As the sun rises on this August morning, I think it’s time for me to finally own up to one of my most self-destructive habits: perusing reader comments on education-related articles on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website.
It started out innocently enough, with a simple desire to learn more about what the rest of world was thinking about education. But lately, it has become more of a quest – and an increasingly quixotic one at that – to try to neutralize the angry rhetoric I read everyday with reasoned perspectives. Rumors persist that paid bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum
infuse the message boards with their respective groups’ talking points. However, I must say that the comments generally seem to lean far more to the right than the left.
I really should just stop reading them. But hundreds of blog posts deriding educators for everything from their benefits to their school schedules to the importance of the subjects they teach are pretty hard to ignore. The anonymity of screen names has made it far too easy to spew rancor and insult people who could be your next door neighbors or your relatives, and I refuse to let this anti-teacher tide go unchecked.
The other day, one poster – I’ll call him “Francis” here – called me out for using “big words” and for being “overeducated.” While I disagreed, since “overeducated” suggests that there isn’t much more that I could learn, I responded only that it could be reasonably argued that having well-educated people working with our children isn’t really such a bad thing.
Francis’ eloquent, succinct response: “Bite me.” (For the record, I politely declined the offer.) Shortly after this exchange, his posts to me and others on the message board were removed by the Journal Sentinel webmasters.
My hackles were raised again last night when WEAC announced that it would be laying off 40% of its staff. The comments on this article were sad and disturbing. “Ha ha!” one poster wrote. Incredibly, 138 people gave that insensitive remark a “thumbs up” rating.
Let’s take politics off the table for just a moment. Last night, 42 people went home with pink slips in their hands. The lives of 42 Wisconsin families just changed dramatically, and not in a good way.
And “ha ha” is all people could come up with??? I was appalled. Sad. I wrote a post decrying that people were taking such joy in others’ misfortune.
A few moments later, the “thumbs down” meter began registering several disapprovals, not for the “ha ha!” post but instead for mine. (Seriously?)
I was tempted to write a followup post reading “Puppies, bunnies and kittens” just to see how long it would take before that too earned a “thumbs down.” After all, who hates kittens? I decided against posting it, though, because I realized that maybe I didn’t want to know the answer to that question after all.
I’m all for civilized discussion with those who don’t agree with me. We can learn plenty from each other. Most of the solutions to what ails our education system – and indeed, the other pressing issues in our nation and world – lie somewhere between the loudest voices on either end of the spectrum.
But how far will any of us really get if not everyone is even willing to listen?
