The war on education

Public education is basically disintegrating around the country. Budgets have been cut to the point where there will be 60+ students per classroom next school year -- classrooms which can barely hold 35 students -- and teachers with 12+ years of experience are being laid off. The latest is TexBetty over at Mock Paper Scissors.

One of the big reasons I left teaching was because it became clear that neither American parents nor American students cared about education and learning. The question I incessantly heard was, “how will knowing X make me money when I graduate?” If there were not dollar signs involved, neither parents nor students were interested in it.

We’ve substituted the almighty dollar for everything that was once great about this culture. Fifty or a hundred years ago, kids could be rowdy but they had a basic respect for learning. Today, it’s all about dollars. Fifty or a hundred years ago, even the right wing wanted to help the poor and downtrodden, they just had a difference of opinion as to the right way to do it. Today, it’s all about “I got mine and eff you.” This country is in a death spiral caused by the discarding of all values other than worship of the almighty dollar, and if you can, get out now, before it becomes impossible.

- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin

What's the matter with education?

So a student wasn't paying attention and the teacher picked up a desk, startling her. So what did she do? She ran to the loo and called 911, of course! She reported that her teacher was out of control, rampaging around the room throwing furniture around and cursing out students, and she was "scared". The cops arrived, found that the teacher was teaching to a quiet room with no rampaging maniac in sight, concluded there was no crime, and left.

Now, back when I was a kid, if I would not only have been eating dinner standing up that night because have been spending the next few days in my room -- *without* Nintendo, television, or any other entertainment. The teacher would have received an apology from me shortly thereafter, with my father pointedly hooking his thumb into his belt as his hand guided me by my neck to the proper spot to issue said apology. The school might or might not have suspended me. But that was before the days of touchy-feely "education", when it was expected that we would go into classrooms and behave like students, or else. Today? Not so much. The point of schools today, apparently is to make students feel "safe" so that we don't harm their "self esteem". And so a teacher who apparently is a fine teacher ends up suspended, and I'm sure the little actress who faked hysterics for 911 is smiling that she "got" the teacher who yelled at her.

-- Badtux the "Sometimes progress ain't" Penguin