Controversy about "Teachers Rock"

There was a CBS TV special called "Teachers Rock" that supported several charities.  One of these charities was "Teach for America"  As a Josh Groban fan, I was very interested to hear about fans who were angry about Josh supporting Teach for America by appearing on this show.

Many of Josh's fans are teachers.  Some of them brought up objections that the teachers union(s) have to Teach for America. The latter group apparently starts charter schools. Charter schools apparently tend to hire less trained, less experienced cheaper, non-union teachers to teach at risk populations.

According to the people I've been in contact with, there is no proof that charter schools do better than public schools with these populations -- despite the claims of the charter schools that they are going to solve the problems in the public schools.  Moreover, the charter schools divert funds away from the public schools.

Teachers tend to get blamed for the poor performance of at risk kids, but in fact the teachers have no control over the conditions outside the school that make it impossible for those students to learn.

One fan called the charter schools in her area "lying thieves" because they took the money for special ed kids and then dumped the kids back into the public schools after the charter schools used up the money.

My kids certainly benefitted from master's degree special ed teachers, through the public schools -- and I'm very grateful that they got that help.  I also found that younger, less experienced, less well trained teachers were not as good at dealing with my special ed kids as those with more training and experience.

This is the first time I've seen several devoted fans get irate about something Josh was doing.

This has been a learning experience for me and I hope it has been for Josh as well. I hope he has been reading some of the very angry tweets that have been posted about this.

Josh Groban & Discrimination

I am really furious hearing that people over 40 were excluded from the screening of Coffee Town.

Age discrimination is a huge problem in this country. People over 50 are spending 3x as long between jobs as people in their 20's. The Wall Street Journal has been running articles about this.

I notice a lot less older people on the streets in New York City, recently, presumably because they aren't employed.

This is not the first time I'm hearing about this sort of thing with Josh. I heard rumors that older fans were excluded from the crowd scenes in the "If I Walk Away" video."

I have noticed, in crowds, that Josh seems to prefer to socialize with younger fans.

I am getting very incensed about this.

And to think that just this week, I was working to interest a couple of older women in buying Josh's albums.

Might just quit being Josh's fan entirely.

I couldn't help but notice as well that the cast of this movie was 4 guys with a token woman -- so common in movies, that the men get all the roles with one woman there to look good. I've also noticed on Josh's CD's that the vast majority of the back stage people are men, as well.  You see this in the studio photos that everyone he is working with is male.

Moreover, though Josh's band on tour has both men and women, there never seem to be older women -- only young, beautiful women. Men apparently are allowed to get middle aged and pudgy and still be in the Groband, but not women.