Citizen Stewart Says...Nonsense

 Citizen Stewart Says…Nonsense

Temple of Confucius by Vincent Poulissen

There are individuals who want to argue, but are not worth your time and energy.  Here in Minnesota Chris Stewart comes to mind.  Unfortunately, I have wasted many hours in debate with him, time I could have spent banging my head on a wall.  While I have managed to keep my distance for some time now, he continues to enjoy throwing rocks and picking a fight with anyone who disagrees with him.

Although he should be ignored, he should also be exposed for the poser that he is.  Rather than critiquing his incoherent, and non sequitur arguments, I present some of “Citizen Stewart’s” own choice words as the clearest argument against his corporate reform agenda for education.  Feel free to read them in full rant on his blog (Citizen Stewart) if you can stomach it.

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me use “pro-union plantation management rhetoric.” 

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me are “childless Twitter hipters” 

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me are “empty nesters, the Ph.d candidates, the ivory tower administrators, the unionist re-Tweeters,… childless urban hipsters slumming… 

Citizen Stewart says, Diane Ravitch, is “a salty axe against school choice"

Citizen Stewart says, of Matt Damon, “Isn’t he precious”

Citizen Stewart says, Julian Helig Vasquez, is “a Ravichian academic…Now he sides with white progressives, even to the point of attacking elders in the black community like Howard Fuller”

Citizen Stewart says, “if we’re not clear on the need to occupy the Occupy types, then we haven’t been watching.”

Citizen Stewart says, of Chicago Public Schools, ““veteran” teachers are set up for life in careers that require neither ability nor results.”

Citizen Stewart says, of public school teachers, “people unable to comprehend how the world has changed and left them on the curb before their untenable pension plans kicked in.”

Citizen Stewart says, of  public school teachers, “They create a completely plausible denial of the bleak, chaotic, inhumane public entities that monopolists use as profitable traps for other people’s children.

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me live on “Planet Ravitch, led by the polemicist Diane Ravitch, is the most rigid, caustic, and resistant to an alternative future.”

Citizen Stewart says, Diane Ravitch is “the Rush Limbaugh of education commentary”

Citizen Stewart says, teacher unionists are part of the “old guard” which also includes the “Westboro Baptist Church [who] carry hateful signs to intimidate marriage equality advocates” Afghan fundamentalists who leave “girls in Afghanistan […] victims of beatings or acid attacks,” and “War profiteers [who] lobby against peace”

Citizen Stewart says, “standard educational measurements” (the new testing regime) use the science of student achievement to defeat the witch doctoring that took place before” and it is, “further advanced by No Child Left Behind law, and funded by educational venture pioneers”

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me are “A motley crew of local teachers […] poking the education reform voodoo doll”

Citizen Stewart says, Diane Ravitch is the “patron saint to poor performing educators everywhere”

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me don’t want “money spent on anything other than teacher pampering” 

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me “are part of an emerging ecosystem of intolerance”

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me are “sharply focused on money and defending the system”

Citizen Stewart says, Gates, Broad, and the Waltons are “Much like the abolitionists who came to “save” us from slavery, or the Northern teachers that came to “save” us in post-slavery schools”

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me “see the “reformers” in the way southern planters saw the northerners that were “invading” their lands, bringing their industries, and changing the social order" 

Citizen Stewart says, teachers “talk incessantly about themselves, their needs, their wants, their job, their martyrdom, and the eternal wrongness of everyone but themselves” 

Citizen Stewart says, people who oppose me are "#teacherbullies" 

Citizen Stewart’s greatest lesson for us comes in the way his comments reinforce the wisdom of an actual philosopher.  Confucius says, “Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”