|
|
|
AFT tries to sell another sham to teachers to deflect weakness and capitulation
AFT tries to sell another sham to teachers to deflect weakness and capitulation by Danny Weil Back in June of last year, the American Federation for Teachers launched its brand new 'lesson plan' website). "Teachers helping teachers--that’s what the AFT is all about and that's the goal of the union's brand-new website. Share My Lesson, launched yesterday, is slated to become the nation’s largest online community for U.S. teachers to collaborate and share teaching resources and innovative ideas, according to AFT. What AFT did not tell its members is that it is taking rank and file dues and paying Britain's TES Connect to handle the whole website, committing $10 million to develop and maintain the site. AFT says in its notice that "TES Connect is the world's largest network of teachers, with more than 2 million teacher members, offering more than 400,000 resources and logs 2.5 million downloads weekly." What AFT doesn't say and what you can go see for yourself is that TES Connect is a large for-profit corporation devoted to canned curriculum that basically divorces teachers from the conception of their work reducing them to little more than clerks in the classroom or dispensaries for official truth and knowledge. Weingarten noted that teachers are so hungry for resources, especially now in cash-starved schools, that 50 percent of teachers leave the teaching profession within their first five years because of a lack of support, deep education budget cuts and other frustrations. This teacher-turnover crisis costs $7.3 billion annually, with unknown costs to children’s education (ibid). I guess this is why AFT set up a foundation to store the cash they got: $5 million that will help pay corporate TES Connect and then fill it with the likes of the one million dollars they received from Bill and Melinda Gates, the horror show of privatization. AFT goes on about how teachers are expected to do so much, often with very little support, and they are thirsty for the tools they need to improve instruction. The AFT decided to accept the challenge and make its biggest investment ever in a tool to improve the teaching profession. Teachers are not hungry and thirsty for lesson plans; they are hungry and thirsty for jobs, job security, pensions, health care, a democratic teaching environment, full disclosure, transparency and the right to be "left alone" by Wall Street thugs looking to game the system. This move by AFT is a mere publicity stunt that is designed by the overpaid leadership of the union to be able to state that they are helping teachers when in fact they are making them more hungry and more thirsty for basic needs everyday. It is this kind of patronizing and infantilizing attitude that now has the union giving tax payer money to British corporations. Readers might wish to read Education PlC by Stephen Ball to see just how England outsourced almost all of its public services including teaching to not simply privatizers, but privatizers from such places as Dubai which now ‘teaches’ 250,000 British youth. To begin with, teachers at their own sites can work together to design and come up with lesson plans. They do not need the British to do it for them. Secondly, if we are looking to England for answers to our educational problems and then giving them millions of tax dollars we are playing right into the hands of the reactionaries. They can now get the millions in tax money and at the same time say they are doing a service for kids and teachers.
— Tula Connell and Danny Weil |
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to
advance understanding of education issues vital to a democracy. We believe this constitutes a
'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes. For more information click here. If you wish to use copyrighted material from
this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from
the copyright owner.
