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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Spills Into Classrooms #ows

Occupy Wall Street Spills Into Classrooms:

Occupy Wall Street Spills Into Classrooms

Occupy Wall Street Education
Retired school teacher Larry Witlen wears "On Wisconsin" on his shirt as he protests during an Occupy Wall Street gathering across from the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J.

Posted: 10/24/11 08:39 PM ET


NEW YORK -- While on Wall Street many protesters decry economic inequality, and in Washington, D.C. debates continue over federal education policy, teachers across the country are occupying their classrooms.

In the eyes of the president of the second-largest teachers' union, the two issues of inequality and education are closely related. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been a frequent visitor to New York's OWS protests. The AFT recently revised its "working document" -- a sort of mission statement -- to include language referring to the richest 1 percent.

"We've been thinking about this whole notion of economic inequity and what it means," Weingarten said in an interview. "You see it in terms of teachers all the time because they're talking about their kids, and how they get really angry when someone says it is an excuse to talk about poverty."

Weingarten continued, "Teachers want to make differences in the lives of kids but there's this current generation of reformers from the hedge fund industries who just think we can bark an order at teachers and it shall be done, and the fact is