Education Week 3/2/2011 Reflection

There are times when I read articles like In War of Words, Reform is A Potent Weapon, that I just want to say things like "duh" and "no kidding Sherlock."  Of course people are always going to use rhetoric to try and claim the moral high ground.  That is the whole point of rhetoric!  Using the right words to belittle or make your political opponent look bad or like they don't really care is how people win and lose elections.  It goes a lot farther than that.  Two weeks ago the Pittsburgh Steelers runningback Rashard Mendenhall made kind of controversial claims about the death of Osama Bin Laden.  Regardless of what he might have meant to say, people didn't take too kindly to his words because they implied that he wasn't happy about Bin Laden being killed and seemingly questioned America's War on Terror.  The fallout of his Twitter comments were pretty far reaching.  The Pittsburgh Steelers organization issued a statement about his comments pretty much saying that they disagreed with their running back.  Champion Sports, a pretty big sports supplier, severed their relationship with Mendenhall so that he is no longer representing their company.  This guy lost out on probably hundreds of thousands of dollars because the rhetoric he used indicated that it was wrong that so many people were celebrating the death of an (albeit very evil) man.  It just goes to show you that words are very powerful, and that they definitely do affect people more than most realize.  That is why it is not at all surprising that people in government use the words they do.  They know exactly what they are saying.  When the whole "groupthink" issue starts to come into play, more people begin to realize the power that certain buzzwords have and they want to use them for their own purposes.  Look at this article.  These proponents of reform are trying to sway people to their side.  How are they doing that?  By insinuating that people who are not on their side have no interest in "putting students first," they are hoping the public will latch onto that and say "why on earth would I want to vote for so and so when they don't want to put my child first.  They are only protecting their own interests!"  Mr. Freeman touches on this issue at the end of the article.  It doesn't matter that he wants to improve education.  The fact that he doesn't approve of increased support for Charter Schools is grounds for claiming that he doesn't want to improve education because that is what the rhetoric has trained us to believe.