This week we went to play our usual Monday night Trivia, but this time it was a bit disturbing. The emcee that night was a young lady who, among many other examples, did not know how to spell or pronounce ‘colonel’, had never heard and had no idea what the word ‘fickle’ meant, had never heard of the ‘Pulitzer Prize’ and could not pronounce it, could not pronounce and did not know the meaning of the word ‘synonym’. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have thought too much about these (and the many other) knowledge gaps she displayed, or the fact that she had difficulty reading the questions, but it was especially disturbing when she announced her day job.
She’s a teacher in the public school system!
Questions abound:We knew many schools are ditching cursive, ditching basic math, ditching phonics and grammar, and many teachers are spewing their own personal political beliefs in place of expected teachings, but what a scary eye-opening to learn they’re now ditching intelligence too! This woman actually landed a teaching job! I have to wonder what motivated a school to hire this person as a teacher.
- How did she graduate from high school?
- How did she graduate from college?
- But first and foremost - how is she even remotely capable of teaching ANYONE???
Parents beware - get to know your teachers, get to know your schools, do whatever you have to, but please ensure your children’s education is a good one!! The future of our world depends on it!
(P.S. This was not a case of nerves. She has been doing this job for quite awhile and was quite comfortable)Word.
And as a footnote, the county spends over $13,000 per student per year. For a class of 20, that's over a quarter of a mil. And for that quarter mil, the citizens get this.
For entirely self serving reasons, every single white person in America thinks that their local kiddie gulag is "One of the good ones," and the violence, perversion, and incompetence which are constantly reported regarding pubic schools only happen in a magical land called Far Far Away. But anyone who loves their children more than they love driving a financed car and paying for cable TV, got their kids out of the pubic schools 30 years ago.
ReplyDeleteHow to fix public schools. Require by LAW that all PS Teachers can only enroll their children in public schools, and to the worst performing school in the district. BY LAW! Let them eat themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe situation will self-correct or implode within 3 years.
I know many PS teachers who send their wee bairns to private, usually Christian schools.
And add to that LAW anyone working or associated directly financially with the schools. Counselors, Administrators, Janitors and especially SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS! Self Gulag all the jerks. They'll either suddenly perform better or the wheels will come off the whole corrupt system.
ReplyDeleteI also find it very unfunny that every time a mandatory teacher qualification and testing system comes up, the UNIONS raise bloody heck. Bastiges.
Now that people can opt out of unions, mayhaps those corrupt piles of evil will start to disappear.
It is easy to pile onto teachers, just like it is easy to pile on to cops. I retired from a 22 year career as a firemedic and I used to think teachers were idiots. I became a teacher thinking I could out teach the bunch of idiots teaching public school.
ReplyDeleteWhat I discovered was this: teaching is like any other profession: there are some who are the very best at what they do. They are few and far between, because the way that the system is set up, the good ones never get the recognition they deserve and leave.
There are a few that have no business teaching. They are the idiots that you always notice. For one reason or another, they never quite screw up badly enough to get fired.
The vast majority of teachers enter the profession with a good bit of knowledge and a desire to help kids. They get worn down by bad management, abusive parents, and a system that is not designed to do what it is nominally supposed to be doing.
Just like any other job.
Good reason to homeschool , in twenty years the country will be run by home schooled kids.
ReplyDeleteI ran for the local school board last year (2017) with one agenda in mind: bring the school system's books, media, and materials into the 21st Century. I spoke in front of parents and teachers, I spoke at forums, I answered emails, I put up a FB page. I kept telling everyone that our HS kids were using history books (remember, this is 2017) that had George Bush as the POTUS and said nothing about Russia's invasions into Crimea and the Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's merely one example. Some of the other books were simply awful.
I revealed statistics showing that grades had been steadily dropping over the past decade as the curriculum changed for the worse, and how unqualified teachers (English teachers who couldn't spell - as noted in the OP) were being rehired and awarded tenure.
I asked why we still send kids home with huge backpacks filled with obsolete books instead of issuing each kid either a tablet or a small laptop (Amazon has a deal for schools if they want to use Kindles), and instead issue each kid E-Books and PDFs with the most current materials available. Copier costs would vanish as teachers could issue PDFs as handouts. Students - and teachers - would be able to use the school's web site as a resource for assignments, daily information, and as a way to receive completed homework. Kids could take their tablets with them in the car, beach, wherever - and their backpacks would be mostly empty. NO MORE STRAINED BACKS. The E-Books and PDFs could be transferred between devices - no excuse for "losing my book".
(BTW: the local school system spends at least $300,000/yr on hardcover maintenance. This doesn't include buying "workbooks" of various types: those other annually-repurchased books handed out to K-6 students before they start using hardcovers in higher grades. For the same cost, a Kindle could be given to each 7-12 student *every year* for use with E-Books and PDFs...)
We (my wife and I) received dozens of phone calls saying that their kids supported me because I *UNDERSTOOD* what was happening at the schools and was on *THEIR SIDE* in trying to fix it.
The local voters didn't turn up at the polls... but the unions (fire, police, teachers, muni workers, etc) did. I lost by a wide margin, and the union-supported candidates won. The school board is now *totally* controlled by the teacher's union.
It's not the teachers or the unions. When the voters don't care enough to turn up at the polls, and instead allow the unions to make the decisions for them...
I don't know why this is a surprise, considering that we had a President who thinks there are 57 states, thinks Austrian is a language and has no idea how to pronounce corpsman.
ReplyDeleteAlmost twenty years ago, when my daughter was in fifth grade, she came home from school one day, laughing that her teacher didn't know how to pronounce the word chivalry. (The teacher used a ch like in chicken and a long i sound.) My daughter was also smart enough not to call the teacher on her mistake.
ReplyDeleteThomas Sowell has pointed out that the average SAT score of students pursuing an undergraduate teaching degree is lower than the average SAT of all students.