John Stossel: Accepting the Teacher Union's Offer (Or Not)

Creator's Syndicate ^ | April 5, 2006 | John Stossel

[wideawake]

Teachers in NYC with little experience can get paid $45,000 to work only 900 hours a year. $50 a hour to babysit.

That's about one-third the hours that normal NYers work.

They also get a swank benefits package and guaranteed lifetime job security if they can manage not to show up to work high on crack or sodomize one of their young charges.

[Tribune7]

I sometimes wonder if the US would not be much closer, politically, to Cuba or Venezuela if we did not have folks like John, Bill O'Riley, Rush Limbaugh, and a handful of others out there day after day exposing the powermongers and their agenda.

We'd certainly be more like France or Germany.

[Tanniker Smith]

I was just reading about the offer and the challenges in the NYC teachers' newspaper.

THe funny thing is that the challenge is No-Win for the teachers union: either he shows how bad the schools are, or he shows how he can't teach for a single week -- except that the school can get rid of him at the end of the week. You can't get rid of a bad teacher so easily.

[50sDad]

My daughter attends Walnut Hills, a magnet school. They are required to learn Latin. They study ancient Greece and Rome. Her fellow students are of every color, and they are all there because they want to be there, because students that survive six years there generally have a 80+% chance of getting a full scholarship somewhere good. They have wonderful sports and performing arts programs, and very little problem with discipline. (They are also in the middle of a "bad neighborhood" with high crime and a horrible dropout rate for the regular school in that area.) The lesson for today? You don't give anybody a hand up by lowering their expectations. This is not a Democrat "we'll let you fail because you can't be expected to really achieve anything, you poor backward hyphanated-American" school. It is a "Old School" school with a classical curriculum, designed to help kids who want a good education get one without being distracted by "victims" who have already given up on themselves because their "leaders" make excuses for being lazy.

My wife and I laugh that our daughter "has no black friends." That is, she has a hundred friends, about half who are black. But she's been raised to be as color-blind as we can manage. I want her to judge as Martin Luther King, Jr. did...on the contents of the hearts of others, not by their skin. She knows winners of every race...and that makes the losers of every race all the more apparent. She has two highly involved parents that love her, set firm guidelines about what is good and bad, and expect her to humbly out-perform others, because she is so strong, kind and smart. If anybody loves their kids, they should give them limits, and have high expectations for whatever area they naturally excel in.

[Minnesocold]

Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent.

I hope more students like Colorado's Sean Allen record and expose their kook teachers' rants. We also have Evan Coyne Maloney exposing colleges.

[grasshopper2]

Well, if you're using PowerPoint, you're probably demonstrating against logic and linear reasoning, since PowerPoint shuns these things.

How is that? I'm hearing that new teachers are using power point instead of the blackboard, and that the education departments are pushing it.

[LexBaird]

BTW, Stossel falls into the same 'language trap' with his "Lots of people". That should be "A lot of people".

If you are going to be picky about vernacular, it should be "many people". Canned goods and land come in lots; people come in groups.

[LexBaird]

I assume these weren't ENGLISH teachers.

I'd assume, since she is a major union head, she hasn't actually taught a class in years.

[Rakkasan1]

IMHO, Stossel is one of the few TV journalist who is honest.

[TheMightyQuinn]

On a related tangent, what are the rules for "got" and "have"?

[Wolfie]

I wonder what else our cameras might see.

Wouldn't matter. If its one thing I've learned in 30 plus years of watching tv news magazine shows exposing all manner of corruption and wrongdoing, its that nobody really gives a carp, and nothing ever changes.

[Condor51]

***On a related tangent, what are the rules for "got" and "have"? ***

'Got' (Past tense and a past participle of get.) - I got a speeding ticket on the way to work.

Have is a tad more involved:
'Have' (To be in possession of. To possess as a characteristic, quality, or function. To possess or contain as a constituent part) - I have a cr@py Dell computer.

In any case, "we got xxxx schools" is improper English since it is the past tense of 'get'. And the mope who used it is the teacher Union Rep, most likely a past teacher - simply marvelous.

[Drango]

Stossel bitch slaps union.

[Caleb1411]

The school principal had me sit in on a class with a "superstar" teacher. It was supposed to be a history class, but he seemed to teach "victimhood in racist America." On the class door he posted a New York Times column denouncing the president for spending too much money on war. Can we say "left-wing"?

[VOA]

Stossel or the teachers: who will blink?
that was a no-brainer!