I've been admiring the work done by A Voice at The Chancellor's and Eduwonkette in exposing "Corporations at Work" in education. (Read my earlier post for a selection of some essays in this area.) As long as bloggers like these keep writing this stuff, we need to be reading it. Actually, this is not really a suggestion. It's pre-requisite for taking this country back.
Progressive Democrats of America sent around an email yesterday containing a passage written by Bill Moyers from his book Moyers on Democracy: I wish I could say that journalists in general are showing the same interest in uncovering the dangerous linkages thwarting this democracy. It is not for lack of honest and courageous individuals who would risk their careers to speak truth to power — a modest risk compared to those of some journalists in authoritarian countries who have been jailed or murdered for the identical "crime."
But our journalists are not in control of the instruments they play. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, new organizations — particularly in television — are folded into entertainment divisions. The "news hole" in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment right. (from Moyers on Democracy)
Last month I shouted out to the press to start listening to teacher voices.
I am shouting out to practically everyone now to point your antennae at this corporate webbing and do whatever you can to expose the crap out of it.
Woodlass:
ReplyDeleteJust a reminder. Joel Klein is a Democrat and Michael Bloomberg is a Democrat, turned Republican, turned Independent. Or in other words an opportunist.
While I agree with you on the corporate model (we are not cogs and the students are not widgets). However, both parties and their leaders subscribe to some form of the corporate model approach for the public schools. Too bad that our unions can't get the political parties and the media to understand how unworkable the corporate model approach is.