Rotten Apples or Low-Hanging Fruit?
By: Wilma de Soto

The controversial TIME Magazine cover story has teachers from around the country up in arms and rightly so.

It’s an apparent corporate education reform piece from stem to stern, written without any balanced input from a single teacher with the intent to defame and malign teachers who have dedicated their professional lives to helping children of all persuasions make better lives for themselves.

Or is it?

While checking out the cover photo that has been passed around social media this week, I took note of something.  The headline proclaims “ROTTEN APPLES”, but the cover photo does not. Instead the reader sees a beautiful red apple, ripened to the point of perfection. A gavel is poised over it ready to deliver the destructive, smashing blow.

In my opinion, this photograph is a perfect and powerful visual metaphor for what Corporate Education reformers have done to the careers of many great teachers around this country; labeling teachers as rotten fruit while they are in the prime of their teaching careers.  Perfect specimens of educational acumen relegated to the garbage heap of history by a few corporate entities whose minions have never taught a single class in public school; they have been demoralized, defamed, denigrated and ultimately destroyed.

So has TIME Magazine goofed on this piece?  Did they inadvertently reveal the corporate education agenda while purporting to support it?  In this case I do not believe, “Only ‘TIME’ will tell.”