Silencing School Whistleblowers Through Social Media

 
I used to write a thriving blog. 

 
A month and a half ago.  

 
But as soon as the New Year dawned, my readership dropped to the tiniest fraction of what it had been in 2021. 

 
I went from about 1,000 readers per article to a few hundred.

 
 
Overnight.  

 
How does that happen?  

 
I suppose it could be that people are sick of me.  

 
Maybe my writing just isn’t what it was and readers are tired of hearing about the same old topics over and over again.  

 
Education and civil rights. That stuff is just so 60 days ago! 

 
Yet look at the reality. School boards are banning Holocaust narratives like Art Spiegleman’s “Maus.” State governments are passing laws to restrict what teachers can say in the classroom or make their jobs more untenable so even more leave the profession.  

 
I just can’t believe that in light of such a flame dancing ever more quickly down an ever-shorter fuse that people aren’t interested in reading about how to stomp it out. 

 
From conservative scholars supporting standardized testing to local athletic leagues saying racism is a matter of both sides. From the effect on education of constantly depriving teachers of planning time to the continuing trauma of Coronavirus raging through our schools as decision makers refuse to take necessary precautions to protect students and staff.  

 
The readership is there.  

 
It’s the method of distribution that’s the problem.  

 
And that method is social media.  

 
It’s been this way since I began the blog back in July of 2014.  

 
I write an article then I post it to Facebook and Twitter.  

 
The later platform has never been a huge draw for me. But until recently Facebook was my bread and butter.  

 
My work was posted on message boards and in online forums and organizations’ pages focused on the issues I write about.  

 
After the first year, the result was hundreds of thousands of readers annually.  

 
But then as Facebook began trying to monetize the distribution of posts beyond a person’s local friend circle, those numbers started to drop.  

 
I went from 446,000 hits in 2015 to 222,000 last year.  

 
It’s demoralizing but not because of any need for fame. 
 

I don’t need to have thousands of people hang on my every word. This isn’t about ego.

It’s about change.  

 
I write this blog to get the word out about what’s really happening in our public schools. And to try to push back against the rising tide trying to destroy my profession.  

 
Mass media is not particularly kind to educators like me.  

 
Even when journalists are writing about schools and learning, they rarely ask classroom teachers their opinions. Instead, the media often turns to self-appointed experts, think tank flunkies, billionaire philanthropists or politicians.  

 
It’s like they can’t even conceive of the fact that someone with a masters degree or higher in education who devotes her whole life to the practice of the discipline has anything worthwhile to say.

 
 
So many of us have taken to the blogosphere to circumvent the regular media channels.  

 
We write out our frustrations. We tell our truths. We give a peek of what it’s like in our public schools, an educated opinion about the ills therein, and how to fix them.  

 
But as time has worn on, more and more of us are leaving the field. We’re abandoning the classroom and the Web.  

 
We’re giving up.  

 
And even those like me who are still desperately sounding the alarm every week are being silenced.  

 
Frankly, I don’t know what to do about it. 

 
I know Facebook is trying to pressure me into paying the company to more widely distribute my articles.

 
 
If I give them $50-$100 a week, they promise to deliver my work as widely as they used to do when I didn’t have to pay for the privilege.  

 
Actually, it wasn’t Facebook that delivered it. It was people on Facebook.  

 
People who really cared about what I had to say would see it and share it with others.  

 
But now there’s a strict algorithm that determines what you get to see on your page. And if it says you’re invisible, then POOF! You’re gone and the people who would most enjoy your writing and want to pass it on don’t get the chance.

 
It’s undemocratic in the extreme but totally legal because Facebook is a for-profit company, not a public service.  

 
It’s not about the free expression of ideas. It’s about making money.  

 
And so people like Joe Rogan make millions on their podcasts spreading science denial, vaccine disinformation and racist dog whistles.  

 
A guy like me just trying to make the world a better place?  

 
I get silenced.  

 
I guess when money is speech, poverty is the real cancel culture.  

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

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I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Trumpsters are Furious Over My Refusal to Sacrifice Students to the Economy

 

You can’t make this stuff up!

 

I published an article yesterday on my blog with the title “You Can’t Have My Students’ Lives to Restart Your Economy.” 

 

In it, I criticized Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil and a Walton Family Foundation advisor who lambasted social distancing efforts as a response to the Coronavirus global pandemic, especially here in the United States. To varying degrees, they each thought it was acceptable to sacrifice children’s safety by reopening schools early if it would get businesses back up and running again.

 

I think that’s beyond ridiculous.

 

Here’s an excerpt:

 

The rich need the poor to get back to work. And they’re willing to put our lives on the line to do it.

 

What’s worse, they’re willing to put our children’s lives on the line.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to risk my daughter’s life so that the stock market can open back up.

 

As a public school teacher, I’m not willing to bet my students lives so that the airlines and cruise industry can get back in the green.

 

Nor am I willing to gamble with my own life even if it means the NBA, NFL and MLB can start playing games and Hollywood can start premiering first run movies again.

 

 

My article seemed pretty reasonable to me, as it has to the more than 17,000 people who have read it since I first hit publish about 24 hours ago.

 

However, on Twitter, there was a vocal minority who took issue with me.

 

Someone from an account I won’t name (though he has more than 65,000 followers and the word “Libertarian” in his handle) retweeted my blog with the following comment:

 

“For the love of God. Students are more at risk of losing their homes and watching their parents split up or succumb to addiction or depression over losing their jobs than they are at risk of ever contracting this virus.”

 

 

He had lots of folks who agreed with him.

 

Their comments seemed to fit into two categories:  (1) quarantine sucks, or (2) they’re MY kids you stoopid gubmint Skool teacher!

 

 

 

 

 

At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of such comments.

 

How can anyone really be against keeping children safe from a deadly virus?

 

After some soul searching, I decided to reply:

 

Hey XXX thanks for sharing my blog post to so many people who probably would not have seen it otherwise. However, I think your criticism is unfounded. You seem to be saying that quarantine sucks. Yes, it DOES suck. But putting kids lives at risk is worse…

 

…While it’s true that kids are often asymptomatic, they do get COVID-19 and become carriers. If we reopen the schools too soon, most kids won’t die, but they’ll bring the virus home to mom, dad and the grandparents who are much more susceptible…

 

 

…What’s worse is that when you get COVID-19 you’re often asymptomatic for the first week or so. Even adults become carriers though they have a greater chance of eventually getting much worse. That’s why we’re doing social distancing now – to stop the spread…

 

 

…We want to give hospitals a chance to treat sick people as they come in and not all at once. Even discounting the effect on children, schools are staffed by adults – many over 55 and with existing health conditions. It’s unfair to make them risk their lives…

 

 

…Teachers shouldn’t have to risk their lives – and their families lives – to do their jobs. Seems to me that’s actually a pretty libertarian position. Your political freedom and autonomy seem pretty constrained in a coffin. Thanks for listening.

 

 

I don’t know if it will do any good, but I thought the readers of my blog might like to know about it.

 

After all, if there’s anything more viral than COVID-19, it’s ignorance.

 

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

Two Theories Why Facebook Keeps Blocking Me When I Write About School Privatization

  

Facebook blocked me.

 

Again.

 

What did I do?

 

Did I post Russian-sponsored propaganda?

 

Nyet.

 

Did I post Nazi or racist memes?

 

Nein.

 

Did I post fraudulent or debunked accounts of factual events?

 

No.

 

So what did I do?

 

I had an opinion.

 

I took that opinion and wrote about it. I backed it up with facts, analogies, literary references and examples from my own experience as a classroom teacher in public school.

 

I took all that, wrote it up in a blog called “The False Paradise of School Privatization,” and posted it on Facebook.

 

It was the same kind of thing I do several times a week.

 

Write a blog. Post it on various Facebook pages and on Twitter.

 

And wait to see if anyone reads it.

 

But this time – BOOM!

 

I hadn’t even posted it to a handful of pages before the cyber arm of Mike Zuckerberg’s robo-security came down on me.

 

The same thing happened in October when I wrote an article called “School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.”

 

I had hoped that that first time was just a fluke or that by now I had since sufficiently proven myself to be a human being and not some nefarious bot.

 

But no such luck.

 

After posting my latest article a few times on Monday, I got this message:

 

“ACTION BLOCKED

 

You have been temporarily blocked from performing this action.”

 

And I got a choice of clicking on:

 

“This is a mistake”

 

Or

 

“OK”

So I clicked on “This is a mistake,” and got the following:

 

“Thanks for letting us know.”

 

My only choice was to click “OK.”

At some point I got a message telling me that I was blocked until Dec. 11 – a full week from my offense.

 

And now I have limited use of the social media platform.

 

I can still see posts.

 

I can like posts.

 

For some reason, I can even post and comment on my own page. But I can’t comment or post on other pages without getting the same error message.

 

At least I can’t do it consistently.

 

I’ve experimented and found that sometimes I can share posts to different pages. Sometimes I can’t.

 

It’s a bizarre, wonky system.

 

And it gets in the way of my work as an education blogger.

 

Facebook has more than 1.5 billion accounts. That includes more than 80% of all Americans.

 

Sharing my blog on the site gets me more readers than anywhere else.

 

Twitter is great and certainly more free. But when you push out a tweet, no one sees it unless they’re looking at their feed at that exact moment. Unless it gets retweeted – or you’re a famous unhinged former reality TV star turned President, then people seek out your own personal brand of nuclear-apocalypse-threatening madness.

 

So why does this keep happening to me?

 

I have two theories.

 

1) I am being purposefully censored by Facebook.

 

2) Facebook algorithms are targeting me because of how I post.

 

Let’s look at the first theory.

 

 

Could someone be actively censoring me?

 

Yes.

 

The proposal has a certain plausibility because the powers that be at Facebook undoubtedly disagree with what I have to say.

 

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, is a huge supporter of edtech, standardized testing and school privatization. He’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make public schools rely more heavily on high stakes tests, evaluating teachers on their students’ scores and pushing Personalized Education software packages on public schools. And when that doesn’t pan out, he’s even backed his own charter schools to do the same.

 

But that’s not all.

 

Since early January of this year, he’s had Campbell Brown on the job as the arbiter of truth for his on-line platform.

 

That’s right.

 

Brown, a school privatization lobbyist and former NBC and CNN personality, heads Facebook’s News Partnership Team.

 

The newly created position was part of Zuckerberg’s attempt to limit fake news on his social media platform while prioritizing information in the mainstream media.

 

What exactly is fake news? Whatever Campbell Brown says it is.

 

This is quite a lot of power to give one person, especially someone who has a reputation for partisanship.

 

Brown, after all, co-founded a charter school propaganda network called The 74, funded – unsurprisingly – by Betsy DeVos, Republican mega-donor and current Secretary of Education.

 

After leaving the anchor’s desk, Brown has had a second career helping corporations destroy public schools and public school teachers.

 

And she does. Not. Like. Me.

 

Let’s just say we’ve gotten into a few Twitter skirmishes.

 

When she became the face of a New York lawsuit attacking teacher tenure in 2014, she received a tidal wave of public backlash. So she went on the Colbert Report to complain about how those fighting for workplace protections for themselves and their students were “silencing the debate” on how best to reform public education.

 

I responded with a blog called “Shhh! Who’s Silencing the Debate on Real Education Reform” claiming that Brown was actually doing the very thing she claimed to be decrying in shutting out teachers’ voices and rights.

 

She responded by cherry picking her rudest critics and tweeting “Sorry Steve but sadly this is not what I characterize as debate,” as if I had had anything to do with these comments.

As if any movement should be judged by its most extreme elements.

 

As if attacking someone’s job, someone’s kids and their future was fine so long as you did so with a smile and a polite comeback.

 

I don’t condone personal attacks, but I certainly understand them. In any case, Brown used the extreme fringes of her critics to condemn us all and conveniently refused to engage us – even those who had been unceasingly polite.

 

That lawsuit eventually failed, but Brown somehow landed on her feet.

 

Now she’s the one who gets to choose truth and falsity on Facebook.

 

Could she be actively working against people like me?

 

Yes.

 

Could she be directing Facebook’s programmers to select against posts that are negative to her pet projects?

 

Yes.

 

But there’s no way to know if she’s actually doing it.

 

Which brings me to my second theory.

 

Perhaps mindless Facebook algorithms are targeting me because of how I post.

 

I do, after all, try to post my articles on as many pages as I can.

 

They’re mostly pages focused on education and education policy with a few political and anti-racism sites thrown in, too.

 

Maybe I’m posting too quickly.

 

I might be triggering one of Zuckerberg’s bots to think I’m a bot, too, spamming up the works with advertising.

 

However, there’s a few problems with this theory.

 

Let’s say it’s true.

 

Why would that, alone, be reason to block me?

 

I’m not posting advertisements. I’m not asking for money. My blog doesn’t sell adds other than those WordPress puts on there, itself, so I can keep the page for free.

 

If an algorithm is stopping me because it thinks I’m unfairly selling something, it’s the result of some badly written code, indeed.

 

When programmers write code, that’s not impartial. It betrays their values. It betrays certain decisions about what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

 

For instance, I keep getting advertisements from Facebook asking me to pay money to the social media network so that they’ll post my articles on other people’s site for me.

 

I get reminders like “Boost this post for $3 to reach up to 580 people.”

Oh, really?

 

So I’m blocked because I posted my own writing to sites that have accepted me as a member and whose membership includes many I consider friends and colleagues. But for a fee, Facebook will post that same article to various sites filled with people I’d consider to be complete strangers.

 

Somehow that doesn’t “violate community standards” – the reason they said they blocked me in October.

 

This is very telling.

 

It seems to indicate that there is nothing wrong with what I’m doing, per se. It’s just that Facebook wants to encourage me to let them do it for me – so they can monetize my account.

 

They’re stopping me from doing this on my own, because they think I’m a sucker who should pay them for the right to communicate with others.

 

And that’s a very real possibility.

 

These blockages may not be political. They may be a simple marketing strategy.

 

So what can I do about it?

 

Well, first I need to wait a week until my account is unfrozen and I get back all the features Facebook users usually enjoy.

 

Then I can try to go back to the way things were posting my articles at all my favorite virtual watering holes.

 

Only slowly.

 

Much more slowly.

 

I figure if I only post once every five minutes or so, I can have my article at all the places that seem to like having them in about the course of an evening.

 

But I have a life, damn it!

 

I can’t spend the twilight hours posting and waiting and posting and waiting.

 

I guess another alternative is to rely on friends to post for me.

 

Spread the love.

 

Have others circulate my articles far and wide.

 

And that’s a great strategy. It’s very hard for Facebook to do anything about it.

 

But it requires me to impose on others. I don’t like doing it.

 

My readers, friends and supporters have lives, too.

 

They have more important things to do than post my writing all over the Internet.

 

So where does that leave me?

 

I’m not sure.

 

If I continue as I have, I’m bound to be blocked and thrown in Facebook Jail again.

 

Even if I don’t, I’m at the mercy of the wealthy elites who control the network.

 

And if the FCC does away with Net Neutrality, as they’re threatening to do in a matter of days, it may not even matter.

 

Regardless of where I post on Facebook, my blog site will probably be slow to the point of molasses and maybe even shut down entirely.

 

This is the brave new world of the plutocracy unrestrained.

 

This is American fascism triumphant.

 

I am only a single point of the resistance.

 

My voice is only as powerful as those who share it.

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If Facebook, Twitter or WordPress somehow takes me down, I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

I Was a Radical Republican – For About a Week – And I Didn’t Change a Single Progressive View

I do not like Ronald Reagan.

I own no guns.

Back in high school I won a debate arguing for pro-choice.

Trickle Down sounds more to me like a bladder condition than an economic theory.

So why was it that last week so many right wingers were retweeting me on Twitter?

Did I say “retweeting”? They were taking my words and memes and sending them out to the Twitterverse as their own thoughts with a reference to my account.

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I think Michelle Malkin pushed down the new heart emoticon on something I wrote.

She may have retweeted me, too. Heck! I may have retweeted her back!

“What new Hell is this?” I thought. “Why am I getting so much love from people who – if they met me in person – would probably try to give me a wedgie and scream, “NERD”?

It turns out I was caught in a maelstrom of political events. And his name is John King.

President Barack Obama named the former New York Education Commissioner as his pick to replace Arne Duncan as US Secretary of Education.

As a public school teacher, this really pissed me off. It pissed off just about every public educator in the country.

Are you kidding, Obama!? John-Freaking-King!? The guy whose only previous experience was teaching for three years at a “no excuses” charter school!?

This is the guy who oversaw the systematic destruction of schools in one of the most populous states in the country all the while pointing his finger at teachers. He approved an obviously fraudulent charter school run by an obvious conman. He ignored and dismissed parents at various education forums. The people of New York hated him so much, he sparked the largest opt out movement in the nation.

And THIS is the guy you’re nominating as Secretary of Education!?

It’s not like he’s even pretended to change his stripes. After New Yorkers booted him out of their state, he was offered a job at the US Department of Education – a prime example of falling upward. Soon afterward, his wife took a job at a corporate education reform company, Bellwether Education Partners!

Isn’t that a conflict of interest? I mean – through her – Bellwether will have the ear of the highest education official in the land. And the rest of us will just be supplicants sending letters, making phone calls hoping for an audience with the King.

THIS was why I was upset. THIS was why I was writing angry blogs and pounding out my rage on Twitter.

And I wasn’t alone.

The usual gang of educators and far left progressives gave me the usual support.

But we were soon joined by a tsunami of social media activists from the other side of the aisle.

Very soon someone made a popular hashtag, #StopJohnKing, and I started seeing hundreds of retweets, restatements and messages of support.

Two of my tweets were particularly popular: one about the conflict of interest of King’s wife working for Bellwhether, the other a seemingly unrelated message about the need to fund public libraries.

 

That’s when I started to notice the Twitter accounts of the people joining in. There were folks proclaiming their love for Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. They described themselves as libertarians and refused to speak to “libtards.” And the pictures on their Twitter accounts were often famous conservatives, racist cartoons of the President, pictures of themselves packing heat or just the darn guns, themselves.

“What the heck have I gotten myself into?” I thought.

That’s when I questioned why they were supporting me. For many of them I wondered if it had less to do with how terrible King would be as Education Secretary than with who nominated him in the first place.

Ever since Antonin Scalia died, many Republicans have sworn a blood oath not to approve any of Obama’s nominees – for the Supreme Court or ANY office.

For them this wasn’t about opposing a terrible Presidential pick. It was about blocking everything Obama did.

I had to face it. I had become a radical Republican, and I hadn’t even needed to change one of my positions to do it. The GOP came to me.

I have to admit, my right wing supporters were mostly very nice. I felt like I had a stronger group behind me than during most progressive campaigns.

There was some strain, however. A few times I could tell they were choking back anti-union rhetoric. “Why don’t we fund our libraries? Because unions,” apparently. “Who needs libraries – I home school.” That kind of thing.

And unfortunately, my progressive buddies were starting to notice the right wing support and take offense.

I got trolled by several lefties demanding I support Common Core.

“How can you be against it?” they’d ask. “Rand Paul hates Common Core. Do you agree with Rand Paul?”

I’d respond politely that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Card-carrying Democrats refused to listen to any criticism of the Obama administration’s education policies. Little did these progressives realize, they were the exact opposite of the GOP activists they hated.

Many Republicans hate Common Core because Obama touched it. Many Democrats love it for the same reason.

The majority of teachers throughout the country hate it because we’ve read it, tried to use it and seen what a load of bullshit it is. We know it was developed with very little input from classroom teachers or child psychologists. We know it has no research behind it to show that it works. We see how it erodes our autonomy in the classroom and increases the amount and difficulty of high stakes tests for our students.

But my progressive friends refused to accept that anything Saint Hope and Change approved could be so terrible.

I’d turn to my newfound Republican posse only to find many of them hated Common Core beyond reason. It wasn’t just bad practice – it was going to turn our kids gay. It was a liberal plot to make children progressive atheists.

Oy vey.

The week just flew by. Eventually the Senate voted to approve King, both Democrats and Republicans – though the opposition was almost entirely in the GOP.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, the Senator I can usually count on to have my back (Bob Casey) stabbed me in the same place. And the Senator who usually only votes for things that are officially endorsed by Lord Satan, himself, (Pat Toomey) was my boy.

What kind of a topsy-turvy world am I living in!?

Elizabeth Warren – the liberal lion – said she wasn’t going to vote for King but ultimately gave in. Oh, Elizabeth. They got to you, too?

There were two points of light though. First, there was one Democrat who actually voted against him: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York – the sight of King’s last catastrophe. Second, my Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, didn’t vote at all. Fwew! I can irrationally justify that – he was too busy, that’s all. Bernie would never have voted for King. Tee-hee!

So once again we see the two major parties as mirror images of each other. Where Republicans made the right choice for the wrong reason, Democrats made the wrong choice for the right one. Progressives were circling the wagons around the President. They were making a point that they weren’t going to let the evil GOP block his nominees – even if one of those nominees was an absolute pathetic failure.

This is politics in 2016, folks.

Decisions are rarely made because of logic, experience, or sound judgement. It’s all political maneuvering, personal gain or both. Meanwhile, the world goes to Hell.

After the vote, I got a smattering of conservative retweets and then… nothing. As quickly as they had come, they were gone.

My tiny caucus of teachers, academics and other ne’er-do-wells are still there. We shout our truths into the wind hoping someone will hear.

On days like today it seems impossible.

But perhaps there is a silver lining in there somewhere. If people from such opposite sides of the political spectrum can agree on something like how terrible John King is, maybe there’s hope. If we can shake hands over the fatuousness of Common Core, maybe we can find other points of agreement.

Maybe these brief moments of concord are opportunities for understanding. Sure my GOP compatriots supported me for the wrong reasons, but maybe some of them were exposed to the right ones.

I know I’ve learned from them. I consider myself an FDR Democrat with an abiding faith in a strong federal government. But even I can see how both the Bush and Obama administrations overstepped their power with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

I don’t buy any of that baloney about Big Government vs. Small Government. But I do think that some things like education policy don’t belong at the federal level. The federal government should ensure public schools are funded properly and maybe regulate outright abuses, but local communities and districts should be deciding how to educate the children in their care.

If those ideas rubbed off on me, what rubbed off on my brief Twitter followers?

Will there come a day when we meet again, join hands and fight for our common good?

Can we overcome the blinders of party and politics to build a better world?

#IHopeSo