What if you would prefer to give educators an attaboy/attagirl for doing a damn good job already?
As you implicitly acknowledge, whatever your preferred remedy, saying “Education Reform” translates as “the schools are not by and large getting it done”, and I disagree with that. You might think my disagreement is in error, but it ought to be an allowable opinion if the contrary one is.
This belief, that someone desiring to make something better, implies that that someone believes that what is there is inferior, is ridiculous and detrimental society.
If I want to reform education and make it better, doesn’t imply that I think that the current education system (and the educators within) is crap.
Likewise, because I desire to make America better, by making it more inclusive and just, does not imply that I think America is a shithole country.
You and your Ilk need to get over this sensitivity. It’s not a binary option.
Not good enough does not equal not good at all!
We can be proud of where we are and at the same time strive to get to a better place.
My “ilk”? You mean teachers unions?
God, I hope you’re not a teacher.
I was a substitute teacher for a number of years (and I do still tutor for the ACT and SAT), but it is my wife who is a special education teacher—and she earns the primary income for our family. Those education “reformers” are mostly teachers union bashers, and it pisses me off to no end.
Then, don’t put Education Reform on your jersey when you make it to the NBA. My guess is that it will be one of the least popular messages anyway, so you can probably relax.
Do you want a moderator to close this thread? It seems like nearly all of your concerns in the OP have been answered – they won’t wear things that say abortion stops a beating heart or blue lives matter Heil Hitler or whatever. They can choose from a small set of social justice slogans. This bickering about what Education Reform means seems pretty small potatoes to me.
It’s actually a very big deal to me and I have been posting about it here for years. And it should be a big deal for everyone one way or the other, regardless of your opinion on the matter.
It’s just too generic to be meaningful, and the vast, vast majority of people seeing “Education Reform” won’t connect anything to it, unlike Black Lives Matter, I Can’t Breathe, etc.
I am grateful to have benefitted from a very excellent and comprehensive education. I am grateful to my many excellent teachers. I have tried to learn what I could from the ones who were less exceptional. I have tried to fulfill a personal duty to pass along knowledge.
But clearly education can always be improved and individualized. And clearly not everyone is on board with full inclusivity. Almost no one is free of implicit bias based on personal experiences. Reform is not a bad message. It’s probably a very muddled one, meaning something different to everyone and sometimes well-meaning but doing harm rather than good.
So they can put political messages on their jerseys, but only within a certain prescribed part of the political spectrum? And that seems okay to you? Again, I don’t like this kind of selective standard even if it ostensibly benefits “my side”.
Why wouldn’t it be okay?
It doesn’t mean the education system doesn’t still fail some kids. Also, you can call for the system, as a whole, to be reformed while still acknowledging that there’s a lot of really good teachers out there. In fact, wouldn’t education reform be done at an administrative level? It seems like that asking for education reform is a message directed at TPTB, not the teachers.
As is the case with a lot of things, just because something isn’t awful doesn’t mean you can’t want it to be better.
“Education Reform” is more popular than I anticipated.
The Dallas Mavericks are all wearing “Equality”, albeit with the foreign-born players (Luka Doncic, Kristaps Porzingis, Boban Marjanovic, J.J. Barea, and Maxi Kleber) having the word in their native language.
The Undefeated reports that 285 out of 350 players have (so far, unclear what the deadline is) opted to wear one of the messages, so it’s been a success for the NBA, whose goal was enticing players to play the season at all in the strange conditions of a restart after a layoff and the Disney bubble project.