USA: Billionaires attack Public Schools

Union buster and education privatizer Bill Gates is a major backer of the new anti-labor film "Waiting For Superman". He was also invited as the guest of honor by AFT President Randy Weingarten to their 2010 AFT national convention.

Weingarten is a major backer of charter schools in NYC and Washington DC. where she received millions of dollars from the Wal-Mart Walton Foundation to help privatize the schools. She defended her support of Green Dot charter schools in NYC as well.

Oprah Winfrey has backed the film on her TV show which led to this letter from a teacher:

Why don’t you, with your great forum for change, invite real classroom teachers to talk about what it’s like to teach homeless students with no resources (students or teachers)? Why don’t you ask my son, who recently graduated with a Master’s of Arts in teaching, what it’s like to teach students living in foster homes for drug abuse, rape — both victims and perpetrators — violence, assault? Why don’t you ask him how he struggles to be a “good” teacher? And wonders — daily — what that even means in the context where he finds himself?


If you want to change education, Oprah, don’t make the mistake everyone else has. Ask teachers. Would you have a conversation about the national state of medicine and health care without asking for the input of doctors, nurses and patients? And yet we have left parents, teachers and students completely out of this critical talk.


If you want real change, invite real teachers to your show, Oprah. The irony is that the conversation seems to valourise teachers, saying that “good” teachers can change things for kids. So can smaller classrooms, food, adequate resources, the freedom to teach according to a child’s needs. But then, that’s not what the “experts” are saying, is it? Unfortunately, the “experts” have no real experience with students. Or teaching. Or classrooms. They only know how to tell the teachers in the trenches what to do?


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