Valerie Strauss
"Jon Stewart on Hypocrisy Behind Assault on Teachers"
Washington Post
Published online on 3-07-11
URL: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/diane-ravitch/jon-stewart-hosts-ravitch-rips.html
OK, I admit this is a fun posting for me as I watched this episode of the Daily Show and enjoyed it immensely. Jon Stewart was obviously angry at the abuse teachers were taking at being called overpaid public servants who do only work nine months of the year and whine about how hard their jobs are. Part of Stewart's anger is his mother was a teacher for, I believe, 20 to 3o years and is still involved in education in a different capacity, so he takes personal offense to the comments being made about and towards teachers.
Stewart has a scathing segment where he shows Republican commentators stating how teachers, even if they have a signed a contract, must be willing to change it to allow cutbacks in their salaries and benefits. He then shows those same commentators in 2009 saying CEO's of financial institutions should still be allowed to receive their bonuses because they had signed contracts that cannot be broken. The commentators also mention in 2009 that the average salary of a CEO was $250,000 and that is really not that much money when (back to 2011) teachers making $50,000/year are considered overpaid.
Stewart then interviews Diane Ravitch about her book, Death and Life of the Great American School System. The last time she was on the Daily Show was in 2003 she was an advocate of NCLB, but now she no longer supports it and wrote her book. By being on the show, Ravitch's book shot up from #758 on Thursday to #35 of best selling books by Monday morning. Not too bad of a bump!
Even though these are funny and satirical (mixed with some bleeped out profanity) videos to watch, they are good to watch because they bring the argument of budgets, teachers, salaries and public employees to a more level playing field. For society, it is another side of the arguments being portrayed in the state budget debates. For teachers, it is helpful in knowing the discussion points and it balances the rage currently being thrown at teachers and public workers. Lastly, it is just a whole lot of fun to watch!
You realize that's the same author we are reading for book club, "the Language Police" right? It makes me want to go out and read it right now, even without the Jon Stewart tie-in.
ReplyDeleteI keep going back in my mind to my first blog post which had the topic of teacher evaluations and dismissals (I think it was Prince George SD in Maryland). When the teacher's union got directly involved in teacher evaluations, the dismissals in the school district went up from 3 to 75 when comparing a 3 year period. What people outside teaching need to understand is that teachers want to get rid of bad teachers too. A teacher is handicapped when he or she has to work with children who did not learn the previous year due to a poor instructor.