Privatizing schools is a bad idea, no matter what promises the Republicans make about its magical abilities to improve education. Corporate influence is also welcome in the conservative free market world they envision. It save the government money, and it’s free of socialism, regulation and the consumer forces that challenge business.
Check out what happens when industry has a say over what kids are learning in school, and then ask yourself, who’s doing the indoctrination.
Washington Post: In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, Gequetta Bright Laney taught public high school students this spring “Where there’s coal, there’s opportunity,” Bright Laney told her class at Coeburn High School in Wise County. Her lessons, like others in dozens of public schools across the country, were approved and funded by the coal industry. These outreach efforts have drawn scrutiny after news in May that Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, distributed fourth-grade curriculum materials funded by the American Coal Foundation.
The school system and the coal industry have honored Bright Laney’s work. She was named CEDAR’s state teacher of the year in 2006 and 2009, winning a $1,000 award each time. Last year, the Interstate Mining Compact Commission named her its national teacher of the year, showering her with free educational products. In one lesson, she asked students to “mine” chocolate chips out of cookies, awarding credit to those with the most chips.
In another, the class played a game of Monopoly adapted to the topic, with properties renamed after mining camps. Even though the grant was funded by the industry, she said, no bias entered into her teaching.
This is my favorite overreach:
CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called “The Greening of Planet Earth,” which says that “our world is deficient in carbon dioxide, and a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is very beneficial.”
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