Area columnist Charles Davenport rattled some feathers this past weekend with a column in yesterday's News & Record saying teachers should "quit whining about their pay." And it has caused a rift among area bloggers.Ed Cone was critical of Davenport's column this morning, saying "it meandered into union-bashing, thinktank-quoting, and flat-out trashing of teachers. Feels to me like he's trolling for angry letters more than offering insight on public education."
John Locke's Terry Stoops education policy analyst chimed in also.
But then resident lawyer and blogger Sam Spagnola had an interesting back-and-forth on the subject this morning, forcing Cone to ban Spag from his site altogether. Spag has his version of what happened here.
Your turn to chime in on all of this.
My thoughts?
I don't teach anymore, I no longer have a dog in the fight, I sell plane tickets over the phone at a far less salary than what I was making as a teacher.
And I blog and write.
I'm blessed and appreciative to be employed though. But I did teach, And I knew I wasn't going to get rich doing it. I was genuinely concerned about my kids, the politics in the schools, the grave amount of testing harming our children this time of year and if my kids were going to make it to class everyday, safe and sound.
Your turn.
E.C. ;)
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1 comment:
EC, my version was admittedly a bit dramatized but the essence is correct.
The fact is that I have been confronting Ed Cone for a week with the words from his N&R column last week and how he applied or didn't apply them to his own actions.
When it became clear to anyone with a brain that Cone wasn't following his own stated principles, I pointed that out.
Suddenly, I was banned.
It's pretty simple. Ed called on people in his column last week to stop labeling each other, quit treating politics like a team sport and engage in a discussion of the issues. Then for a week, he engaged in the very team sports he criticized as exemplified by who and what he chose to criticize and defend.
Then along comes Davenports column and rather than provide any kind of argument to refute Davenport, Cone simply criticizes Davenport.
I called him out on this, referenced last weeks column, and presto- banned.
What ensued was an actual discussion of the issues (sans Ed, who still couldn't muster an argument of his own against Davenport) just like I initially requested.
At least one other commenter stated that he believed my initial criticism of Ed's post was appropriate and nobody else complained. But that didn't matter. I confronted Ed again about his refusal to address my comments about the disconnect between what he stated in his column the week before and his actions during the past week, and for this I was banned.
Oh well.
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