Rush: Teaching Is ‘Easy Money Scam’
By Michael Kaufman
The other day I was talking to my neighbor in front of his house as Rush Limbaugh’s voice blared inside from the radio. I like my neighbor despite his terrible judgment. Rush was doing a segment similar to one he titled, “Teachers Run an Easy Money Scam on Fellow Citizens” for his website. He said, “Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?
“That’s not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last. Can we just get that out in the open?” According to Rush, the teaching profession today has been taken over by “people who’ve found an easy way to make a living.”
This from a man who makes millions of dollars for sitting at a microphone and spouting whatever bit of stupidity and bigotry pops into his head. In this case he ignorantly maligns so many wonderful and dedicated teachers I know or have known that I cannot name them all….so I will name only two: India Kaufman, who teaches elementary school in Atlanta, and the late Alex Smith, who taught in the Warwick Valley Middle School.
As for Rush, he would be an ideal candidate for an appearance on a new Survivor show being proposed in an email currently making the rounds on the internet. He would be one of six business people dropped into an elementary school for a full school year.
Each contestant will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum and a class of 20-25 students. Each class will include some learning-disabled children, children with ADHD, children who speak limited English, and several labeled with severe behavior problems. Rush and the other contestants will have to complete lesson plans at least three days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives, and to modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly.
They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. Each month they will conduct fire drills, tornado drills, and [Code Red] drills for shooting attacks.
They will be required to attend workshops, faculty meetings, and curriculum development meetings. They will also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the standards of learning (SOL) tests. If they are sick or are having a bad day they must not let it show.
Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If any students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible.
The business people will only have access to the public golf course on the weekends, but with their new salary, they will not be able to afford it. Lunch will be limited to 30 minutes, which is not counted as part of their work day. They will be permitted to use a student restroom as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before or after school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies.
Finally, the contestants must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time. The winner of this Survivor season will be allowed to return to their job.
Is there anyone reading this who thinks Rush could last a week?
Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.
Tags: Michael Kaufman, Rush Limbaugh
March 23rd, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Nice one, Mike. Frankly, I doubt very much if Limbaugh could last a week in a heterogenous classroom of 30 first graders. And there’s as much chance of his attempting to teach for a year as there is of my understanding the special theory of relativity. Difference is that I know that I don’t know.
I recall that when we started this Zest of Orange thing, I vowed to myself to keep the language in my writing clean and upright, no personal insults. But you know, when all’s said and done, Limbaugh is just an ignorant ass who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m glad you nailed him.
March 23rd, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Thanks, Jeff. And just for the record: India Kaufman is my daughter-in-law. She teaches third grade. Whenever I visit the family in Atlanta she is up late into the early morning hours working on lesson plans and reports, grading tests, etc. She often lays out her own money to buy items she needs to enrich the experience of her students. Alex Smith was a no-nonsense teacher who earned his students’ respect so they would work hard to earn his. He was also a stalwart of the teachers’ union and he would no doubt be amused by Limbaugh’s characterization of him as a “left-wing activist.”
March 23rd, 2011 at 9:33 pm
So Rush finally got around to attacking school teachers. By now I figure he must have maligned just about every profession, organization and religion that his bigoted perspective could give voice to. It never fails to amaze and frighten me that Rush, the golden boy of hate radio, has so many serious listeners.
March 23rd, 2011 at 9:44 pm
A week? He wouldn’t last a morning.
Thanks for this post, Mike, and especially for the mention of my former colleague, Alex Smith.
March 23rd, 2011 at 10:52 pm
I don’t watch YouTube much, but Taylor Mali nailed it for teachers when asked at a dinner party “What do you make?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU
Check it out…
March 24th, 2011 at 1:34 am
PRICELESS – he wouldn’t last it past roll call. Go teachers, you have my respect 100%. Two of my sisters were elementary school teachers and they never rested attending to our future citizens.
March 24th, 2011 at 8:39 am
Last a week? Try a couple of days and he’d be lucky to have “only” 25 kids in his class. My daughter teaches Global Studies in the city and “herds” 150 kids throughout the day. She also pays for most of her needed supplies, including copies, because the school is broke. She helps to break up fights too! And, because she cares – and without added financial incentive – she set up a legal studies program which has her getting home at 9 p.m. on the nights of mock court or other events! THANK YOU for writing this column. (PS: the most important mentors in my life were either educators or people who encouraged life-long learning.)
March 25th, 2011 at 9:57 am
I carefully read your article and the comments, even to going to view the YouTube referenced.
There is a lot of scapegoating coming from Republicans and fronted by people like the Wisconsin governor with accompaniment by the Limbaughs of the nation. The 2008 debacle created by the Wall Street greed and banks created the continuing financial crisis given some respite by the stimulus money; however that one year was not a year of working out the solution in states: what planning was necessary to accomplish the next year’s budget to avoid a disaster at their level. New York State had nonsense in its legislature when the state Senate played politics about who would be King of the moutain.
The greatest teaching effort teachers ever faced is educating and reminding people of what they do every day. The politicians have found that the best defense is an offense. They means scapegoating the teachers.
If tenure is abolished it must be replaced by guaranteed due process as articulated in the Constitution. In my first teaching assisgnment as a seventh grade teacher of English in Watkins Glen, New York, I taught six classes of 30 each, had a homeroom, lunch duty, bus duty, and study hall. I had thirty minutes for lunch which included the long walk to the cafeteria and back. All of this in 1961 was without additional compensations. I had just returned from serving in the Army for two years.
I returned to the university to obtain advanced degrees and taught high school tenth grade and eleventh grade for two years before teaching in the community college for thirty-five years. The challenges in teaching grew as articulated in the comments and film clip. Teachers fought for benefits and compensation for some of the additional non-teaching duties. In good times some of these benefits did come, but at a price. They were reminded in inflationary times that you had to take less because you had these future benefits. Now that the future is here we are seeing these under attack. They were not the cause for the financial meltdown whose ripples are more like a tsunami–long and forceful.
Everyone thinks they could be a teacher, but I have observed the public non-teachers who come in for an hour or two and leave. My deceased colleague Ray Raimondi used to say that he would love to go to a new college every two weeks and leave so that he didn’t have to do evaluation of writing with suggestions for improvement (evaluation) and present the next assignment. You could leave with applause that way. You are not accountable. Therefore visiting professionals other than teachers can walk out from their presentations without any long term results. Many view that experience as it is: entertainment,ego massage, or public service.
Limbaugh is an argument for tenure which was historically instituted to protect teachers from the political whims and prejudices of a community. Free speech in and out of the classroom will be subject to perception, rumor, and litmus tests on certain issues, and, yes political party.
I wonder if some of the commentary here, and mine, would pass such tests.
March 27th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Thanks Lee, Anita, Linda, Mike, Jo, and Edwin for your great comments. Here are a couple more from the Virtual Mailbag: Mikhail Horowitz expressed thanks “on behalf of my mother, who taught for 30 years in Bed Stuy. The [bleeping] nerve of that moron!” And Rory simply wrote, “To hell with Rush Limbaugh.” As Keith Olbermann would say, “Rush Limbaugh: Today’s Worst Person in the World!” Can’t wait until Keith is back on TV. Meanwhile, here is a link to his recent commentary on U.S. intervention in Libya.
http://readersupportednews.org/video/4-video/5384-keith-olbermann-special-comment-libya-obama-and-the-five-second-rule
March 30th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
That was a fantastic article, I am a veteran of many years in the classroom and I can remember those days. I think that I might also suggest that the survival candidates must have no felony convictions and pass a drug test as well.