Just Telling It Like it Is, NYSUT.

Well what are New Year's resolutions for if not for breaking 6 weeks into the New Year? In conversation with my beloved a few weeks back she asked if I had anything specific in mind for 2013 and I foolishly volunteered that I was going to make an honest attempt to dial back some of the fire and brimstone rhetoric I tend to espouse especially in Blogland and on the Facebook. So what do I do but go Janet Reno Waco-style on my state union affiliates accusing them of every form of cowardice and malfeasance in the Kingdumb. I get why I wrote what I wrote but I think fresh from the whopping letdown of the evening I was so blinded with frustration and anger I may have been approaching fugue state when I sat down to vent my spleen and possibly several other organs as well. Wordsworth had 2 definitions of poetry the first of which I have all ready illustrated quite keenly "the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion."
So let's try it again using Wordsworth's OTHER version, viz: "emotion recollected in tranquility..."   

Part of NYSUT's apparent "campaign" is to go to their website and fill out a little complaint slip as we used to call them in my days of rocking and rolling in the wild and wooly 1987 era  hallways of Kensington High. NYSUT calls it Tell it Like It Is and essentially they ask battle hardened teachers from the classrooms currently under attack by Cuomo, King, Bloomie, the Broads, the Waltons and the Gateses just to name a few, to share their frustrations of 21st Century education under the "reform" attack/testing paradigm. Then we are asked to offer our solutions to the problems we face every day. Because nobody in Albany ever taught so how the hell would they know? 

Wanna take a guess what happens to these little complaint slips after you spend an hour or two fine tuning them and making sure all of your i's are dotted and all of your t's are crossed? They get sent I assume by email to the Board of Regents and John King.  WOW.    REALLY?  There was an attempted laugh line implying that King has asked not to be bombarded with so many emails. Ha ha. And another lukewarm assurance that there may even be a slight suspicion that some of the Regents actually READ some of them. Hold me back, I just gotta dance. So what it boils down to is we are trying to distract our opponents. As Duke University's cameron Crazies well know, even Speedo Guy's act only worked once. Watch this and laugh your arse off to keep from crying at the fecklessness your union dues are getting for you. 

We are asked to pour our hearts and souls into these little missives so that they can be used to overload the email boxes of people like Bob Bennett and Meryl Tisch whose imaginations hold us somewhere beneath contempt and somewhere slightly above pederasty. Maybe. So next time Prince Andrew or the Monarch of the NYSED Kingdumb hold a public forum I (does King ever appear announced in B-lo?) I suggest as many of us as possible gear up in our Speedos and blow up the event the way Speedo guy unhinged Jackie Manuel as he missed 2 of 2 free throws. Conventional decency's imperative stands that anyone who can wear a Size 40 Speedo or larger, shouldn't. Peace.