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BOYCOTT!!! Waiting for Superman!!!
A national corporate media blitz funded by billionaire union busters and privatizers like Bill Gates and the Eli Broad foundation are pushing a reactionary film pushing privatization of all public schools in the US. This film is being pushed by Obama's education Secretary Arne Duncan and Washington DC School Superintendent Rhee. They have pushed "No Child Left Behind" also supported by Democratic Congressman George Miller and the "Race To The Top". Bill Gates was also invited as a special guest of honor by AFT president Randi Weingarten to the AFT national convention.
![duncan_with_obama.jpg](/uploads/2010/09/27/duncan_with_obama.jpg)
BOYCOTT!!! Waiting for Superman!!!
Waiting for Superman is pernicious propaganda aimed to privatize public education!!!!
Waiting for Superman is part of a three decades-long bi-partisan-corporate driven “consensus building” campaign to development public support for privatizing public schools, smashing teacher unions, while promoting charter schools. The premise of the documentary is that public schools are “failing schools” and that teacher unions are an obstacle to the reform of public education. The documentary underscores President Barack Obama’s education policy—called Race to the Top—which aims to intensify the aforementioned objectives.
The “consensus building” campaign against public education has expanded significantly since Obama announced the Race to the Top policy in July, 2009. This can be observed by the broad-based, and ever present, commentaries in support of charter schools and statements claiming teacher unions impede pro-corporate educational reforms. This propaganda campaign involves media pundits and columnists, corporate news reports, academic administrators and university boards of trustees and regents, foundation heads, such as Bill Gates, and some union leaders. Waiting for Superman, produced by Davis Guggenheim, who also produced Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, is an indication of just how wide-spread that assault is.
While the Gates and Brode Foundations financed Waiting for Superman, those billionaires are opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% in the country.
All the while, funding for public education in California is 47th lowest in the country, and the situation continues to get worse.
Waiting for Superman completely ignores economic, sociological, and technological factors which actually shape the conditions which influence elementary and secondary student’s academic performance. Stan Karp, an editor at Rethinking Schools, states, “It's as if someone made a film about global warming and did not mention cars, oil companies, or carbon dioxide.” Karp continues: “this film misses the mark by light years. Instead of helping people understand the many problems schools face and what it will take to address them, it presents misleading infor-mation and simplistic "solutions" that will make it harder for those of us working to improve public education to succeed. We know first hand how urgently change is needed. But by siding with a corporate reform agenda of teacher bashing, union busting, test-based "accountability" and highly selective, privatized charters, the film pours gasoline on the public education bonfire started by [George W. Bush’s] No Child Left Behind and Race To the Top.” See: http://www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org as a place to find more information about a campaign to counter the impact of this documentary.
Produced by: United Public Workers for Action. See: http://www.UPWA.info
Waiting for Superman is pernicious propaganda aimed to privatize public education!!!!
Waiting for Superman is part of a three decades-long bi-partisan-corporate driven “consensus building” campaign to development public support for privatizing public schools, smashing teacher unions, while promoting charter schools. The premise of the documentary is that public schools are “failing schools” and that teacher unions are an obstacle to the reform of public education. The documentary underscores President Barack Obama’s education policy—called Race to the Top—which aims to intensify the aforementioned objectives.
The “consensus building” campaign against public education has expanded significantly since Obama announced the Race to the Top policy in July, 2009. This can be observed by the broad-based, and ever present, commentaries in support of charter schools and statements claiming teacher unions impede pro-corporate educational reforms. This propaganda campaign involves media pundits and columnists, corporate news reports, academic administrators and university boards of trustees and regents, foundation heads, such as Bill Gates, and some union leaders. Waiting for Superman, produced by Davis Guggenheim, who also produced Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, is an indication of just how wide-spread that assault is.
While the Gates and Brode Foundations financed Waiting for Superman, those billionaires are opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% in the country.
All the while, funding for public education in California is 47th lowest in the country, and the situation continues to get worse.
Waiting for Superman completely ignores economic, sociological, and technological factors which actually shape the conditions which influence elementary and secondary student’s academic performance. Stan Karp, an editor at Rethinking Schools, states, “It's as if someone made a film about global warming and did not mention cars, oil companies, or carbon dioxide.” Karp continues: “this film misses the mark by light years. Instead of helping people understand the many problems schools face and what it will take to address them, it presents misleading infor-mation and simplistic "solutions" that will make it harder for those of us working to improve public education to succeed. We know first hand how urgently change is needed. But by siding with a corporate reform agenda of teacher bashing, union busting, test-based "accountability" and highly selective, privatized charters, the film pours gasoline on the public education bonfire started by [George W. Bush’s] No Child Left Behind and Race To the Top.” See: http://www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org as a place to find more information about a campaign to counter the impact of this documentary.
Produced by: United Public Workers for Action. See: http://www.UPWA.info
For more information:
http://www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org
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Please come into an inner city classroom an see what teachers are working at: to create life-long learners who can forgive and forget their homelives for the 7hours + they are with us trying to learn and escape from their realities. We work SOOO hard for SOOO little - most of us cannot even live in our own apartments; we have to share spaces like college kids, just so that we can make a difference in our children's lives.
Think investment bankers, CEOs with Golden Parachutes and pencil pushers and Golf maniacs who make decisions over martinis who play with and steal our money - they are the ones who should be investigated! Not public school teachers, who have more regulations than the Federal Government (think OSHA, FDA, etc.) that impede their quest and progress. Bankers, investors, people with money to spare just want their hands on the largest budget item in any city, county or state in the Union which is education, and are propagandizing big time against its existence so that they can profit, just like they have with old growth forests, any hint of petroleum deposits - anywhere, coal, diamonds, cocoa, cocaine or anything that they think can make them money.
BEWARE, citizen, consumer and failing capitalist. The laws have been laxed in their favor and the only ones who stand to lose are - we, the tax payers!
Think investment bankers, CEOs with Golden Parachutes and pencil pushers and Golf maniacs who make decisions over martinis who play with and steal our money - they are the ones who should be investigated! Not public school teachers, who have more regulations than the Federal Government (think OSHA, FDA, etc.) that impede their quest and progress. Bankers, investors, people with money to spare just want their hands on the largest budget item in any city, county or state in the Union which is education, and are propagandizing big time against its existence so that they can profit, just like they have with old growth forests, any hint of petroleum deposits - anywhere, coal, diamonds, cocoa, cocaine or anything that they think can make them money.
BEWARE, citizen, consumer and failing capitalist. The laws have been laxed in their favor and the only ones who stand to lose are - we, the tax payers!
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