to make this work as best as they possibly can while also juggling their own issues in their own lives. I doubt there are many teachers dancing around in their underwear blasting Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out For The Summer.’
Teacher bashing has been a national past-time, especially with the rise of the ‘reformers’ in the last 15 to 20 years. With Michelle Rhee on Time Magazine and Oprah, Waiting For Superman, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Teach For America, and, more recently, the different think tanks and websites like The74 and Education Post, Betsy DeVos, teacher bashing and it’s sister, teacher’s union bashing, which is pretty much the same thing — it’s like saying “I love Jewish people. I just hate when they get together and go to temple.” — though the teacher bashers have softened their tone over the last two or three years, they have only done this, I think, as a political calculation.
A pandemic can bring out the best in people, so the way that teacher bashers act in a pandemic is pretty much the high bar we can ever expect from them. Based on some of what I have seen some of the most prominent teacher bashers on social media, I’m not impressed.
And then he offers numerous examples of “reformers” bashing teachers as slackers who are overpaid and underworked.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One of his examples is from a guy who uses the phrase “government schools”. Such people shouldn’t even be dignified with a response.
Using “government” as a belittling adjective is a sure sign of a Libertarian.
Libertarians have a visceral hatred for anything and everything related to the government, which is actually very ironic when the hatred is expressed online, given that the world wide web came out of government sponsored research.
the only argument in some states is whether it is “gummint” or “gubmint”
I just love how clueless the reform narrative is, and really, I must say, “privileged”
Not everyone is staying home with their kids! MOST people where I live are still going to work!
Because you are a professional ed reformer/public school critic and can do your job from your home office does NOT mean most public school parents all over the country can do the same.
This is part of the reason the online charters in Ohio were such an unmitigated disaster- ordinary people have to go work- they can’t supervise their childrens online school.
This is one of the tens of identical ed reform essays about how public schools cannot respond to the virus crisis. All the essays say exactly the same thing:
View at Medium.com
All the essays use a survey conducted by ONE ed reform think tank to “prove” this belief- the ed reform think tank is consistently anti-public school and consistently pro-charter and voucher and NONE of them have used any other source or even vetted this source to see if it’s valid.
This is acceptable in ed reform, apparently. One source, no one questions it, they all repeat it as it if it’s conclusive and rock solid.
How are public schools handling the crisis? Well, I don’t know and either do ed reformers- all they have is one pro charter think tank who conducted a “survey”.
If you want to know what public schools are doing in a crisis in ed reform circles you don’t ask a public school- you ask an ed reform think tank.
this “report” was a Medium article written by PPI’s ed policy guy, David Osborne. Osborne is a classic neo-liberal out of the Arne Duncan mould…and it’s telling where his funding is coming from:
“Off and on since 1990, Osborne has served as a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) in Washington, D.C.[7] In late 2014, Osborne was appointed director of a PPI project on Reinventing America’s Schools, which focuses on reforming the public school system to treat every public school like a charter school. The project is financially supported by the Walton Family Foundation,[8] the Broad Foundation,[9] and the Arnold Foundation.[10][11]”
Always follow the money. You never go wrong when you follow the money.
Chiara Well . . . predatory capitalism does what predatory capitalism IS: They pay professional propagandists to din the country, 24-7, with a now-50-year-old campaign . . of “drowning” all things public, and/or (as in education) absorbing it under their capitalist-only ideological mantra (it’s camel’s nose double-speak is: public-private partnerships).
They can afford it.
Also, it has taken just as long for good but politically-naive teachers to get the glimmering idea out of their heads that EVERYONE really does want what is best for the children. CBK
I would urge public school parents and supporters to read ed reformers during this crisis. The essays and opinion pieces have gone from being anti-public school and pro charter and voucher to openly advocating for abolishing public schools.
If you are hiring these folks to run or advise your public school systems you are hiring and paying people who have an ideological goal to abolish public schools.
How is hiring people who are ideologically opposed to the existence of public schools going to turn out for students IN public schools? Not well! They don’t support your schools, which means that they don’t support the students who are IN those schools.
I have a suggestion. Instead of hiring people who are ideologically opposed to public schools we could hire people who support public schools. That will work out better for public school students.
This was one of Michael Bloomberg’s favorite rhetorical moves over the years I taught in New York City. I was, am, and will always be tired of this garbage.
I read all the teacher bashers in Gary’s article, and they seem to have a lot in common with the billionaire, fundamentalist Christian couple who own and run HOBBY LOBBY.
According to the article BELOW, HOBBY LOBBY is likely the most hated company during the pandemic, or the company whose leaders are treating its employees the worst in response to this global disaster. (Also, if you recall, this is the same company that successfully instigated a union-busting lawsuit and U.S. Supreme Court decision a few years ago.)
FROM THE ARTICLE:
“Earlier this month, the billionaire Christian owners of the Hobby Lobby chain – David and Barbara Green, above – notified staff that they intended keeping their stores open during the COVID-19 pandemic because Barbara got a message from On High saying that staff would be protected by the power of prayer.”
Nope, that’s not from a parody in THE ONION. It’s real.
It just gets worse from there:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethinker/2020/04/hobby-lobby-is-fast-becoming-one-of-uss-most-hated-companies/?fbclid=IwAR0qLpsGUSAAIos3GAN0yduHMwmOSlIYSqo8aN-MQEV6HuWaFVsSxGKnVW4
This “Christian” couple, who have “billions” in their personal bank account, so they could pay these employees out of those billions for decades, and still remain “billionaires.
But no. Instead, they executed a massive firing by email(!!!). Of course, they called this a “layoff”, but then in the same email clarified that the “layoff” would be “permanent.” (Huh?… “permanent layoff”???!!! Isn’t that kinda like a “temporary fatality”?) Oh, and they provided $0 severance to those same non-union (READ: “powerless”) employees, and terminated their health insurance. The final sentence of the email said that they “with” (misspelling of “wish”) their employees “their best.”
Mind you, this is after this couple had earlier — while they kept their stores open in defiance of the government (SEE QUOTE ABOVE) — barred those employees from wearing masks, or even gloves because the couple believed that it “makes customers uncomfortable.”
Wow.
The teacher bashers in Gary’s article are funded by corporate ed. reform billionaires whose endgame is to privatize all schools, bust all teachers unions, and then have all teachers in the same position — and have the same powerlessness over job conditions, pay, etc. — as those HOBBY LOBBY employees. Those billionaires and their well-paid teacher bashers — Rotterham, Stewart, Petrilli, Jeanne Allen, etc. — read the above article about HOBBY LOBBY with envy, saying to themselves,
“God If only we could do that to all those damn, lazy, greedy teachers!!!! Wouldn’t that be awesome??!!! But don’t worry. That day is coming soon.”
Please don’t call the owners of Hobby Lobby “Christian”. Christ would not recognize them.
Uh, wow.
Oh, I forgot to include Corey DeAngelis in that list of teacher haters in the second-to-last paragraph.
When their masks drop from their faces, the message for us hard-working, constantly-sacrificing teachers is obvious:
They HATE us! They freakin’ HATE us!
More like Snobby Lobby
These people have confused themselves with the God they claim to worship.
I hate to use Hobby Lobby and try to stay out of there as much as I possibly can. I leave feeling depressed every single time I go there….the church music piped in is reminiscent of music in funeral homes.
‘The teacher bashers in Gary’s article are funded by corporate ed. reform billionaires’
Do I bash the teachers or the corporations mentioned above for teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes which is the main cause of many children being unable to read?
Surely teachers cannot be that naive not to understand that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds.
Read my following post and see why many kids disengage from learning to read. Many teachers around the world are teaching the pronunciation of phonemes as in the first video which is now broadcast in more than 100 countries.
Don’t educators including Diane Ravitch have an opinion on this?
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2020/04/to-teach-or-not-to-teach-correct.html