Paying Attention

Herein be random ruminations on politics, history, ideas, spirituality, religion, education, media, life, relationships, culture... and Boston sports when I really want to vent.

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." (ubiquitous)

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and never will." (Frederick Douglass)

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." (Susan B. Anthony)

"Clearly the trick in life is to die young as late as possible." (William Sloane Coffin)

January 17, 2012 6:37 pm
"With all this information, I think the Heritage Foundation drew the wrong conclusion. More money would make a difference in teacher recruitment and retention — not because current teachers are underpaid according to their current skill set, but because we want people with better skill sets in the classroom. If we want better performance, we shouldn’t be looking at people who are similar to current teachers. We should be looking for people who are better. And that will require, among other things, recruiting people who could make more money in the private sector."

—

I’m sorry, but this is BS.  Get rid of the 5% of teachers (cops, lawyers, doctors, etc.) who do most of the malpractice — which the respective unions and associations make difficult to do — and you are left with the 95% who are professional, competent and caring.

Bashing teachers is easy.  Talk instead about ineffective, political or enabling principals, politicians who underfund disadvantaged schools, school boards which put 35 kids in a classroom, parents who offer more problems than help, government budget cuts which send children to school in the morning with growling stomachs…

Trust me: teachers are not the problem.  Teachers are the ones who have all the problems everyone else created dumped in their laps.  But teachers are an easy target, and in the hyper-partisan holy war conservatives have devised for our nation’s politics, teachers also belong to a UNION… and a union which has supported Democrats (because Democrats care about education sincerely, albeit ineffectually.  Republicans want to destroy public schools.  Not much choice there for teachers unions). 

PS.  Don’t trust CBS or any other branch of corporate news to tell you anything worthwhile about public education, poverty, or the intersection between the two.  Neither the corporation nor its journalist employees have a clue about that.

New study: Teachers are overpaid? - CBS News (via robot-heart-politics)

(via robot-heart-politics)

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