…and why it doesn’t matter.
You hear it all the time. The dedicated, underpaid teacher struggling to bring the light of knowledge to the young students thirsting for knowledge.
It’s bullshit.
I don’t care how dedicated or wonderful any individual teacher is, the education system produces crap. That any individual student manages to learn in spite of the system doesn’t matter. You can’t point to the successes to offset the failure.
If a serial killer saves a life for every one he kills would we let him avoid jail and give him a raise? Of course not. Education in the United States must be judged by its failure not it’s (questionable) success.
And does anyone think the US public education system is a success by any measure?
If public schools were a business they would be bankrupt and closed down. The Feds would be dragging the administrators into court for fraud and the Consumer Product Safety Commission would be demanding a recall.
And individual teachers would be sued for malpractice.
I woke up this morning with this thought: Those with an IQ above 115 waste their time in school, and those with an IQ below 85 waste the school’s time.
Well put. If it was only a few dollars wasted on this madness, it would be different. The thousands spent on each student yeilds only high priced baby sitters with pensions that don’t match their skills.
If it’s such a screwed up job as a teacher, then quit. Nobody held a gun to their head when they chose their career and nobody does the same each morning forcing them to go to work.
Not only that, but as the kids get older there’s not much even the best teacher can do if those kids (and their parents) don’t care.
I went to public school and the best teachers I had are either retired now or left to go to the private sector / start their own charter schools. Colleges aren’t much better. The amount of pure indoctrination involved is disgusting.
Well said Alan, and VERY true, especially today!
I must respectfully disagree. Public schools are a roaring success by the most important measure. They do exactly what they were intended to do.
To tie into your story, My Father was a great hard-working and dedicated public school teacher. I would argue he is everything the public school system should have, among many others.
But…
He also was a union negotiator who worked hard to make sure the unmotivated, stupid, depraved and drunk teachers he worked with got the same pay, benefits and merits he did.
When I bring this up, naming the various pedophiles, idiots, slackers, and drunks he worked with (and even acknowledged them as such) he changes the subject.
It is indeed a broken system.
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all” -Paul Simon (Kodachrome)