John Merrow, former PBS education reporter, thanks FOX News pundit Tucker Carlson for one of the silliest ideas ever.
Merrow writes:
I am coming out of retirement to help Tucker Carlson save American public education, our children, and, by extension, our way of life. But this is not about me; it’s about the brilliant campaign created by America’s premier ‘uber journalist,’ Tucker Carlson of Fox. (I put ‘journalist’ in quotes not to disparage Mr. Carlson but to indicate that he stands head and shoulders above his pedestrian counterparts.)
Mr. Carlson has recognized that the greatest threat to America’s future is NOT climate change, the rich-poor wealth gap, Russian cyber warfare, or China. No, the greatest danger to our way of life is Critical Race Theory, which simply cannot be allowed to be taught in our schools.
Mr. Carlson’s solution is nothing short of brilliant: Cameras in every public school classroom so that teachers who try to subvert our youth by filling their heads with dangerous ideas can be identified, publicly shamed, and fired.
There are nay-sayers, of course: Short-sighted critics who maintain that cameras are an invasion of privacy. And some studies indicate that academic achievement suffers when everyone is under surveillance, but Mr. Carlson is not swayed; he keeps his eye on the prize: protecting young minds from getting in the habit of asking questions or even expressing doubts.
I hope it is obvious that Merrow is writing with his tongue in his cheek.
Merrow guesses that there are some three million classrooms in the nation. The cost of wiring them and installing cameras and microphones would be about $12 billion, he estimates.
Merrow writes:
One minor downside: We will probably have to buy the cameras, microphones, and DVRs from Chinese, Tiawanese, or Swiss companies, because American companies missed the boat when it came to creating effective security systems.
But even if more than $13 billion leaves our shores without benefiting the American economy, Mr. Carlson’s plan will still create prosperity because it’s going to create several million jobs–the men and women who will spend their days watching our teachers, taking careful notes, and, inevitably, bearing witness against those teachers who are polluting the minds of our children.
I hope Mr. Carlson will support giving employment preference to devoted viewers of the Fox channel, because their antennae will be sensitive to what matters. They will be able to spot “Critical Race Theory” easily, because Mr. Carlson and his colleagues have educated them.
We will need to hire at least a million of these “Watchers” at a cost of roughly $40,000 per year, for a total of $4,000,000,000. This will be an annual expense
Let me be blunt about what’s at stake: If you are not willing to spend more than $17,000,000,000 to save our nation from subversion, I think you should leave the country now.
Because I believe I can help Mr. Carlson save America, I am coming out of retirement. I have created an on-line training program for “Watchers,” which provides basic training in recognizing the educational subversion known as Critical Race Theory…
I am calling the program, which costs only $100 per adult learner, the“Critical Race Aggressive Pedagogy Trap,” or “CRAP TRAP.” You can sign up here, or you can meet me on the corner of Morse and Fuller Streets and hand me the cash.
Please open the link and finish reading this wonderful satire.
It’s not a joke how much the fake CRT crusade will be costing taxpayers.
SUGGESTION: School officials should get one of those apps that attorneys use for billing so they can track how much taxpayer time they spend fielding CRT calls, reading and responding to emails, holding forums and running committees and responding to FOIA requests.
Of course the biggest expense is lawsuits, win or lose, and in the case of large settlements can lead to increases of local taxes, cause cuts to services or layoffs, force borrowing or lower bond ratings which increases borrowing rates.
This is of course multiplied if individual teachers end up spending extra time respinding to parents’ fake CRT accusations, either to notify them when racial issues will be mentioned in class, assure them they are teaching history neutrally or as suggested by anti-CRT blogger Chad Carmichael, when teachers have to submit lesson plans to parents ahead of time.
Add it up and we are talking about millions of tax dollars being used to correct the record, fact-check false claims and walk parents through what is actually happening as opposed to the wild-eye paranoid delusions being broadcast on Fox and Breitbart.
Tucker Carlson & Truly Stupid Idea
well, that narrows it down …
“Tucker Carlson AND Truly brilliant idea” would narrow it down to the empty set.
Fox hosts need some “Loving Tourists “
As advertised, truly stupid, what’s next? Reeducation camps for “errant” teachers?
be careful — you may spread ideas 🙂
Carlson is a shameless right wing propagandist. He even ridiculed and threw some rhetorical barbs at the four Capitol Police officers who gave harrowing accounts of their experiences on January 6th during a House committee hearing. And TC gets paid millions to vomit up such vicious tripe.
Tucker said on his show that the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was an idiot and a pig for defending teaching about racism in the military. Mark Milley is the highest ranking military person in the country. Carlson has never worn his country’s uniform.
I don’t grant high praise to anyone who “rises to the top” of a death and destruction organization that is the pre-eminently wasteful, unaccountable and out of control US Military. Milley is big part of one of the most cancerous organizations on the face of the earth, just as Carlson is a large part of one of the most abhorrent supposedly news organizations of this country.
Not having worn “his country’s uniform” is not a bad thing. Many of us haven’t, for me, by choice to not become a part of the world’s largest death and destruction machine.
“When will we learn, when will we ever learn!”
Commenter Nancy Flanagan posted about an organization, whataretheylearning.com, in a thread to an earlier post.
Luke Rosiak is identified at the site and appears to be integral to its efforts. Daily Caller lists Rosiak as a “reporter” at its site. Sourcewatch provides info. about Daily Caller. It lists Rosiak as an employee of Daily Caller.
“clap trap”….haven’t used that in a long time. Adding it back to my vocabulary for all things ridiculous in education.
Once ox News pundit ucker Carlson buys all o the cameras, remind him to burn all o the books. He should use an excessive amount o oil and coal. Question: How much does it cost to put all the students on laptops (with cameras), extracted and assembled overseas, to surveil the young people with standardized tests and analyze what, i anything, their answers mean? Just saying. And sorry, ucker, one o the keys o my typewriter is stuck.
Unstated Meaning
What’s left unstated
Is under-rated
And means the most
In every post
well said with or without the f
Sounds like Tucker Carlson wants to turn the United States into China probably with Traitor Trump as president for life since China also has a president for life now, or maybe Carlson sees himself as the first U.S. president for life.
As of 2019, it is estimated that 200 million monitoring CCTV cameras of the “Skynet” system have been put to use in mainland China, four times the number of surveillance cameras in the United States. By 2020, the number of surveillance cameras in mainland China is expected to reach 626 million.
China has also created an AI surveillance system linked to those cameras.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/one-billion-surveillance-cameras-will-be-watching-globally-in-2021.html
If one takes those numbers (200 million for China vs 50 million for US) at face value, that means the US has roughly the same number of surveillance cameras per capita as China.
The main difference is that in China, it’s the government that does all the monitoring while in the US it’s the government working with the cooperation of the corporations like Google and Facebook.
Big Tech is openly competing in a cold war style race to the surveillance bottom. They even say so.
And given that software (eg Pegasus) exists that can turn a smartphone into a surveillance camera, microphone and GPS tracking device, the quoted numbers are a gross underestimate of the potential surveillance capabilities of both China and the US at this very moment.
Funny that the paid CRT watchers in this fantasy that Tucker hasn’t really thought out would be making WAY more money than the typical paraprofessional/educational support professional.
Good job Merrow!
Tucker Carlson’s idea to save American public education by focussing cameras on teachers is truly stupid, but not any stupider than John Merrow’s idea to save it by focussing (PBS) cameras on Michelle Rhee.
Wow, Merrow has been hiding his light under a bushel all these years. It takes a buoyant sense of humor to, well, find any humor in the Fox-hole, and a high caliber of satire to stick the landing. More, Merrow, more!
Is Tucker having sex with kids in a pizza shop?
All these christians deeply fear their savior Jesus does not literally exist. They murdered tens of millions of natives over Jesus, and he doesn’t even exist!
It’s the spirit of emergence. One can only deny nature for so long. Nature always wins, no matter what one “believes”.
TARGO!!!!!
TARGO to Left Coast Teacher
I’m glad you didn’t think it was oolish.
Or ucked up
Oh man, you guys are KILLING it! Thanks for the laughs! Because with all of this anti-CRT crap, it’s going to be a LONG year for this social studies teacher. I need all the laughs I can get!
“We will probably have to buy the cameras, microphones, and DVRs from Chinese, Tiawanese, or Swiss companies, because American companies missed the boat when it came to creating effective security systems.”
He forgot the best security system developers, the Israelis.
Americans excel at “securing” our systems with malware from other countries.