This article is unpleasant reading for anyone who thinks that the system works, but now that we have blogging standing as an alternative to journalism, we are beginning to see more clearly where the system is collapsing in on itself. "It's a matter of routine that reporters feel or know they are being lied to," writes the author. "Yet they take the quotes and pass them on, unchallenged. And they rationalize this essentially corrupt practice - corrupt that is from the point of view of the democracy that the media purportedly supports - any number of ways." It seems to me - and I have often talked about the similarities between journalism and education - that this applies to teaching as well. The task is not merely to pass on facts, unchallenged, like a machine, but to enter into a conversation, not only with the student, but also with the source of the knowledge being passed on. Teachers are the reporters of knowledge for students - and we rue the day teachers even lose their passion for the truth in the way, it seems, much of the commercial press have.
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