Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Teacher-Bashing Frank Bruni Can't Understand Why There's A Teacher Shortage

You can't make this up.

Teacher-bashing, "Won't Back Down"-loving NY Times food critic Frank Bruni thinks we need to study out why there's a teacher shortage across the nation:

I've already covered the main reason for why fewer are becoming teachers here, but let's do it in a serious of embedded tweets as well:




Bruni is pals with teacher-bashing Campbell Brown and writes edu-claptrap for a living, so it's not a surprise that he tweeted something inane in response to the article Motiko Rich wrote in the NY Times today about the teacher shortage problem across the nation.

Neither Brown nor Bruni can see (or want to see) that bashing teachers and public schools for all the ills in society, calling for diminished work protections and salary (e.g., based on merit pay) and pushing for reforms that sap the souls of teachers have real world consequences.

Who wants to go into a job where they blame everything bad in the world on you, continually abuse you in the newspapers, try and take away the salary and benefits you have, and impose new, odious and unfair ways to evaluate you?

5 comments:

  1. In fairness, it's tough to consider all the circumstances when you have the crushing workload of squeezing out 800 words not once, but TWICE a week.

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  2. I just re-read Bruni's WON'T BACK DOWN review. In it, Bruni calls teachers "pigs at the trough", due to their pushing for a decent wage, benefits, pension, etc.

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    BRUNI "The unions have also run afoul of the grim economic times. 'In the private sector, nobody’s got any security about anything,' said Charles Taylor Kerchner, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University. So the unions’ fights over pay raises and pensions, he said, made previously routine negotiations 'look like pigs at the trough.' ”
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    It's not "the grim economic times" that teachers are "running afoul of." It's demagogues like Bruni who, while doing the bidding of his corporate masters, pits one group of middle class workers against another, inciting hatred a la Scott Walker.

    When would-be teachers---either those in college deciding on a career, or those older people mulling over a career change---read over and over stuff like Bruni's, where today's teachers are being condemned as greedy, lazy, incompetent "pigs at the trough," is there wonder why there's a shortage?

    Bruni and the corporate reformers want to gut salaries, bust unions, and turn those teachers into low-level service workers who can be fired at will... and now he's puzzled as to why no one wants to do that job.

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  3. Jack Covey, Will you please send that tweet to Bruni?
    Well said!

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  4. Teachers are highly educated and intelligent hard workers. We want to be paid for our experience, hard work, and level of education. A job with a pension and benefits is a good middle class job. Hey, just like Elia and her associates right? Don't they have pensions and benefits?
    I guess then Bruni should be calling all of them pigs as well.
    And Cuomo is a pig too. And all the oligarchs well they're definitely pigs, maybe even hogs.
    Funny how they keep projecting their own shortcomings onto other people.
    Who is the real pig Bruni? You are of course.

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  5. Teaching is a dead profession, I have teachers at my school who went to Brown, Columbia, Wesley, and I went to NYU. Everyone went into it because they wanted to, they enjoyed it, etc. not now. We all hate it! One of my former colleagues just got a law degree after teaching for over 10-years and wont be returning, another started driving for Uber, and made more money and less stress, not coming back, one took a job in Long Island, another teacher we have just walked out last year and never came back(her friends say she had enough and is doing better) and my best friend who worked as an adjunct and writing papers and two books(probably when they should've been teaching), and took a full time job at the college...This is besides the retirees...turn over seems to be getting worse this year with the improving economy. Granted we have a large school that attracts highly educated teachers, however there's something very wrong when you have 10-15 teachers out of 100 leaving almost every year! Plus I hate having to meet all these new people!

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