Showing posts with label NCB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NCB. Show all posts

Monday, September 13, 2010

Good Apples, Bad Metaphors, and Why NBC is Wrong

At the end of this month, NBC's two-day "Education Summit" will take place in New York City.  One of the "confirmed" sessions at "Education Nation" is: Good Apples: How do we keep good teachers, throw out bad ones, and put a new shine on the profession? I am not joking. This is actually true.


This is what I sent to NBC:


I was disheartened to read of your summit that is designed to "fix" schooling and includes the"confirmed" session titled: Good Apples: How do we keep good teachers, throw out bad ones, and put a new shine on the profession?

This is disgraceful, insulting, counter productive, and ignorant. The disdain of actual educators--not policy makers, CEOs, mayors, chancellors, commissioners, and so on--but rather, people who actually teach and lead in schools is clearly present in the Discourse NBC has produced. 

In what other profession would a national summit be convened that would find it allowable to exclude representatives of that profession as you have done in this summit? Can you imagine a national summit about law that did not include lawyers? Or a medical summit, sans doctors?

This is a disgrace.

NBC says, "It's time to reinvent America as an Education Nation."  Imagine thinking America could truly be reinvented without privileging the voices of teachers, administrators, and students.  If I watched any TV,  I'd boycott NBC. I am curious as to what you think.