Thursday, March 17, 2022

Random Notes from a Crank

Jennifer Berskhire has a great article in The Nation that anyone who cares about public education should read. It's titled "Why Teachers Are Dropping Out." 

Because of a confluence of low pay, exploitation, shitty benefits, attacks against teacher unions, and stupid cultural battles about what's being taught in classrooms that is aided and abetted by Fox Faux News and other right-wing media outlets, I worry about the teachers we're losing in public education. 

Then again, having witnessed the sorry state of social studies education my daughter has gotten in her high school, some of those folks' teaching practices (or lack thereof) need to be examined. They wouldn't know squat about critical race theory and would only hazily understand it. Unfortunately, as the stereotype goes, the social studies faculty all too often are an intellectual backwater of coaches. 

The crap going on in Iowa in regard to K-12 education, for example, is ridiculous. And other nonsense like that is happening in other states. 

Meanwhile as Russia's invasion of Ukraine goes on, the ratings leader of Faux News, Tucker Carlson, is a darling of Russia's state-run propaganda machine: "How Russia Is Using Tucker Carlson In Its Propaganda." 

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