Are you skeptical that the Common Core education
standards will significantly improve school outcomes, given their
massive cost and cumbersome standardized testing requirements? Why,
you must be some kind of insane conspiracy theorist!
Michael Mulgrew, president of New York City’s United Federation
of Teachers, remarked at a convention last month that only crazy
people could possibly oppose Common Core. (His comments were not
widely publicized until late last week.)
“I’ve heard the stories about how Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Joel
Klein, and a flying saucer full of Martians designed these things
to brainwash us all,” he said, according to
The New York Daily News.
It’s a cheap shot, although it’s nothing compared to what he
said next, regarding activists who are trying to presure
legislatures to move away from Common Core:
“So I stand here in support for [Common Core] for one simple
reason. If someone takes something from me, I’m going to grab it
right back out of their cold, twisted, sick hand, and say it is
mine. You don’t take what is mine. And I’m going to punch you in
the face and push you in the dirt.”
Charming.
Really, this is petty tribalism at its most obvious. Mulgrew
comes across as flatly disinterested in the actual policy; what he
cares about is getting his goon squad fired up about one thing or
another (note that the audience—presumably public school
teachers—applaud his suggestion of violence). For union leadership,
every issue is a fight, and any group that stands in opposition to
the official union position is an enemy that needs to be beaten
into submission.
Many teachers, and even some teachers unions, have actually
joined conservatives and libertarians in opposition to Common Core.
That’s because they recognize that centrally-mandated solutions to
the national education problem are unlikely to work—even if such a
diverse ideological coalition is unlikely to agree on anything
else.
But that’s beside the point. For some interest groups, if you’re
not a friend, you’re enemy. Either you’re with Mulgrew, or he’s
going to knock you in the dirt.
Hat tip: Richard Thompson / Rare
More from Reason on Common Core
here.
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