ROBERT BARKLEY FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
First they came for your integrity. They did it subtly and over time as they obfuscated our textbooks to reflect a narrow ideology rather than the whole truth.
Next they attacked the integrity of your profession. They did it by devising embarrassingly shallow and mandatory testing in order to hold you accountable for outcomes over which you have minimal control, all the while ignoring the many inadequacies of the society that contribute to student stress.
Then they devastated what you had hoped to give to your students. They did it by narrowing the curriculum to only those attributes they find suitable to provide compliant and narrowly trained workers, and by their unenlightened neglect of the multiple intelligences and learning styles and varied pace of learning that is present in all learners.
Then they reduced your ability to motivate students by limiting the availability of instructional supplies or making you purchase them yourselves. They did it by advocating for insufficient funding through regressive taxation.
Then they set out to diminish your hard earned salaries. They did it by pushing performance pay that has been long proven both ineffective and demeaning.
Then they attacked your pensions. They did it by blaming the sudden funding inadequacies thereof on you rather than on the greed and incompetence of Wall Street.
Then they assaulted your health care. They did it by ignoring the reduced wages you accepted in lieu of the growing costs of health insura