I’m getting sick and tired of folks from all sides taking swipes at public education. I taught special education (mostly middle school) for 28 years and worked in an after-school program for four more afterwards and I can tell you that education has always suffered from just one thing: too many people who have never taught in a classroom a day in their lives telling teachers how to teach. Nothing drives me crazier than some half-baked sophist expounding on the dire state of education when, many times, they are exactly the reason why education is in such bad straits.
If you hire an auto mechanic to repair your car, you’re not going to get under the hood with them. If you hire an accountant to do your taxes, you’re not going to bring in another accountant to check their figures. If you go to a doctor, you may seek out a second opinion, but you’re usually pretty sure both are qualified.
Why is it so hard to just let teachers teach?
Bill Maher, whose opinions I usually respect and whose show is the only place where left and right can meet and have a civil discussion these days, has come down hard on educational institutions, calling them “diploma mills” and lecturing them on their political stances. A recent guest on his show blamed the left for indoctrinating students to a form of Marxism where everything is seen through the prism of oppressor/oppressed with no thought to the context on the issues.
On that point, three university presidents were recently asked to resign. Two consented. But blaming teachers for all the problems in education is a bridge too far for me.
I must admit that our political gaze has narrowed to an alarming degree. As a nation, we’re completely burned out and resistant to listening to the voices of anybody that can cause us discomfort. We have reduced almost every issue to pro or con with no middle ground.
The middle ground is where we can meet and civil discourse can begin. But, we’ve completely scorched that field because each side now assumes, erroneously, that they alone posses the correct information. Unless we start talking to each other again, we’ll never know.
Someone online recently blamed left-leaning people for the traffic cameras that have proliferated like wild turkeys on our Island.
The cameras were a result of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Vision Zero” program. Nobody likes them, nobody asked for them, and everybody is hip to the fact that promoting them as a tool to improve “school safety” became a gross lie when the cameras started running 24-7, following the pandemic, after which they were seen by many of us solely as a cash grab.
In Florida, teachers are literally being told what they can and cannot teach in a classroom and to what end? Why not openly discuss slavery and different types of lifestyles? Does denying their existence actually cancel them out? This harkens back to the “Rainbow Curriculum,” where some parents objected to their kids being taught about different lifestyles. Some said the guide, entitled “Children Of The Rainbow Curriculum,” encouraged children to engage in sex. Teenagers have never needed “encouragement” to explore.
And, we’re off to the races yet again with Mike Johnson, the current Speaker of the House, who I view as oppositional to LGBTQ+ and women’s rights while defining himself as a Christian. He informed the press that, if they wanted to know what his agenda was, all they had to do was pick up and read a Bible. Oh…that book where natural disasters occur and people kill other people and a whole lot of begetting gets done and a man tried to slaughter his only son?
To me he sounds like what has been termed a “Christian nationalist,” or those folks waiting for The Rapture. I’ll take a hard pass.
I understand the reason: money. There is a large scale effort on both sides to privatize public education. Maher joked about opening his own Catholic school, minus the religion, where no phones or lateness would be acceptable and neither would any phony excuses for having more time to take a test, “also known as cheating.”
Really, Bill? I worked for 28 years with kids that needed that extra time and here’s a salient factoid for you: In a study in California, all the students were given extra time on a test. The ones that needed it did better. The ones that didn’t did about the same. If people were really interested in education, this is the kind of study they should be looking at.
But, they’re not. They’re looking at how they can make a fast buck off of some kids’ inability to learn in a regular classroom setting. They’re callous and cynical and, in the end, doing a major disservice to kids who desperately need help. If people were really interested in making education better, they would hire the best teachers they can find at salaries that would allow those teachers to have a life outside of the classroom, improve the technology used in classrooms, make the buildings themselves safer and healthier and provide kids with something other than a lukewarm slab of bread with cheese for lunch.
But, they’re not. They just want to complain. Because it’s much, much easier to complain than to actually DO something to fix the problem.
Teachers fix the problem. Every. Single. Day. Show them some respect and let them do what you hired them to do!
Hold those magnificent grey heads high! Especially my fellow teachers!
Comments may be submitted to “Talk To the Old Guy” on Facebook.
The Old Guy: Why does everyone keep criticizing teachers?
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13.01.2024
I’m getting sick and tired of folks from all sides taking swipes at public education. I taught special education (mostly middle school) for 28 years and worked in an after-school program for four more afterwards and I can tell you that education has always suffered from just one thing: too many people who have never taught in a classroom a day in their lives telling teachers how to teach. Nothing drives me crazier than some half-baked sophist expounding on the dire state of education when, many times, they are exactly the reason why education is in such bad straits.
If you hire an auto mechanic to repair your car, you’re not going to get under the hood with them. If you hire an accountant to do your taxes, you’re not going to bring in another accountant to check their figures. If you go to a doctor, you may seek out a second opinion, but you’re usually pretty sure both are qualified.
Why is it so hard to just let teachers teach?
Bill Maher, whose opinions I usually respect and whose show is the only place where left and right can meet and have a civil discussion these days, has come down hard on educational institutions, calling them “diploma mills” and lecturing them on their political stances. A recent guest on his show blamed the left for indoctrinating students to a form of Marxism where everything is seen through the prism of........
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