What Wendy Kopp Could Have Learned From My Sicilian Grandfather

Posted by A Voice in the Wilderness

August 20, 2008

My grandfather grew up in the same town in Sicily as some seriously questionable characters. We have lots of stories in my family of Grandpa’s dealings with certain individuals – he knew this one or that one- but they are mostly family-folk lore and the aggrandizement of a pretty gentle and honest man.

Still, he knew all about dealing with members of organized crime - he had seen many of his friends ruined through such relationships. One of the things he stressed over and over again was never, ever to do business with them or take their money. Once you did, they “owned you”, he would explain. Once you accepted money from them, your business would no longer be your own, and you would have no further say in the direction in which it was headed. Priorities would naturally shift from your own to those that suited theirs.

Simply put – if you take money from questionable characters, you serve their purposes.

We do a great deal of writing on this blog about Teach for America – often to the chagrin of some of its members. We’ve tried on several occasions to explain that our difficulty lies with the organization itself, and not with the members who have been recruited into it. That being said, one of our main problems with TFA has been the direction that we see it headed in and the private interests which it seems to serve.

If we are to believe the official story of Wendy Kopp-good natured college student creates program to fill teacher shortage – then we can only assume that the program lost its direction when it began accepting money from “questionable” sources. By questionable I mean corporations and institutions which have ties to or policies that are in direct opposition to what Kopp preaches. Our favorite subject is of course, Walmart, the company known for union busting, intimidation tactics and scores of human rights violations.

The latest seems to be the Monsanto Company, the “agriculture” corporation which has strong ties to the Bush administration and Iraq and who have given the world, among other things, Agent Orange.

Monsanto has long been criticized for its attempts to hide decades of PCP pollution, campaigns to eliminate organic agriculture, manufacturing of birth deforming agents such as Agent Orange and a long list of other corporately funded atrocities. They’ve also been acused of -surprise, surpise – engaging in union busting.

So isn’t it very interesting that Teach for America, an organization that is described by some educators as contributing to the practice of union busting has just received 1 million dollars from a company that is known for union busting? According to the Saint Louis Journal, Monsanto has recently given Teach for America the money to be used towards training new teachers.

Given Monsanto’s horrific reputation towards human rights, one has to question the motives of such contributions.

If only Grandpa was still alive to tell Wendy about what happens when you accept money from crooks. Wendy, Wendy…senza faccia?