July 1, 2008

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Sol Stern Replies On Obama And Ayers

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 1:09 pm

Sol Stern replies to our post, Is the educational right capable of debating Obama’s educational program?, below.

I’m used to having my views criticized from both the left and the right, but I have never had one of my education articles so egregiously distorted as Leo Casey does on Edwize. Some school choice groups have attacked me for my second thoughts on vouchers and even called me a tool of the teachers unions, but at least they fairly accurately summarized my argument. Not so Casey. In his post, Casey accuses me of “taking the lead to smear Barack Obama with the 40-year-old political past of University of Illinois Professor Bill Ayers.” I challenge Casey to produce a single sentence in my City Journal article that justifies that claim. In fact, in my article, I specifically write that “Obama has a point ” when he says that he has been “unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers.” I also wrote that if Chicago Mayor Richard Daley can hire Ayers to work in the public schools and forgive him for his sins of the 60s, “why should Obama’s less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification?”

Any fair minded person reading my article will see that it is not about Ayers past, but rather about his present day education views and activities. In that context, I write that the real issue that Obama ought to confront is Ayers’ position as one of the leaders within the Ed school professorate of the movement to “teach for social justice” in public school classrooms, including math and science classrooms. I also show how Obama has so far successfully ducked this issue (for example, saying in one of the TV debates that Ayers is merely “some English professor.”) So I conclude the article by writing that “it would be nice to hear what [Obama] thinks of his Hyde Park neighbor’s vision for turning the nation’s schools into left-wing indoctrination centers” and I suggest that we should hear from the other candidates about this issue as well. But Casey says not a word about the main thrust of my article.

I note with some bemusement that Casey decided to falsely accuse me of an Obama smear two months and a week after my City Journal article was published. Where has Leo been all this time? Well, for at least part of the time, he and his fellow union officers were still busy campaigning for their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. As has been well documented, Clinton not only did the Obama-Ayers smear in at least one TV debate, but she encouraged campaign aide Sidney Blumenthal to circulate articles about the Obama-Ayers connection to the reporters covering the campaign. I may have missed it, but I didn’t hear Casey or other UFT officials complaining to the Clinton campaign about these “smears.”

In his current writings and in his ed school courses, Professor Ayers is saying exactly the same thing as he did during his Weatherman days, except not punctuating his political points with bombs. Like many other Ed school professors he’s urging teachers to use the classroom for left wing propaganda. I find that abhorrent, and it’s not a smear to say so. (It’s just as abhorrent when teachers use their classrooms to disseminate right wing propaganda.) I would think that this would at least be an issue for the UFT, which calls itself a “union of professionals.” To ask a commonly asked question: What would Al Shanker have done?

3 Comments »

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  • [...] his reply [below] to our post, Is the educational right capable of debating Obama’s educational [...]

    Pingback by More On Obama And Ayers | Edwize — July 1, 2008 @ 2:56 pm

  • Stern is playing games here. He’s dragged Bill Ayers into the campaign discussion through the back door, pretending to be a real (ie. “balanced”) critic of pedagogy.

    At least he’s honest enough to admit that it’s progressive educators that he’s after–not just ’60s radicals.

    But why would he insist that Obama confront a distinguished professor of education in a debate over what that professor should teach in his classroom.

    Isn’t this simply part of the campaign to get left-wing and liberal professors out of the university?

    Isn’t Stern still playing the old McCarthyist guilt-by-association (Obama with “his Hyde-Park neighbor”) game, just like Diamond.

    Whey should a residential candidate even taken a position on his neighbor’s classroom discussions?

    What’s McCain’s position on curriculum? Oh yes, he’s for the teaching of creationism. Does Stern want McCain going after ed profs who disagree?

    This of course leaves aside the question of whether teaching values of equity and social justice equals “using the classroom for left-wing propaganda” as Stern and friends at the far-right Manhattan Institute claim.

    Ayers’ classrooms are models of open inquiry and debate with lots of views presented–even Ayers’. A far cry from propagandizing.

    Not so with Stern’s columns or the work of the Institute.

    Stern’s crying the blues about Leo treating him unfairly. But he’s playing games. Making himself out to be the victim when he just playing the same smear game Leo caught him at in the first place. Stern isn’t really the honest broker he pretends to be.

    Comment by mklonsky — July 1, 2008 @ 3:49 pm

  • Klonsky should disclose here, of course, that he has been the recipient of huge grants from Obama and Ayers ($175,000 from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Obama and Ayers led together). That it seems to me is useful information for judging the veracity of his claims. Of course, while I disagree with much of Sol Stern’s views to dismiss him as someone “pretending” to be a critic on pedagogy is ridiculous as Stern has been working hard on these issues for many years.

    Comment by Steve Diamond — July 6, 2008 @ 8:01 pm

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