What It Means To Speak Truth To Power (About That Medium Post)

The whole point was to speak truth to power. 20,000 views later, I don’t know what to do about the new eyeballs on my writing.

In subsequent tweets, [Perry] comes within inches of calling himself the next Messiah, stopping kids from stuttering and pulling them from gangs, stepping in for their absent fathers, and keeping them up until midnight for no other reason than his own need to set these boys straight. In subsequent tweets, he shouts down tweeters who resent his anti-Black message, chiding him for implying that dreads and braids?—?hair styles with African traditions?—?make black boys look dirty and, worse yet, unsuccessful. He continues to use this weekend experience of setting boys straight (yes, like the jail, but only with a comedian and an army veteran) to make other wild assertions about the American school system and absentee fatherhood. He admittedly spends 29 tweets extolling the virtues of depriving boys their sleep and cutting their natural hair to detractors, then makes an about face to chastise “y’all” for spending time on Twitter instead of getting to work.

How do you lead an education revolution when your ideas are so revolting?

I didn’t intend on focusing on any one person or restarting the same old education debates. As is my annual tradition, I just wanted to put the conversations so many of us put in our private messages out there for non-educators to see. For a classroom teacher who’s been doing this for 11 years, I’m fascinated by the plethora of critique that I either a) write hit pieces or that b) I have no solutions. The bulk of my work has been largely to find solutions in the murkiest, most complicated spaces. continue reading

The post What It Means To Speak Truth To Power (About That Medium Post) appeared first on The Jose Vilson.