News Snipet 'Blog

I remember a certain blogger critiquing one of my articles for painting in broad strokes and making some generalizations... As someone who works with public school educators day in and day out, I have to take issue with all three of your statements here.

(1)Every profession has its bad apples, and teaching is no different. But plenty can and still teach.

(2) If teachers in general can't, why slam the public school system in particular? There are plenty of very successful school districts, and there are lots of reason why those that fail do so.

(3) This is absolutely not your "average every day school teacher". If it were, my work weeks would look very different than they do.

 

Does this mean that it is no longer PC to show up at a costume party as a hunchback?

This PC stuff has gotten way out of control, it's past ridiculous.

I don't think that he should have had to resign.

A high school in Vermont was getting flack from the loud minority over their sports mascot, Crusader. The images of the crusades and all.... Anyway, one of the teachers is a friend of mine and I asked him about it. His reply, "I am merely a spear-carrier in the effort." How silly was that reply in context to the issue of the Crusader?

Oh, these things get me clucking!
Hen

 

Hiya Lefty!

Since I was painting in broad strokes I'll shamefacedly qualify them:

1. Having taught in the public school system both secondary and post, I find that the generalization fit many :) --ok, not all...

2. Our public school system in #33 in the industrialized world. It costs far more and yields less even than in nations than are far less affluent than ours. It earns it's poor reputation by many degrees. Keep in mind, that many of our most "successful" districts are still light years behind overseas averages. But I guess thats all relative.

(Give a specific example here. When I came back from Australia I was doing the same algebra in the 6th grade that was in my first year in college in the United States--I tested out of a majority of my first year curriculum. When I came back from the 8th I had already taken Junior level calculus, structures, finite and many other mathematics.)

The only explanation for this is a broken down system with broken down and resistant-to-change educators that continue to support it.

Let me give you another specific example. My daughter's 4th and 5th grade teachers both insist on my daughter memorizing her multiplication tables. The wasted hours of time on it, making the kids write them over and over again. I tried to diplomatically and tactfully find out why they were doing it--the bottom line was that it was always done that way. Two points from this: 1. Its a tremendous waste of class and instruction time, and 2. rote memorization is a detriment to developing mathematical skills. The problem is, Lefty, is that none of her teachers know this and neither of them were willing to consider an alternative. My daughter should have already been through algebra and working on pre-calc by this time. Needless to say, she is now in private school.

3. My point concerning THIS guy was that he couldn't be very bright. Evidently he has never listened to the news, read the paper or surfed the net--if he had he would have known what he did was get him canned or worse. Of course, this isn't near as bad as the guy they just put in prison from our former school district who was having sex with his students.

Understand what your saying, Lefty, but we have to look at our failing system in hard terms--not relative ones.

____________________________
KC, not sure how to respond to that one...

____________________________

Hen, I understand what your saying, and I don't like the PC movement any more than you, but this guy just set himself up for the fall. This is more about his judgement than his actions...

____________________________

Thanks all for your comments!

-Jack

 

You can always find an example of some crazy public school teacher doing something stupid or even felonious in your local district, but I would guess that those are a tiny, tiny fraction of the hundreds of teachers in every district that work their butts off for little pay and desperately want their kids to succeed.

Jack, I hope those two incidents with those two teachers were not the only reasons you pulled your kid out of public school. I'm imagining that's the case; their are bad schools.

 

Jack, Jack, Jack... your generalization is bad. There are good teachers out there, man. Really good ones.

How about going after some of those school board members instead? Or parents who want their kids' teachers to be babysitters?

 

Ok, Ok! I surrender!

Here's my reasoning.

Our public education system is awful. Thats no generalization, that's stacking it up against a world forum.

Our educators, (that includes admin AND teachers) LARGELY support the system as it is. Not only that, they feed into one of the largest and self-interested lobby in the nation that is resistant to ANY change. They are self-protecting, and in doing so sacrifice themselves and the future of our children.

I fault them for this. Does that there's not a lot of them that are good people who work hard? No, I would have to say that many of them do. But unless we start hearing more about change for the better and an increase in our international standing, I have to stand by some of those lousy generalizations. :)

Thanks for chiming in Shea! Hope you're doing well.

-Jack

 

Kathy! Good to hear from you! I taught in the secondary public school system for a year and it was the biggest cake job I had ever had. I got weekends off, left work at 4, had all the public holidays, 3 weeks vacation, summer off, christmas vacation, and a salary that was comfortable. I guess you ask why I left, huh? Well, Maine is so freaking cold that I had to move back south! Here in our state, our teachers are well compensated, our administrators even better compensated, and they are the most powerful lobby in the state. Add to this that we are DEAD last in the United States educationally, and that United States is 33 in the industrialized world, and I guess you begin to see a little of my distrust of our failed system.

On the individual level, I know that many teachers are well intended, but that and and $3 will get you coffee at Starbucks.

Kathy, we can't continue to excuse the crap we call an education system because it is well intended or because there are "processes" in place for "improvement". Unless we start asking for results and accountability we are going to be 33 in the world, and as long as we have this loser Democrat, Tennenbaum, in this state we will continue to be dead last.

I will admit to a little generalization there, guys...

Thanks all for your comments!

-Jack

 

Funny that he got in serious trouble over wearing "black face" but kept his job after making sexual suggestive comments to a female student. Talk about patterns....