Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Cartel--New Jersey teachers

5/10: "There is one scene in Bob Bowdon's movie, The Cartel, that ought to be required viewing for everyone who has ever voted Democratic, especially if you live in New Jersey. It is the scene of a lottery drawing for places in a Charter School in that state, which pays its teachers and the school administrators with which its educational system is top-heavy more than any other. Mr. Bowdon's camera shows us
  • the faces of the parents and children who have been chosen for the school and the faces of those who have not. Both are in tears, but for the chosen ones, they are tears of joy; for
  • those not chosen, they are tears of despair.
"Thank you, God. They have a chance," says one of the lucky mothers who is overwhelmed by her good fortune. Mercifully, Mr. Bowdon allows the faces of those who have missed out on that chance -- yet again -- to speak for themselves....
  • To those without any personal or political stake in the breathtaking corruption of the New Jersey teachers unions, however, I would think that it must be impossible to watch this scene without being moved.
It's not as if nobody before Bob Bowdon knew that, in many inner-city schools, teachers and pupils are alike held hostage to thugs who will allow neither teaching nor learning to take place. Nor is it news to those who are not ignorant a-purpose that masses of those who have spent many years in such
Yet you can't blame Mr. Bowdon's movie for acting as if this is all some unheard of outrage and not something that has been a feature of American urban life -- albeit not to the extent that it is now in New Jersey -- for a generation and more, if only people had cared to find out about it. ...

  • That may be changing now as people are finally daring to inform themselves about how more and more money for public schools has only reinforced their failures."...from The American Spectator, via Lucianne.com

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