[lbo-talk] a teacher in trouble, reply to Nathan

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Sat Mar 4 13:16:52 PST 2006


----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> -"I want fight for what's right," Waggoner said. "The biggest travesty -is the childrens' education." When initially asked what they knew -about the opera, she said, her students said, "fat women screaming," -"people yelling in Viking hats," and "I hate it." After seeing the -Faust video, "they got excited by opera, but now they associate it -with a four letter word," Waggoner said. -Has the Colorado Education Association done anything for Waggoner?

The union is representing her, although as I indicated, they probably don't have much they can do for her other than work out details of her termination:

http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3510141 "According to Waggoner, Sauter told her union representative, Norm Milks, on Monday that the board had refused her buyout terms and some of its members were insisting she be fired. Milks could not be reached for comment."

What's remarkable is that intellectuals on this list are so attracted to news of free speech rights being violated, but are not vociferously discussing the 65% Solution, TABOR and other issues that are a far more immediate threat to public education and teachers jobs in Colorado. It reflects the skewed priorities of folks on the list and why I react rather strongly when people say the union should be spending their money on the Bennish case, when they don't know all the issues that the union is spending its funds on. Spending money defeating TABOR and its variants is far more important for the broad public interest than defending the rights of lefty intellectuals to spout off in the classroom.

-- Nathan Newman



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