EDUCATION NEWS For Immediate Release
The Long And Winding Road
To A Place Called Teacher Justice
by David Pakter, M.A., M.F.A.
Background
http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubber-room-news-david-pakters-3020a.html
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubber-room-news-david-pakters-3020a.html
My four year battle to obtain some measure of Justice for what was done to me and my inner city intellectually gifted Medical students would be a comical exercise in futility were it not for people throughout this Nation who know it is a mortal sin to avert one's eyes from the crimes perpetrated on innocent human beings, be they rich or poor, and regardless of the color of their skin or ethnic origins.
That has happened too many times in history and tragically continues to happen, even as I write these words. It seems the never ending wars against the world's most vulnerable and powerless people is an ongoing fact of history.
(We must hope that new leadership in Washington can stem this horrific tide and lead our Beloved Nation in a new direction where even the least among us is just as valued and just as respected as the first among us including our nation's next President.)
My road to finding Justice has been a long and winding and wearying journey. It always is for those people who feel compelled to become Whistle-blowers and report the wrongs to which they are witness.
But it is a journey I have had to make because the wanton and retaliatory destruction of the Medical Program I had laboriously built and financed to propel intellectually gifted Minority students into Ivy League Universities, simultaneously robbed those very gifted young human beings of the opportunity to escape from the grinding cycle of poverty into which most of them, through no fault of their own, had been born.
The memory and awareness of that crime perpetrated on those countless young, at risk students, by the New York City Board of Education and a sorry specimen of a human being who goes by the name of Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq., will hound and haunt me into my grave and beyond.
People like Karen Horwitz, author of the soon to be Best Seller, "White Chalk Crime: The REAL Reason Schools Fail" (see desciption and Five Star reviews on Amazon.com books), has reported on this human tragedy in her new book. It documents, in agonizing and riveting detail how Educational bureaucracies throughout the United States deal swiftly and harshly with teachers who attempt to report wrongdoing, fiscal mismanagement and the denial of their Constitutional Rights to Equal Protection and Equal Rights to millions of American schoolchildren.
Dr. Alberto M. Goldwaser, M.D., D.F.A.P.A., the renowned Forensic Psychiatrist and distinguished Chairman of the Ethics Committee for Psychiatry has frequently found himself called upon to intercede and save many innocent targeted teacher reporters from being Railroaded by the NYC Dept/Board of Education Medical Office. This arm of the NYC DOE for decades has been utilized to drive Whistle-blower teachers out of the system with knowingly bogus claims of being "unfit for duty". A technique learned from the playbook for silencing and eliminating political dissidents during the Stalinist Era in the former USSR.
It is due to the unfailing support of these people above named and countless others, too numerous to mention, that I have been able to persevere in a struggle that can only be described as a "David versus Goliath" battle.
Though I may never be so fortunate as to get to the mountain top myself and claim I have won some type of final legal and moral victory vindicating my struggles to protect the Constitutional rights of my students to Equal Protection and Equal Rights under the law, yet I must continue to believe that no victory is ever won by a single person.
Victories along the long road to improving the Human condition, are always due to the collective and ever steadfast efforts of countless individuals, often unnamed and unsung, who arise from time to time during the relentless course and inexorable march of Human history.
To all those courageous people of conscience who have unwaveringly extended to me a helping hand, even in my darkest hours, when the "flickering flames" of Hope, seemed almost permanently extinguished, I cannot do better than to quote here those immortal words of William Shakespeare:
"I can no other answer make, but thanks and thanks and ever thanks".
I will always remain in debt to these and so many others who still believe that in these United States of America there really must, should, and can be, Justice for All.
_______________________________________________________________
David Pakter, M.A., M.F.A. Teacher of the Year
Decorated by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City Hall
For Exceptional Achievement in Education
_____________________________________________________________
New York City, May 17, 2008_____________________________________________________________
1 comment:
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