Education Nation in Los Angeles
Last year’s Education Nation programming on NBC was widely panned by most teachers whose opinions I read or heard. The heavy-hands of corporate sponsorship and foundation funding showed through in the design of the event, the selection of topics and guests, and the focus on a single and simplified narrative about public schools. My colleague Anthony Cody was not alone in seeing the event as part of a broader media “war on teachers.”
This year, Education Nation is back and NBC is taking it on the road. The only portion I’ve seen so far was today’s Los Angeles Teacher Town Hall, which was a webcast rather than a television broadcast. I was prepared to be disappointed, but due to the involvement of some friends, and friends of friends, I decided to watch and listen. The two-hour program covered many of the key issues in education, with a bit of a California focus to start, but overall, tackling the major issues in the national education debate. In short, I’d say that NBC and Education Nation took an important step towards redeeming their reputation among teachers. I don’t pretend to speak for other teachers, but I think I have a reasonable sense of how certain ideas and issues resonate among my peers, and how the presentation of those issues is likely to trigger certain responses. Among teacher
