MTheads

I Defend My Right to Keep Teaching Children I Admit I Can't Teach!

Let's see.  According to striking Chicago teachers, some children cannot be taught.  Teachers are unable to impart knowledge to such children.  Therefore, teachers should not be held accountable if students do not improve under their instruction. 

We have some addendums:

1) Students' attitudes to learning are responsible for their success or failure in school.

2) Parents are responsible for their children's success or failure in school.

3) Societal conditions are responsible for children's success or failure in school.

4) Teachers apparently have no responsibility for children's success or failure in school.

According to many teachers, they are beating their highly educated and professional heads against a Biden-literal wall.  And no one respects their efforts, either. 

What are their demands? Higher pay and continuing control over every aspect of a public education system they admit they are powerless to improve. 

If they are admittedly powerless to teach a subset of children, let someone else try.  Let the private sector have a chance.  Or let's try vouchers or start more charters.  What would Chicago have to lose other than some teaching positions which would be made up with the new positions from the new enterprises? 

But we all know this is not what the strikers and their sycophants want.  They do not want to give up one single child to any outside organization, no matter how badly they themselves are doing, no matter if the parents want more choices, no matter if it means defending an anachronistic status quo against all real attempts to innovate.  It's not about educating for a new era.  It's about defending yesterday's moribund educational establishment.  It's not about finding what will educate those children in less than optimum situations.  It's about using them to leverage money from the tax payer.  It's about the power of the monolithic teacher unions. 

As I usually end my arguments against the current rigid state of our public education, I can only warn that change is coming.  Parents and students are the bosses and not those we employ as area specialists.  Teaching is not nearly as difficult to pull off as many would like us to think.  Wait until we see how well some people manage to teach the unteachable.  Wait until the clever children who were trapped in bad schools become parents.  We're slowly dismantling the bureaucratic and legal obstacles that have been erected to prevent real parental involvement. 

Striking Teachers Make Public the Incredible Deal They're Getting, Tax Payers Doing Some Serious Thinking

Are those striking teachers in Chicago and their ridiculous groupies actually for real??  What??  Demands for no national testing, no charter schools, no teacher evaluations, no closing of failing schools, no laying off of teachers, more subsidiary employees, more pay, more job security, and, funniest of all, more respect. And, we have no right to doubt their collective efforts despite the horrendous statistics of their students' achievements. 

I've spent three glorious days reading comments and posts on various news sites debating the teacher strike.  And I'm actually, not Biden-literally, disgusted by the morons who support the strike. 

Moron positions:

1) Public schools are underfunded.  Ah huh.  A classic, for sure. Only stupid women and weepy, hippy men could possibly believe this.  The rest just want more money, or want you to have less for various lefty ideological reasons.

2) Charter schools are destroying public education.  Enemies of charter schools are filled with hate at the idea of any child escaping the grasp of the collective, borg-like public schools.  They have an overwhelming fear of anyone anywhere having educational objectives not in lock step with the ones that were imprinted on their souls during college.

3) Parents are to blame. It's not the public education system, it's the parents.  You know, the parents with little choice on which school their children attend; the parents with no say on curriculum; the parents with no way to avoid bad teachers; the parents who already have full time jobs so they can pay property taxes to pay teachers' salaries which are often higher than their own.  It's the parents' job to shut up and make it work.

4) Teaching is the hardest job in the world. We're lucky anyone wants to spend time with our horrible children, much less try to impart the wisdom of the ages to them.  Besides having to associate with our children, they have to put in long hours, bring work home, and pay for continuing education.  Wait a minute...so do the rest of us!  Next.

5) Teaching as a profession is not given any respect.  Become a profession, earn respect.  They look like angry bus drivers rather than college educated professionals. Hints: Stop chomping on gum, tuck in your matchy matchy t-shirts, brush your hair, and leave the drums in the music rooms.  I know tax dollars paid for those drums.  And it hurts.