Whatever we decide to do as a group, I think we should seriously consider what we can do to make sure that the first thing people do when they think of teaching as a profession they think of it as important, positive and prestigious. I still think that our ability to accomplish any other objective will be based on that.
I ran across a similar argument made about NASA. Here's a great quote:
NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.
In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanities grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts.
Doesn't this apply to us as well?
A fan of NASA even made this promotional video (look below) since NASA seems uninterested in doing it themselves. We need to do this sort of thing, effectively.
My comment is actually not about this, but I cannot figure out how to post this info, which I think is an interesting perspective........
ReplyDeletehttp://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781
"A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy-where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision-investing in education yields great bang for the buck," writes Joanne Barkan in Dissent magazine. Barkan is a graduate of Chicago Public Schools.