"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Thursday, January 17, 2008

New Spellings Propaganda and the Mysterious and Phony PBS Link

Armstrong Williams, eat your heart out. ED is no longer farming out their covert propaganda but, rather, producing it in house as fake newscasts through something called ED TV. The latest effort by Spellings and her the-not-ready-for-4-AM players features a one-hour infomercial for NCLB.

When you go this page from ED's website, you will see PBS listed promimently as an outlet for this most recent fake news program with a NewsHour-looking set, the round interview table, and Doris McMillan (from McMillan Communications) playing the role of newscaster.

After watching this first episode via a webcast, oh my god, I could not believe that PBS could have anything to do with this, even though they are listed on the front end as partner and at the end with the claim of PBS member stations as contributing partners. I called PBS TeacherLine to get details on the broadcast schedule, and as I had a hunch, PBS TeacherLine knows nothing of a relationship with ED to show or produce Education News Parents Can Use.

When I dug a little further, I found out that PBS TeacherLine was created by the generosity of an ED grant in 2000. It remains a mystery which one of ED braintrust came up the bright idea to list PBS as a partner in this most obvious propaganda series.

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