Everything in the world is part of nature’s grand design and exists for a reason. If we are patient we will eventually understand its mysteries. Do giraffes have long necks so they can reach their food high up? Beats me. But I know why we were born with a “gag reflex.” So that we could read New York Post editorials, retch, and live to see another day.
Did you see their latest blood libel against ATRs? Their lead editorial on Sunday practically accuses ATRs of ritual sacrifice of children. It reads like a modernization of a Middle Ages tract or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham’s playbook.
Mercilessly poisoning the well of public opinion goes beyond bad journalism. They didn’t merely fail to vet information before basing conclusions on it. They brazenly lied. So what else is new? When it comes to public school teachers, and especially or union, that is their stock in trade.
Anyone with at least two brain cells knows that ATRs are innocent victims of policies and campaigns that the DOE is orchestrating citywide or endorsing on the school level.
Closing schools or reorganizing them for cynical and quixotic reasons, or sacrificing foreign language, social studies, science, and the arts to accommodate more test prep bilge in the school’s master program, thereby dislodging some of the finest veterans in the system and making them ATRs, does not make for parastism. It makes for bad luck.
It’s especially bizarre that some of the principals making these decisions, whose Tudor powers are promoted by the Post, have themselves no more educational training than a crash course of a few weeks in a Leadership Infirmary.
The Post editorial also weeps steel tears over the fact that the UFT is an effective bulwark against the DOE’s desired manipulation of statistics as another weapon in the principal’s arsenal of capricious and whimsical pretexts for performing hatchet jobs on teachers who have crossed them by having had the temerity to be still active in their fifth or sixth decade of life or by invoking contractual rights.
More sputum from other recent and rude New York Post editorials: teachers should secede from the mass of other Americans who enjoy the pesky protection of the First Amendment.
Teachers are strictly forbidden from wearing political buttons or even, in some schools, pinning issues-related literature on the UFT bulletin board. Principals are actually censoring, screening, and filtering the free and legal expression of opinion. Of course they are emboldened by the demons of Chambers Street.
The Post vehemently favors the perpetuation of the infamy of mayoral control of the schools in its present form. They oppose even a “fine tuning,” as supported by the public advocate, the city council speaker and others who would extend mayoral control but give some say to parents who currently have none in practice but much in theory.
Perish the thought of including educators in any decision-making power in the future! Parents have been our allies in many crucial battles, the CFE and class size struggles, among them. The DOE (and the Post) would love to drive a wedge between us educators and parents by claiming that our interests diverge or even conflict. Of course that’s not the case. There is no contradiction. Parents and educators can each be properly respected without one being at the expense of the other.
Educators are professionals who have logged tens of thousands of hours in academic preparation and classroom experience. That fact should not be lost on friend or foe, although it doesn’t sit well with the latter. There is no hypocrisy in embracing our allies in the community while insisting that educators have unique qualifications.
But there certainly is hypocrisy in upholding a belief in the rule of law and at the same time advocating the exemption of the mayor from the law of term limits. Some politicos whose souls can be bought on e-bay are bucking for a temporary suspension of the law and then reexamination and likely reimposition of it after the mayor has saved the city from perdition as only he could do. This is, after all, the Age of the White Knight. It is beyond the pale to imagine that William Thompson, a mayoral hopeful who is the city’s financial comptroller, would know enough about dollars and cents. And the mayor surely knows about bonds, whether by portfolio or from the dives of raw power.
There are historical precedents for passing special laws to enable a particular leader, whether because of expertise or cult of personality, to stay in power to solve an acute crisis, whether it be revolutionaries in the streets or an unstable economy. It amounts to a touch of genteel martial law.
What’s next on tap of the New York ComPost’s crusade against public school educators and the union that champions them? By all means turn to their movie reviews but not to their editorial page if you value the truth. There’s no point trying to glean gospel from fish wrap.
1 Comment:
1 eileenm
· Oct 7, 2008 at 2:15 pm
It’s important to read the Post to know what the enemy is up to. It’s clear that the firing of ATRs to save the city money will be the major thrust of the next contract. Excellent teachers are branded incompetent with no proof whatsoever and the public will buy it unless they understand what’s really happening. In my opinion, the DOE planned this from the very beginning ,and in order to get a bigger raise, we fell into their trap. This is an issue that goes to the very heart of the union and the principles of seniority and security.I can see this as an issue that, if the DOE refuses to place the ATRs and insists on firing them, will warrant-dare I say it- a STRIKE. If the ATR situation doesn’t affect you now, it can and probably will, tomorrow.The UFT must be prepared to act!