Teach the children or hit the bricks

Scientists can measure the rate at which subatomic particles make spontaneous transitions between matter and antimatter. Three trillion times per second. We know how far the Triangulum Galaxy is from Earth. Three million light years. Pi has been taken to 2.7 trillion decimal places using only a personal computer. Human beings have been able to measure and catalog everything and anything, except, according to the Democratic Party and the teacher's union, the performance of teachers... Click here to read more.

The author is right about the teachers and their unions, but the rot is far deeper and broader. The pathological elements of the government school system include the administrators, (especially) schools of education, school boards at the state and local level, state departments of education, the state and federal courts, federal agencies and the DOE, the publishers of textbooks, and various other ideological and economic special interest groups.

You can no more reform government schools than you could reform Soviet collective farms. The model is the mistake.

The government school system needs to be closed. Unfortunately, those who benefit from it and the people addicted to free daycare will allow this enormously evil and destructive system to continue. Consequently, it will continue to destroy our children, families, churches, communities, culture, and country as it slowly continues to collapse.

The article talks about quantifying things. Performance by a human is a lot different. I have had to evaluate performance of employees and it is not that easy. If you work in a factory and make widgets you can evaluate that output. In teaching or any other job where you interact with others it is not just your skills that determine the outcome. Imagine a football team. You have the star player and the rest of the team are scrubs. They are unmotivated and don't practice. They don't play every down and really could care less if they win or lose. Will that team win? I doubt it.
Lets go to the classroom. Your students are unmotivated, they come in high on drugs or alcohol, and never study. Will they do well? Oh they have parents that smoke dope with them and teach them things like, (I am not making this up, this is a direct quote from one of my students), “if I need something my daddy says steal it”,
Now I am responsible for his performance. I hope you begin to see the problem.
If that is not enough we are no longer teachers. We have to make medical evaluations of students. Once again I am not kidding. I have been called on the carpet for writing snide remarks on “Official forms” that I think are stupid. I wrote things like, “how can I possibly know this, and I am not a licensed Dr.” The powers that be were very upset that I dared to question the “form.” No child left behind makes it almost impossible to get rid of disruptive students. Thanks President Bush and Teddy Kennedy. In the midst of all this we still teach and some students actually learn something. I have had former students tell me my class was the only reason they stayed in school. But for every victory we generally suffer many defeats.
I cannot make them learn. I can coax, and find what I hope will interest them but there is only so much we can do.
I am sorry the British Corn Laws are just not that interesting for most people.
Sorry for the rant but I hope this helps you understand what it is like in the field.
I am not in a union and I am evaluated every year. The evaluation consists of what I do in class and how prepared I am etc. I am observed at various times and graded on how well I do my job.
I have no problem being evaluated on criteria I can control. I have a problem being graded on something I cannot.

Notice that I said “The model is the mistake”. It isn’t just ______[fill in the blank]. It is almost impossible for anyone who is sane to work in a government school. In fact, we have probably reached the point where the relatively sane should leave.

By the way, I have taught and come from a family of government school employees. Teachers should know, however, that in all walks of life salaries and performance reviews involve subjective elements and things that the person being evaluated ro whose salary is being changed cannot control. That’s life.

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