There are two ways to improve our schools. Hire better people and improve the ones we have. Everything else is just noise. #EducationNation
— Todd (@ToddWhitaker) October 6, 2013
Gotta love the motivational speaker/education professor/car salesman Todd Whitaker weighing in on complex issues like public education, poverty and teaching with so pithy and ignorant a tweet.
But what else can you expect from a guy who makes his living selling snake oil?
This is the kind of bullshit you get from Education Nation and NBC, indeed, from the corporate-owned media as a whole, when they cover education.
It gives a forum for this kind of stuff.
My response:
No, Todd, dealing with issues affecting students, schools, teachers and learning is not just "noise."
It's called trying to find solutions to complex issues in an increasingly complex, rapidly changing (some would say "devolving") world.
That you think this sort of thing is nothing but "noise"shows nothing but your own ignorance and inability to see beyond your corporate reform ideology.
Poverty matters.
What is happening outside schools in the culture at large, the nation at large, the world at large matters.
These things affect what happens in schools.
One more thing to say about this, Todd:
Speaking of the Outside World
ReplyDeleteChristie said today that the lowest performing schools in NJ, one of which I work at, are failure factories. I would like to issue His Honor an invitation to come teach at my school or any of the other schools for a week to see how much value he can add.
Awful man, awful policies. He doesn't actually care about kids in those schools - he just cares about giving those school over to his charter buddies.
Delete