Gov. Lee's education advisor: Teachers come from 'dumbest parts of dumbest colleges'

[Jilly_in_VA]

A new report from CBS affiliate WTVF claimed that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s education advisor has been mocking the state’s public education teachers and questioning their roles in the classroom.

WTVF reported that they managed to obtain hidden-camera footage of a closed-door reception between the governor and Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Michigan’s ultra-conservative Hillsdale College. In the video, Arnn reportedly belittled diversity efforts in higher education and claimed that people have education degrees because they are “easy” and you “don’t have to know anything.”

The report also said that, throughout the nearly two-hour video, Lee never once stood up in defense of Tennessee’s teachers and only offered praise for Arnn, who Lee has in charge of setting up Tennessee charter schools across the state. Additionally, Lee did not mention his own wife, Maria Lee, who has a degree in elementary education and worked as a teacher for 14 years.

WTVF also listed examples Arnn’s remarks:

“The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
“They are taught that they are going to go and do something to those kids.... Do they ever talk about anything except what they are going to do to these kids?”

https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/06/30/gov-lees-education-advisor-teachers-come-dumbest-parts-dumbest-colleges/

Go to the link for the rest of it. It's appalling.

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

1. My grandmother got her master's degree in education

She got her master’s driving 120 miles round trip to the University of Florida during her summer’s vacations from teaching. At age 50. Took her 6 summer breaks to complete.

I can assure you, Dr. Arnn, she wasn’t dumb.

[Tanuki]

2. Arnn led the "1776 Report," which Trump commissioned as a counterweight to the 1619 Project.

Historians derided it as political claptrap and agenda-driven propaganda. It's horrifying and depressing to think he will have any influence over public education.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/politics/trump-1776-commission-report.amp.html

"The White House on Monday released the report of the presidential 1776 Commission, a sweeping attack on liberal thought and activism that calls for a “patriotic education,” defends America’s founding against charges that it was tainted by slavery and likens progressivism to fascism.

President Trump formed the 18-member commission — which includes no professional historians but a number of conservative activists, politicians and intellectuals — in the heat of his re-election campaign in September, as he cast himself as a defender of traditional American heritage against “radical” liberals. Not previously known for his interest in American history or education, Mr. Trump insisted that the nation’s schools had been infiltrated by anti-American thought and required a new “pro-American” curriculum.

The commission formed part of Mr. Trump’s larger response to the antiracism protests, some of them violent, that followed the May killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
....


The report likens the American progressive movement of the early 20th century to the fascism of leaders like Benito Mussolini, who it said “sought to centralize power under the management of so-called experts.”

“The biggest tell in the 1776 report is that it lists ‘Progressivism’ along with ‘Slavery’ and ‘Fascism’ in its list of ‘challenges to America’s principles,’” Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University, wrote on Twitter. “Time to rewrite my lectures to say that ending child labor and regulating meatpacking = Hitlerism.”...(more)

[Docreed2003]

3. Ok "Dr" Arnn...please expound on the multitude of intellectual giants from

Pocahontas, AK....(no offense to Pocahontas, AK)

This prick exemplifies the worst of the GOP and he's best buds with Lee. Arnn has made it his mission to destroy public education, while lining his pockets in the process, replacing it with his for profit, evangelical, right wing worldview schools. His goal is to brainwash as many kids as possible into the rw ideology. The sad thing is Lee has managed to pull off a move whereby these schools are able to move into a district, even if the district refuses. Screw him and his schools. Hey Bill, how much money are you going to pull in off this deal??

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. I come from a long line of teachers

at every level, from elementary in tiny local schools through high school to PhDs in major universities, and what this awhole said made me so mad I want to hunt him down and punch him right in his smug little face. I'm still mad. Then I remembered that this is the school Betsy DeVos graduated from and I got even madder. These people are out to ruin what's left of the American public school system.