TIME’s Nov. 3rd Article on Teacher Tenure an Example of Stereotyping. OK, I know I’m late on the scene of this controversy. However, since I don’t subscribe to TIME and no one offered me a copy to read, I had to wait until I could buy one on the news stand. I refuse to criticize an article I’ve not yet read. Now, let’s begin….. Graphics Dept and Cover/Page Editors are amazingly out of sync with the content of the article. Much of the TIME’s Nov. 3rd article on teacher tenure issues is pretty mundane and amateurishly written. Were it not for the amazingly out of sync graphics and headlines, this could be a largely forgettable article. The graphic atop the two opening pages of the article is out of sync with the content. The judge maintains that 1%-3% of teachers are bad teachers. No other claim about the ratio exists in the article. Yet the graphic shows four apples, one of which is rotten (aka bad). Without the least explanation, TIME Magazine’s Graphics Dept inflated the ratio of bad teachers to 25%. That’s outrageous! The cover page graphic is utterly stunning. Although it can be logically inferred that 97% of teachers are adequate to good, the graphic on the cover shows a court gavel about to smash a clean, good apple. This graphic is truly representative of the proposed solution, which is smashing all teachers - even the good ones. Repealing tenure attacks all 100% of teachers, while the court’s evidence suggests 97% of them are adequate to exceptional, an amazingly capricious case of stereotyping and over kill. The irony is that this proposal represents exactly the kind of capricious behavior which led to the creation of tenure laws in the first place. Indeed, the article accurately states, Before tenure laws in early 20th century, a teacher could be fired for holding unorthodox political views or attending the wrong church, or for no reason at all if the local party boss wanted to pass on the job to someone else.’ ” We can now add that teachers could be fired because they were successfully stereotyped to match someone else’s behavior. Ken Mortland Kirkland WA
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 19:44:56 +0000
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