Teachers and the President: Love Meets Indifference and Condescension
By Mark Naison
I received a photo from an enraged Michigan teacher with whom I communicate on a regular basis. Dated January 20, 2016, it showed President Obama with a huge smile in a Detroit pizza shop preparing to visit the city’s auto show.
What a slap in the face! A smiling President visiting a city where teachers engaged in an ongoing sick-out to protest intolerable conditions in the schools where they work. Did the President care that thousands of teachers put their jobs in jeopardy to fight for decent conditions for their students? Did he say anything about the desperate conditions in Detroit schools? What kind of President visits a city in crisis and refuses to acknowledge that a crisis exists?
We expected such deplorable behavior from George W. Bush–the kind he displayed during Hurricane Katrina. From Barack Obama, who swept into the White House with teacher votes in 2008, this came as another example in a litany of betrayals.
Barack Obama said nothing during the great Chicago Teachers’ Strike of 2014. He never defended the teachers who lost their collective bargaining rights in the state of Wisconsin a few years earlier nor did he ever demonstrate that he appreciates the efforts of our nation’s educators enough to encourage them to play a role in shaping education policy.
Given the overwhelming support he received from the nation’s public-school teachers, why does he continue to ignore them as a positive force in the nation’s political life and as a bulwark of its middle class? The President’s close friend, the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, provides some clues.
Duncan’s words and deeds reflect contempt for our nation’s educators. He views them as incapable of rising to the challenge of preparing children for global economic competition—graduates from second-tier colleges and universities who entered their chosen profession by default. UnworthyTeachers and the President: Love Meets Indifference and Condescension - BK Nation:
