In my opinion, public education has gone down a path of disaster in many ways – too many teaching methodologies that are not much more than somebody’s fad idea instead of being verifiably certified effective, teachers who believe their mission is to indoctrinate students with “a worldview” instead of teaching subject basics well, and unions that want you to simply believe that higher salaries and perks are an instant panacea to what they’ve been doing the last 30 years.
So, DO watch this of a high school student asking other students some simple, basic American Civics and geography questions. Watch the utter cluelessness (with the exception of one young lady) and the blank stares of these high schoolers when the mic is offered in their general direction.
(H/T: The Blaze)
Well prepared and taught by their teachers, eh? The problem for parents and taxpayers is…
…that the teaching profession confronts them with uppity service and attitudes (“well, weknow better than most parents what is best for the children!”). The unions won’t accept blame – they utterly condemn any form of competition (think non-union charter schools and the ability of parents to have more control on how their children are educated via school choice) or moan and groan that “hey blame the results on those kids!”. They do believe that putting more in the pockets of teachers’ union member will solve the problem (even as the message is sent “hey, don’t pay us more? Your kids will suffer!”).
Right. The problem is that the NEA’s words said when they didn’t think we all were listening, they show a different face; from a post I did back in 2009, here are the words of the retiring NEA General Counsel saying it is NOT about the children but about the power of the Union:
Teaching is not the highest calling, only power.
Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.
And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.
This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.
Too high a price to pay for educated children. Chanin got wild applause from thousands of NEA members at the San Diego Convention Centerfor his remarks.
