Five of Jon Stewart’s greatest hits on teachers, school reform and stupidity
Education and school reform weren’t topics that Jon Stewart (whose mother is a veteran educator) spent a great deal of time exploring on “The Daily Show” but when he did, it was worthwhile listening. Never the hard-line critic of corporate school reform that many would have liked him to be, Stewart still poked holes in it on occasion. Now that the show is ending, here are some of his greatest education hits on the show:
1. Cheating teachers go to jail. Cheating Wall Streeters don’t. What’s up with that? — April 2015
Stewart makes the inevitable comparison between former teachers and administrators in Atlanta who were sentenced for cheating on standardized tests — a few for as much as seven years — with the folks on Wall Street who in 2008 nearly brought down the country’s financial system. Only one Wall Streeter was sentenced to 12 months in jail. The Atlanta convictions, of racketeering and other crimes in a standardized test-cheating scandal, were believed to be the worst of a wave of test cheating in nearly 40 states and Washington, D.C. — not by students but by teachers and administrators who were under pressure to meet score goals.
The case stemmed from a 2013 indictment by a grand jury of Beverly Hall, the now-deceased Atlanta schools superintendent, and 34 teachers, principals and others. Twelve teachers eventually went to trial; one was acquitted of all charges and the 11 others were all convicted of racketeering — under a law used against the Gambino organized-crime family — plus a variety of other charges. Prosecutors alleged that Hall had run a “corrupt” organization that used test scores to financially reward and punish teachers. Hall passed away earlier this year.
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2. Bill allows teachers, parents to hit kids hard enough to bruise — February 2014
A legislator in Kansas was pushing legislation to allow teachers and parents to whack kids hard enough to bruise, apparently out of the mistaken belief that beating up children is an effective disciplinary method. A legislative committee killed the bill, but the sorry fact is that someone thought it was worth committing to paper. Said Stewart, invoking the name of a bill sponsor:
A legislator in Kansas was pushing legislation to allow teachers and parents to whack kids hard enough to bruise, apparently out of the mistaken belief that beating up children is an effective disciplinary method. A legislative committee killed the bill, but the sorry fact is that someone thought it was worth committing to paper. Said Stewart, invoking the name of a bill sponsor:
Hello, my name is Representative Gail Finney. Are you holding back from punching the **** out of your children because you fear legal repercussions? Well, fear no more. Your nightmare is over, whereas theirs is just beginning.
The bill called for permitting teachers, caretakers and anybody else with permission from a child’s guardian to hit them really, really hard — hard enough to bruise.
Stewart:
Whoever it is in your life that you believe hits the hardest. … “Hey, uh, while you’re here to fix the cable, would you mind going upstairs. I’ve got a 9-year-old that won’t make the bed. A quick shot to the chops should do it …
Under House Bill 2699:
‘Corporal punishment’ means 10 forceful applications in succession of a bare open-hand palm against the clothed buttocks of a child acknowledging that redness or bruising may occur on the tender skin of a child as a result.
The video:
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3. What are critics of preschool talking about? — March 2013
After President Obama advanced an expansion of high-quality preschool in his 2013 State of the Union speech, critics went after the idea, and Stewart went after them, saying:
…. If these children want an education, they should get jobs and pay for it themselves. But that’s illegal, Thanks nanny state…
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4. Taking on Michelle Rhee — February 2013
It was a big deal when Stewart invited school reform leader Michelle Rhee on the show after her memoir, “Radical,” was published, and though he didn’t rip her to pieces in the way her critics wanted, he did test her about whether her brand of reform unfairly targeted teachers. He also said something that Rhee and other reformers could take insult from: that there has been “no real innovation in education since John Dewey.”
Teachers, he told Rhee, are demoralized. “Are we hanging them out to dry, coming in every three years, saying here’s the new reform, you are going to teach to that… increase your scores or you are fired?” He said the education scene is “like a football team who gets a new offensive coordinator every year.”
In explaining why her new memoir is titled “Radical,” Rhee expressed some surprise that she was seen as a radical when she first became chancellor of D.C. schools because all she was doing was taking “obvious” common-sense actions such as closing failing schools and firing bad teachers. (She posed on the cover of Time magazine with a broom, so it’s hard to really see how she was surprised.) Stewart pointed out that the concern was how she decided to close the schools and fire the teachers, questioning whether the metrics for assessment were fair.
When Rhee said that poverty only makes things more “challenging,” Stewart said, “It seems like education can only be put in place once the soil is fertile.” His suggestion — that for many children even great teachers can’t overcome the effects of hunger and poor nutrition and exhaustion and trauma from violence — was exactly right.
Unfortunately, Stewart didn’t ask her about some of her more provocative actions — such as firing a principal on television or about the famous incidents in which she was so desperate as a young teacher to keep her students under control that she taped their mouths shut, and, once, swatted a bee and popped it in her mouth to shock them.
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5. Trying to talk to Education Secretary Arne Duncan — February 2012
Duncan was so programmed that Stewart was unable to get the basketball-playing secretary to have some fun talking about the New York Knicks’ hero, Five of Jon Stewart’s greatest hits on teachers, school reform and stupidity - The Washington Post: