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Education

Amazon Encourages Teachers To Use Social Media To Obtain Classroom Supplies 95

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
theodp writes: By purchasing items from hundreds of teachers' Wish Lists this back-to-school season," Amazon explained in a Monday corporate post, "Amazon is working to ensure teachers can fill their classrooms with the items they need, from essential school supplies like pencils and markers to books to help stock up the classroom library. [...] If you are an educator who needs help fulfilling your list, or if you know someone who does, share your Amazon Wish List on social media and tag @amazon with #ClearTheList."

In a Twitter post last week, Amazon called on its 3.7 million followers to "learn about our Amazon Future Engineer Teacher of the Year award recipients and help them #ClearTheList." Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) is "a comprehensive childhood-to-career program aimed at increasing access to computer science education for children and young adults." Explaining the importance of #ClearTheList school funding in a video shared with Amazon's 29.2 million Facebook followers, one AFE Teacher of the Year explains, "You can't teach 21st century skills without 21st century funding, so supplies are super important for classrooms." A second AFE Teacher of the Year also endorsed #ClearTheList funding in Amazon's Monday post, explaining that ""When teachers have all their classroom supplies, they can focus on nurturing their students' curiosity." Each of the 10 AFE Teachers of the Year 2021 received a $30,000+ prize package from Amazon in June, which should clear their lists.
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Amazon Encourages Teachers To Use Social Media To Obtain Classroom Supplies More

Amazon Encourages Teachers To Use Social Media To Obtain Classroom Supplies

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  • Amazon, these are your future employees, maybe fund them directly.

    • Sorry, but if they have an education, not only would they not have to work for Amazon, if they had to, they might even have the brains to know that as a group they can stand up to the exploitation.

      And why the hell would Amazon want that?

    • fund them directly

      So like maybe picking a handul of teachers and giving them $30k to buy supplies? Or are you saying that instead of funding public schools with taxpayer money we should rely solely on Corporate Sponsorship?

    • Well then let's see what happens:

      My classroom Wish list [amazon.com]

      Slashdotters?

  • Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:21AM (#61697303)
    How about we tax these giant corps, and have them pay for school supplies
    Fucking idiots.

    • How about we tax these giant corps, and have them pay for school supplies Fucking idiots.

      Or let them donate the needed supplies directly (they do after all have the teachers' wish lists handy) and then deduct the donations. I'm good with either plan.

      • Education is a critical part of a Nations Long term interest. Being relent on Good Will of a company to help aid in such an important endeavor is going to be self defeating.

        1. A big part of Charity is self promotion. Not to many people will donate their time in a homeless shelter, and stay in the back room, where they may donate food, cook a meal, and clean up the kitchen, while avoiding getting thanks and prays from the staff and the homeless. If Amazon were to donate such supplies, it will probably be p

      • No. The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.

        • What I am wondering is why we are still so clinging on to the old ways, even after all of the social upheval during the past 2 years, and not really doing anything to change the rotten system?

          Believe it or not, it can be changed without tanks in the street and people beginning to address each other as "comrade".

          The "red scare" started getting very tired and old after the 1950s, and is moreso now.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Let's do everything by donation. Need a new school building, let's wait for someone to donate one. Let me rephrase, need a new school building in an inner city black neighborhood? ... better hope that someone in the community knows a sports star, because don't hold your breath waiting for a white-owned corporation to step up.

        Leaving things up to donations seems like freedom, but it letting the chips fall where they may utterly crushes a generation's hope for economic mobility.

        • What year did you write this? The 'white owned' corporations are falling over themselves to be the most 'diverse'. If. As mugging the predominantly black inner city school will be preferred over a far worse school that is predominantly white.

          Just look at the awards link in the article. The award is chiefly touting 'equity' and 'diversity' among the criteria.

          • Show me the white owned corporation who donated a fully functional school in a disadvantaged neighborhood with students drawn only from that neighborhood
            If you show me JUST ONE, I'll tolerate your nonsense.

            • Why should I? That's not something I claimed. AC said that 'white-owned' corporations wouldn't donate a school building to a predominantly black school.

              Okay, let's have an example:

              https://eu.delawareonline.com/... [delawareonline.com]

              While not myself a 'white/owned' corporation yet, I donated to an independent school that targets predominantly black inner-city kids, focussing on discipline, self-worth, practical job skills, and a Christian ethos. What have you done?

        • Score.
    • States already have lotteries, which fund the schools.

      • States already have lotteries, which fund the schools.

        Well educated people don't play the lottery. As you might imagine, this creates a feedback look that ensures many people get poor educations.

        • Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Surak_Prime ( 160061 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:26AM (#61697519)

          I hear this, but don't really understand it. I mean, I understand that if one buys multiple lottery tickets, then each additional lottery number set purchased only increases odds of winning by such an tiny amount as to not be worth it. But purchasing that *first* set of numbers on a lottery ticket in any given drawing increases your chances of winning by 100%.- from 0 to 1.Seems like a reasonable thing to do, especially if you also get one ticket's price worth of fun out of being "in the game".

          • Exactly, that first ticket gives you a shot - however small - at being rich. People who think only people who are bad at math play the lottery, are the kind of people who are prone to drowning in a river that's only 1 meter deep on average. The lottery wouldn't be my first choice for spending a leftover tenner on, but I also wouldn't talk people out of spending theirs that way.

          • I'm not trying to disparage lotto players or anything. This is purely based on lotto participation statistics I've seen. I realize that correlation doesn't always imply causation, but sometimes it does.

          • An increase of "0" to "1" is not an increase of "100%". This is why the lottery is a tax on those that are bad at math!

          • But purchasing that *first* set of numbers on a lottery ticket in any given drawing increases your chances of winning by 100%

            No, just no, your statement is ambiguous and wrong in both interpretations I can think of.

            First interpretation; absolute increase, you chances where 0% of winning now n% where n is a very small number of winning after you by your ticket, your chance of winning is now n% so you increase is n%.

            Second interpretation; relative increase, your chances where 0% of winning now n%, so the relative percentage increase from 0 to n is n/0 * 100, so that increase is infinite (not 100%) no matter how small n is, this pro

      • Re:Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)

        by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:11AM (#61697461) Journal
        What's that, the birth lottery? Being born to rich parents guarantees good and affordable education. Here's a better one, have people and corporations pay their fair share of taxes and properly fund schools and teachers' salaries. And no, America is not fucking over-taxed. It is the least taxed industrial nation on the planet, and yet it is still sinking into oblivion. So the over-taxed bullshit is just that.

      • Re:Better idea (Score:4, Informative)

        by notsouseful ( 6407080 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:14AM (#61697471)
        Uhh, you should look into that. In Iowa, the lotteries don't provide additional funding for schools. They sure were passed to do just that. However, what happened was the funding for schools was "replaced" by the funds coming in from the lotteries, so there was no actual gain of funding, funny how that works. The states and localities are still responsible for funding the schools whether they draw from lotteries or not.

        • A lot of states did the old switcheroo. I recall Florida did as well when the lottery first was introduced. The shell game...

  • Store recommends shopping (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:40AM (#61697357) Homepage Journal

    Film at 11

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suss ( 158993 )

      I would recommend Jeff Bezos go fuck himself, but he probably already did, with his army of clones. You are now imagining a Jeff Bezos clone orgy.

  • I know it wasn't their slogan... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:42AM (#61697371)

    But Amazon just seems to be getting more and more evil....

    • They are running a promotion centered around their donation of $300K to schools. Where's the evil part?

  • This is behavior normalized generations ago (Score:3)

    by feedayeen ( 1322473 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:43AM (#61697381)

    This is just a more updated form of a behavior normalized for generations. Teachers in underfunded school districts have had years of experience being unable to get the resources that they need without both doing huge amounts of unpaid word and spending a good amount of their own money on classrooms. I've gotten little lists printed out to hand to my parents before of classroom supplies that were needed and had classes and by high school had a a teachers make references to printer limits. It's been almost 15 years since high school, but nothing's changed to increase the valuation of teachers or school so I'd be shocked if it's different today.

    I want to emphasize the use of 'normalized' not that this is a behavior that should be done.

    • This is SOP in schools where most of the students have a darker shade of skin, they get targeted with labels such as "superpredator", and come from a place refered to as a "ghetto". Sometimes these buildings are near deathtraps, where the ceilings are falling in. At least thats how it was back in the 1990s.

      I was hoping that during the past 30 years this had all changed, that society woke up and realised that systematic racism is a very bad thing for society as a whole, and that the ill effects trickle up an

  • to a well to do one. The first thing he noticed was he didn't have to keep buying supplies for his kids because the school district supplied them free of charge.

    I don't know exactly how much he was spending, but I gather it was a fair amount, especially for somebody living in that district.

    Basically, it's really expensive to be poor.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      The first thing he noticed was the people in the well to do area valued education and were willing to fund it with local taxes, instead of expecting the Federal government to pay for everything.

      • The first thing he noticed was the people in the well to do area valued education and were willing to fund it with local taxes, instead of expecting the Federal government to pay for everything.

        It can easily be more complicated than that. Poorer areas tend to have populations that live in apartments. As a result, rents go up when landlords increase rents, sometimes as a result of increased property taxes, other times 'just because'. Since property taxes are abstracted away from apartment renters, there's far less ability to vote with one's wallet.

        Compounded with that, people in well-to-do areas that pay property taxes directly can be more involved in the education process. I'm not exactly sure wha

      • That's not how taxes work. Taxes are based on a percentage, not a flat cost. A well to do area at the same tax rate as a poor one will get more tax revenue with the same amount of people. In order to fund education with the same dollar amount, the poor area would need to tax their people at a much higher rate than the rich one or else the tax money would need to roll up to the state level and then be distributed evenly.

        • There are all kinds of "taxes" - sometimes with different names. For example non-ad valorem assessments can be a fixed amount applied to a properties tax liability.

    • Re: A buddy of mine moved from a poor district (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:58AM (#61697695)

      "It's expensive to be poor" and not just in
      a monitary sense.

      Lower life expectancy, having to fear for your life walking to the corner market, being targeted by gangs and police, a much higher chance of being incarcerated, always being very close to ending up homeless, dim prospects for your future are just some of those non-monitary costs.

  • They bust unions, monitor employees, and create poor working conditions even for developers with one hand, and they pretend to pander to educators and other public goods by responding to a few tweets with the other hand.
  • How dare Amazon give school supplies to teachers. The absolute gall to fill a funding hole that local politicians have absolutely no intent to fill themselves.
    • Maybe local school districts would have the funding for school supplies if local politicians DID NOT give HUGE tax breaks and subsidies to LARGE corporations such as Amazon. Maybe if government actually taxed large businesses they would have the money they needed to properly fund education.

      You can fuck off now.

    • "c0rPoRaTiOnS aRe eV1L! "

      Amazon is far from being a saint, but they are filling the gap that the crooked politicians won't. And also, there is a lack of accountability to keep these politicians in check.

      "Nice Lamborghini you got there. I"m sure all of the kids in your district who have to share textbooks printed in 1974 will be proud of you!"

  • The people who run this society don't give a single fuck about education. Jeff Bezos could fund all these school supplies from the change found in the sofa in his secret sex dungeon (and from the looks of him, you just know he's got one), but it probably amuses him to see teachers beg.

    This is why whenever I see one of those stories about how mega-billionaires are leaving the country, I tip my hat and bid them a fond "fuck off".

  • Usually they do it through old fashioned advertisements.

    But "social media"

  • Tax? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cygnusvis ( 6168614 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:23AM (#61697503)
    I already pay property taxes to fund schools i'm certainly not paying for supplies directly for anyones kid other than mine.

    • Somebody mod this guy up, he gets it!
      I don't mind paying taxes to live in a civilized country -- what I *do* mind is corruption and graft. And the bullshit idea that private business can do it better and cheaper. No, they cannot, not if they want to make a profit. See: Rural Electrification Act, among many hundreds of other examples.

      • The private approach works well in many areas so long as there is the ability for the customer to choose alternatives. See practically every product or service you enjoy for examples.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          the ability for the customer to choose alternatives

          They're working eagerly to prevent this in the private sector.

          I will live and die without ever seeing a free market. Like several kinds of political systems, it only exists on paper. Theoretically.

          • The economic advantages, seen in a global reduction in poverty, increase lifespans, and access to comfort and technology would suggest some benefits to free markets.

            That there is no perfectly free market is probably a good thing. The extremists libertarian dream doesn't end well - we tried that. The trick is to regulate where necessary to combat distortions of the market without causing even bigger distortions. Regulation at its core should be addressed towards reducing information asymmetry. The average co

        • Right that is why we should have a zillion different competing standards. NOT.

          It took the Government to say what the screw thread standards are going to be, among other things. Electric service, clean water, food, etc etc.etc. So uh, nope, The private sector should stay in its own sandbox. Why?

          Because they are too interested in competing and trying to become a law unto themselves instead of actually doing what's right for society. See all of American history.

          • Regulation and ownership are two different things. Let's at least try to discuss the latter without veering off.

            Are you suggesting that we can't have standardisation without government intervention? If so then please explain how the government brought us VESA, VGA, HDMI, MP3, ELF, FAT, VHS, compact cassette, home pizza delivery, and disco.

  • Where did the tax money go? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CQDX ( 2720013 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:37AM (#61697573)

    A big chunk of the tax revenue is supposed to go to schools. When I was a kid, the schools were well kept and we had text books and useful library. Parents were to buy basic supplies for their kids like pencils, papers and notebooks. Now, there aren't any text books (to save on costs I suppose) and every year there is some kind of drive to bring bags and bags of basic supplies to the schools to stock up on classroom necessities. So where did the tax money go? Poorly managed retirement funds? Grifters? The state's general fund to pay increasing debts?

    • That tax money went into 'administration.' (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @11:49AM (#61697627) Homepage
      When I started school around 1980 most schooling was classes and teachers, by the time I graduated school expansion had turned into some classrooms and a lot of administration offices. I imagine by now every 4 students need 1 administrator because 'we created jobs'.

      Schooling needs an overhaul, and by that I mean start cutting the useless fat jobs that aren't teachers.

    • All of the above including sports.

    • A little bit of everything you mentioned. Blatant mismanagement of funds being the prime one. I work....err...a "employed" by the gov't. We rarely if ever do any actual work. But we elevate the wasting of public funds to a fucking art form.

      I am not proud of this, but the facts are the facts and public sectors, of which education is but one part, hold no accountability for the spending of money and while we have a "waste fraud and abuse" hotline, it's primarily to snitch of low-level employees taking home c

  • Teachers should never have to do this. (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @02:12PM (#61698137) Journal
    I'm stating the obvious. Schools are underfunded, teachers should not have to have beg on social media, or have bake sales, or whatever, to raise money for the basic things they need to do their job. It's wrong.

  • Simple Solutions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El Fantasmo ( 1057616 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:30PM (#61698401)

    1. Properly fund schools
    2. Properly fund schools
    3. Stop with all this lottery money helps fund schools crap; it's just a tax on poor people.

    Ask any politician and they'll tell you, "Children are our most important resource" until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by theCoder ( 23772 )

      While I agree in principle, I think school supply "shortages" are very likely to be created artificially because they are highly visible. These school supplies are incredibly cheap compared to most other things involved in running a school. Just like every other business, the cost of a school will go into two places: salaries and buildings. Both of those are important, but their magnitude will dwarf the cost of having enough pencils and paper in the classroom.

      However, school supplies are both highly visi

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • but damn, there's PLENTY of tax money for the newest worthless F-35 wannabe.
  • Just pay your fare share of taxes, start with that.

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