Reply #49: The teacher's unions?

[Nevernose]

You mean, those folks who actually KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT TEACHING? Christ, why would we listen to THEM? I mean sure, we go to doctors when we have a medical question, and lawyers when we have a legal question, and we go to plumbers when we have a leak, and astronomers when we have a question about the sun, but going to teachers when we have a question about teaching? Ridiculous!

Do you want to know the REAL reason that shitty teachers aren't fired from most districts? It's because there's no one else to replace them, and most districts figure that a bad teacher is better than no teacher at all. Mostly the unions are just involved in making sure that management adheres to the contract. After all, unions are made up of teachers, hard-working professionals who are as ashamed of the bad teachers and the worse working conditions as anyone else would be.

Why is there no one else to replace them? Because of people like you, who claim that the failure with our educational system is "educators fail to educate." A convenient scapegoat, and one that has been going on for a hundred years or more. There's no respect.

But it's not entirely your fault, or even mostly your fault. The districts can't replace them, because they don't pay enough. They don't have the cash to woo someone from the private sector in to teach math or science. It's entering a life of service: they'll never be respected, always get paid less, and always have to work more than someone else with the same degree and abilities in a similar field.

And they'll do it in substandard conditions. Rats. Power shortages. Random violence. Gang-and-drug related violence. Parents who can't read, and are actually proud of that fact. Money doesn't make a difference? Then why is it that "Low-income black students" are the big losers? Could it be that they don't have enough copies of Macbeth or To Kill a Mockingbird lying around? That those schools don't have the best teachers because the best teachers have already moved on to better-paying districts or easier schools? And what about the condition of our society itself? All someone has to do to see the anti-intellectual, superficial, valueless society we have created is to turn on the cable television for a few minutes.

The only thing I agree with you on is the lack of discipline in schools -- but you've still got it wrong. It's not judicial fiats that have caused this mess, it's the well-intentioned legislatures of all fifty states and the federal congress. Everytime they pass a law about education, I fond myself saying, "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do."