Posted on 04/05/2006 2:07:04 AM PDT by RWR8189
Last month, 500 angry schoolteachers assembled outside my office. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was furious that "Stupid in America," a "20/20" show I did on education, suggested that some union teachers were lazy. They shouted that I didn't understand how difficult teaching was, and chanted, "Shame on you!"
Randi Weingarten, head of New York City's union, took the microphone and hollered, "Just teach for a week!" She said I could select from many schools. "We got high schools, we got elementary schools, we got junior high schools!"
I accepted. I even said I'd let the union pick the school. I thought I'd learn more about how difficult teaching is. Above all, it was a chance to get our cameras into schools -- something the N.Y. bureaucracy had forbidden -- so we could show you what was really going on.
But it won't happen.
Like most of our dealings with the union, nothing was easy. It took weeks of phone calls to make any sort of progress. I suspect this will not surprise public-school parents.
Finally, the union picked a school: Beacon High. Unfortunately, it's not a typical public school -- it's "special." Beacon doesn't have the full incentives or flexibility of a private school: It can't go out of business, and it is burdened by bureaucratic rules and a union contract. But Beacon offers a limited form of what the union opposes: school choice. As with a private school, you don't have to go there, and they don't have to take you. Applicants must submit portfolios, and if too few chose Beacon, it wouldn't be able to remain special. To remain what it is, it must compete.
Recently classes of Beacon students took field trips to France, South Africa, and tellingly, Venezuela and Cuba. Beacon has rooms filled with computers, students learn to do PowerPoint demonstrations, and a class I watched had two teachers (one a student-teacher) for 24 students. Ninety percent of Beacon's students graduate, while the average graduation rate for New York City public schools is only 53 percent.
I guess they didn't want me to look at a normal public school.
But this is the school the UFT picked, and I was up for the challenge. Who knows what I might have learned by teaching?
My producers went to a meeting at the school to choose a class for me to teach. The union representative didn't come, so we were told no decisions could be made. Lots of people came to a second meeting at the school: four people from the union, one person from the city Department of Education, and administrators and teachers from Beacon. They decided I might teach history classes and "media studies," but they would have to talk to more people.
You would think my teaching had been my crazy idea. I was only trying to accept the union's offer.
I prepped for my history classes. We had more meetings. The school principal had me sit in on a class with a "superstar" teacher. It was supposed to be a history class, but he seemed to teach "victimhood in racist America." On the class door he posted a New York Times column denouncing the president for spending too much money on war. Can we say "left-wing"?
Then there were more meetings. Finally, four days before what was supposed to be my first day of class, they canceled. Officially, "they" were the public school administrators who said it might be "disruptive" and that it might "set a precedent" that would open their doors to other reporters.
Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent.
I wonder why the union even made the challenge. I suspect the UFT didn't expect me to say yes. When I turned out not to be easily intimidated, the teachers' union and the government school monopoly folded. Perhaps there's a lesson there.
But I wasn't trying to call a bluff. I wanted to accept an invitation. I'd like 20/20's cameras to see me struggle to be a good teacher.
I wonder what else our cameras might see.
That's about one-third the hours that normal NYers work.
They also get a swank benefits package and guaranteed lifetime job security if they can manage not to show up to work high on crack or sodomize one of their young charges.
We'd certainly be more like France or Germany.
THe funny thing is that the challenge is No-Win for the teachers union: either he shows how bad the schools are, or he shows how he can't teach for a single week -- except that the school can get rid of him at the end of the week. You can't get rid of a bad teacher so easily.
My wife and I laugh that our daughter "has no black friends." That is, she has a hundred friends, about half who are black. But she's been raised to be as color-blind as we can manage. I want her to judge as Martin Luther King, Jr. did...on the contents of the hearts of others, not by their skin. She knows winners of every race...and that makes the losers of every race all the more apparent. She has two highly involved parents that love her, set firm guidelines about what is good and bad, and expect her to humbly out-perform others, because she is so strong, kind and smart. If anybody loves their kids, they should give them limits, and have high expectations for whatever area they naturally excel in.
Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent.
I hope more students like Colorado's Sean Allen record and expose their kook teachers' rants. We also have Evan Coyne Maloney exposing colleges.
How is that? I'm hearing that new teachers are using power point instead of the blackboard, and that the education departments are pushing it.
If you are going to be picky about vernacular, it should be "many people". Canned goods and land come in lots; people come in groups.
I'd assume, since she is a major union head, she hasn't actually taught a class in years.
IMHO, Stossel is one of the few TV journalist who is honest.
On a related tangent, what are the rules for "got" and "have"?
Wouldn't matter. If its one thing I've learned in 30 plus years of watching tv news magazine shows exposing all manner of corruption and wrongdoing, its that nobody really gives a carp, and nothing ever changes.
'Got' (Past tense and a past participle of get.) - I got a speeding ticket on the way to work.
Have is a tad more involved:
'Have' (To be in possession of. To possess as a characteristic, quality, or function. To possess or contain as a constituent part) - I have a cr@py Dell computer.
In any case, "we got xxxx schools" is improper English since it is the past tense of 'get'. And the mope who used it is the teacher Union Rep, most likely a past teacher - simply marvelous.
Stossel bitch slaps union.
Stossel or the teachers: who will blink?
that was a no-brainer!
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