November 29, 2007
Disney and Me: On Being Erased From Official Corporate History [Updated]
Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 1:54 pm
On the Disney Company’s corporate website, the reader will find a honor roll of teachers from across the United States who have been recognized by the American Teacher Awards, starting with the first class of 1990 and concluding with the last class of 2006. A close examination will reveal that there is no teacher listed as the 1992 honoree in the category of Social Studies. Two of the three Social Studies finalists are listed, but the teacher who was actually named Social Studies Teacher of the Year is missing.*
I am that missing teacher. My name disappeared some time after I organized a public letter, signed by twenty-five American Teacher Award honorees, protesting Disney’s sponsorship of John Stossel’s Stupid in America, an ideological broadside against public education and the teachers who labor in our public schools.
The story begins in the fall of 1990, six years into my teaching career. I was teaching Social Studies at Clara Barton High School in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, and spending much of my free time preparing my Political Science class for participation in the national We The People competition. This was the third year of what would be a remarkable decade long run of Clara Barton classes in that competition: our classes — entirely students of color, predominantly female and majority immigrant — won the New York City championship every year, took the New York State championship in four of those years, and twice came in fourth in the entire nation. Immense amounts of work and effort went into preparing students for that competition, and the office of the then Congressman for our school, Major Owens, played a major role in bringing together judges and lawyers active in the community to conduct practice sessions. When the liaison from the Congressman’s office asked me to apply for the American Teacher Awards, I did so more out of a sense of obligation to her than a belief that Disney would be interested in honoring a teacher of inner city students.
I was surprised, therefore, when I received notification that I was a finalist, and even more surprised when the crew which came to New York City to film my classes and my school did an excellent job of capturing the reality of our work at Clara Barton for a five minute television vignette. Watching it fifteen years later, I am struck at how the fruit of that work continues to blossom: the young African-American female student who speaks about how the Political Science class inspired her to direct her life in a positive fashion and consider a career in law is not only a lawyer, but the Educational Director of Legal Outreach, a program that provides legal education for New York City public school students.
When all of the finalists were assembled in Hollywood for the awards ceremony, modeled after the Academy Awards, I learned why our group reflected the diversity of American public education, with a number of us coming from inner city schools 
— the selection committee was made up entirely of educators, drawn from past award winners and national educational organizations. It truly was a honor to be part of the 1992 class of honorees, and a thrill to receive my award from Morgan Freeman, whose work I have long admired. My mother, a retired New York City public school teacher who has since passed away, was able to attend the ceremony, which made it all that more memorable and moving an experience.
After our honorees delivered our acceptance speeches on national television, talking about the reality of our classes and schools, we wondered aloud to each other if Disney had any idea of what they had wrought when we were chosen. Whatever the reason, in subsequent years Disney first changed the method of selection and then stopped televising the awards ceremony, slowly eviscerating the American Teacher Awards until it ended them altogether in 2006.
As the nature of the American Teacher Awards changed and its profile diminished, my connection to it lessened, until all that was left was one of personal ties to my class of 1992. But early in 2006, as I spent a Friday night watching John Stossel’s Stupid In America on Disney Corporation’s ABC, I knew that the teachers who had been honored by the Disney’s American Teacher Awards had a special responsibility to speak out against that demagoguery. Starting with just a handful of contacts, word of mouth and emails spread news of the letter of protest until 25 honorees had signed.
Neither Robert Iger nor the Disney Corporation ever answered our letter of protest. To date, the only response has been the one that removed my name as the Social Studies Teacher of the Year from the list of 1992 honorees. Given the reason why Disney erased my name from the honor roll, that action is perhaps best understood as the final honor of the American Teacher Awards.
UPDATE:
Michael Antonucci, an anti-teacher union, anti-public education blogger who has crossed swords with us at Edwize many times in the past, asserts that Disney’s deletion is not what it appears to be — that it is simply some sort of technical glitch.
As I made quite clear in my original post, I don’t pretend to know the exact timing of the change in the Disney web site. What I do know is that I went to that very same page of honorees by year to identify names of teachers I could contact when I circulated the Stossel protest letter, and all of the 1992 honorees whom I knew were listed at that time, as was my own name. I obviously would have noticed if my own name was missing when I read the list. At some later point, someone went into the web page and removed my name. This is simply not a case of some tired intern doing a poor job of translating one list, in which every honoree is list alphabetically, into another later list by year, as Antonucci suggests without any evidence. I linked to the Google cache simply because it was the available proof that the honoree list on the web site had been changed, and that my name had once been there.
It is also the case that contrary to the assumptions Antonucci makes, the Disney executive who dealt with American Teacher Awards knew full well who organized the protest letter — an email solicitation from me to another honoree was forwarded to him, and he sent out an email to a number of honorees that named me, and it was forwarded back to me. Moreover, both the email and regular solicitations had those who wanted to sign the letter return their consent to me.
I did check to see if a number of the teachers who signed the letter also had their names removed, and noted this was not the case. If they had, I would have made that point in my post.
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* In anticipation that this listing might change once again in response to this posting, Edwize took screen shots of the page listing the honorees as of this writing and of the Google cached page, which included my name prior to this episode. Here is the page as of my writing; my name was originally between that of Charles Bird and Sonja Cassady, and highlighted in light blue, as the winner in my category:
And here is the Google cache of the listing for all of the years before my name was eliminated:
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The re-writing of history smacks of the totalitarian regimes around the world.
I guess Disney forgot to have Leo sign a “I Will NEVER, NEVER, criticize Disney” pledge!
In the current world of Rove/Cheney manipulating facts and manufacturing truths has become a politcal norm. Sadly, the primary producer of child media genre has chosen the Rove/Cheney path …
Hopefully on Jan 20, 2009 we will inaugerate a President who acknowledges we live by the rule of law, instead of a puppets and strings.
Comment by Peter Goodman — November 29, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
[...] Daily Kos: Disney and Me: On Being Erased From Official Corporate History var J = jQuery.noConflict(); Disney and Me: On Being Erased From Official Corporate History by SteveUFT Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 01:06:57 PM PST[I hope this post proves interesting. It was written by Edwize blogger Leo Casey, and previously posted on Edwize.] [...]
Pingback by Daily Kos: Disney and Me: On Being Erased From Official Corporate History — November 29, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
[...] Yes, this could explain it… Posted by Garrett on November 29th, 2007 in Rant [...]
Pingback by Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog » Archive » Disney as corporate scum — November 29, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
[...] by booze meme.Hmmm, I think I want one.The Watchmen Blog has pictures from the Watchmen set.Disney erases history after being criticized by teacher.Bothell High School has a big game coming up. It won’t be down at [...]
Pingback by Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog — November 30, 2007 @ 5:29 am
[...] November 30, 2007 Leo Casey Gets E-Whacked! By A Mouse! Fun as this would be, it sounds just too good to be true…especially because the Stossel thing turned out to be a boon for ABC! But who knows…more than a [...]
Pingback by Eduwonk.com: Leo Casey Gets E-Whacked! By A Mouse! — November 30, 2007 @ 11:58 am
[...] UFT's Leo Casey has an amazing post over at EdWize about the decision that some thin-skinned Disney exec apparently made to deliberately [...]
Pingback by Democrats for Education Reform — November 30, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
I know exactly how you feel. Every time I see my comments deleted from Edwize, I feel the same way.
I guess you forgot to have me sign a “I Will NEVER, NEVER, criticize Leo” pledge!
Comment by NYC Educator — November 30, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
I don’t know if Disney has changed its labor practices, but I recall reading in Harper’s a few years back about the horrors of being Mickey in Disneyworld – the combination of the stifling Florida heat, and the great big head that Mickey wears, and company rules forbidding its removal under any circumstances made for some awful stories. So, if that’s its labor practices, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
But whatever its position in the world of labor (I really don’t know), it is still chilling that Disney would put itself in the same category as Stalin (cutting Bukharin et al from the family photos) and Big Brother (altering history on Orwell’s imagined web). And it is even more chilling that a company that prides itself on celebrating the values of community and tolerance in the virtual worlds it creates, would blot out the name of someone who actually tries to practice those values in the real - -and very difficult – world beyond its gates.
Disney seems to owe an explanation.
Comment by Jackie Bennett — December 1, 2007 @ 12:51 am
As a teacher of media and instructional technology, I always tell my students to question everything they see on the internet. My 5th grade students read this article and several asked 1. Why a letter was not written asking if names were accidently omitted 2. Why the adults did not see the other names missing from the cached pages and then realize it might be a mistake?
Comment by Techmeister — December 1, 2007 @ 9:16 am
Some nasty edbloggers are reporting that it wasn’t just you who was left off, and that it might not be connected to Stossel.
Let them report. It doesn’t change that the Stossel piece was disgusting. It doesn’t change what Jackie says about Disney’s past labor practices.
Maybe you missed on this one (and that’s just maybe, I am not convinced) but you chose the right target.
And I wonder if the removals were really random… Someone should take a closer look.
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — December 1, 2007 @ 11:38 am
This post is interesting because I know how it feels to be deleted from this blog. However, this blog is run by “my union” and is supported by my union dues. It should not have the right to delete comments that disagree with the poster. That is called opinions and every member has the right to express them.
Was Leo and all other teachers who signed that letter removed from the site, or were other teachers who had nothing to do with the letter also removed? If the former…interesting.
If the latter…pure ego.
Either way, Edwize needs to be a democratic blog that allows all opinions.
Comment by Schoolgal — December 1, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
Google retrieved that cache on October 1, 2007. If your name was removed, then it seems it was removed in the past two months.
What happened, then, in those two months? Apparently the list has been restructured since October. On the cached page, all the honorees are listed alphabetically on one big list. On the current page, they are listed by year.
It is possible that the person in charge of reorganizing the list was tired and made a few mistakes. There are more than 500 names total. This could have been done by an unpaid college intern or overworked underline.
I wouldn’t put it past Disney and other powerful corporate entities to tinker with history. We know this sort of thing happens. In this case, however, given the time frame and the restructuring of the list, it’s possible there was no malicious intent behind the deletions.
Comment by Otter — December 1, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
[...] Leo Casey found that Disney dumped him from their web site, he was right. He thought it was because of the Stossel letter. Nasty Anti-teacher blogger found [...]
Pingback by A Sunday Link-a-Sortment « JD2718 — December 2, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
Feel free to post your opinions and argue, but everyone still needs to abide by the comment rules.
Comment by Steve Perez — December 5, 2007 @ 5:48 pm