More on the "Failing Public Schools"

On the previous post about the public schools, a commenter says:

What conservatives SAY they hate about teachers is the unions (they’re always careful to say “teachers’ unions”). What they actually hate is that they used to be able to pay teachers nothing, because they were almost all women, against whom it was legal and universal to discriminate in the rest of the labor force. 50 years ago, becoming a teacher was the epitome of professional accomplishment for half the working-age population. Now that those people are becoming doctors and lawyers, the quality of teaching talent pool available at the price has plummeted, even though the price has gone up.

I agree with most of this comment, but there’s nothing wrong with the pool of teachers. Most of them weren’t as smart as I was, but who is? The kids themselves used to tell me this. They would tell me I was the smartest teacher of them all, or maybe had one competitor. I didn’t feel that my fellow teachers were idiots at all. And some of them were quite intelligent, especially some White male teachers at the White suburban high schools. The SAT and achievement test scores are going down because so many more Blacks and Hispanics are taking the tests. Also, a lot of Whites who have no business going to college are taking those tests too. In those international competitions, multiracial USA is pitted against all White European and all NE Asian NE Asian countries. Yeah, they “beat” us. So what? What do you expect? This international competition thing is insane anyway. It’s like a foot race. Get 250 great runners and make them race. One will come in first. One will come in 250th. No matter how many times you do the race, it will always end up the same, some people at the forefront, others at the rear. Same with all “international competitions.” Why is the US “failing” if we don’t come in first on every single international achievement test competition? This whole “we are falling behind” crap about the international competitions is coming from the Right and it’s part of a plot to destroy the public schools, which, as I noted earlier, they have always hated. The White Right hates the public schools even more now, because the moneyed ones send their kids to private schools, but they are taxed to pay for public schools. Especially public schools for “niggers and beaners” = non-Whites. Really pisses them off! That’s a major factor driving this whole rightwing jihad against the public schools. The average 18 year old today does better on math, reading and knowledge that any 18 year old at any time prior to 1960. We are better educated than ever. As I mentioned, those “failing schools” all happen to be full of Blacks and Hispanics. This is a race realism problem, not a failure of teachers, administrators or schools problem. How are you going to fix that problem, “failing schools” clowns? Send the Blacks back to Africa? Send the Hispanics back to Latin America? That’s the only realistic solution, and it’s undoable for many reasons. So in the interim, we will be stuck with “failing schools.” Private schools do not do a better job of educating kids. They have a better pool, and they throw out all the bad ones. Public schools have to take everyone of all abilities, even retarded and learning disabled. We can hardly throw out anyone, even for bad behavior. When we do, the Blacks scream racism because way more Blacks get suspended. I don’t think there’s any racism going on at all in suspensions like Jesse Jackson says. I taught in the schools for years. The only injustice is way more Blacks need to be suspended! That’s right. Not nearly enough Blacks are being suspended! The jihad against the public schools started with Reagan, and it’s all about rich Whites wanting to defund public schools because they don’t go to them. Also it’s a way to attack the Left and especially the teachers unions, which the Right despises. My father taught at a private school for a while. The owners cared nothing about the kids. They underpaid the teachers, overworked them, and scrimped on all supplies. My father had provide his own paper, pencils, chalk, erasers, you name it. The books were way out of date. The classroom was out of everything. The owners didn’t even care how well the kids did, but there was a lot of pressure on teachers to pass the idiot kids of the White parents who were paying the salaries of the owners. My father got in trouble for giving some of these dunces bad grades, and the owners ordered him to give them good grades or get fired. The owners could care less whether anything was learned or not and spent their time flying around in Lear Jets (I am not making this up). The idea that such a school does a better job than a public school is ridiculous. Let’s see now. The way to make better schools is:

  • Pay teachers much less money. That way they will work so much harder!
  • Defund the schools. Don’t provide any materials and use only out of date texts. Make teachers and students provide all materials out of their pockets.
  • Force teachers to pass failing students and make them give A’s when they deserve C’s.
  • Care absolutely nothing about whether any student is learning anything. Just focus on making a profit for the school so you can fly around in your Lear Jet.

Yeah, that’s the ticket! The “charter schools” thing is also a mess. Teachers’ unions are banned at private schools, so this means what? Teachers make less money? Let’s see. Get rid of the workers’ union, and then the workers will work so much harder and better! Why would they do that? Unionized workers don’t work less or less well than nonunionized workers. Charter schools get to pick and choose who enrolls, and they get to throw out any dumb or bad acting kids. So their scores look better. Sure. They cherry pick.

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0 thoughts on “More on the "Failing Public Schools"”

  1. I dunno man, as much as I hate to death scumbag union busters on nearly all fronts, I personally have some pretty deep union-busting tendencies when it comes to teachers’ unions.
    I tend to be of the higher pay, higher benefits, but less job security (or rather, merit-tied job security) viewpoint as far as teachers are concerned, sort of like the most recent union-negotiated contract in DC, where the teacher’s were given 20% base salary raises plus merit-based bonuses totaling up to 100% or so of their base salary in exchange for the abolition of tenure and seniority-based job security. I mean teaching isn’t like collecting garbage or working on the docks or something. After all, the whole point of the union is to look out for the workers as priority number one, not necessarily the stuff the workers are handling (in this case, not garbage or cargo ships but rather kids needing to learn).

  2. Dear Robert
    I agree with you about the intelligence of teachers. What matters is not whether teachers are as smart as lawyers or some other high-IQ group but whether they are smart enough for the job. I learned to read Dutch and Portuguese from teachers who weren’t superbright and did not have a university degree.
    As to unions, my understanding is that in the US it is very hard to fire a teacher. As a result, bad teachers are only transfered and end up in the least desirable schools, that is, schools filled with bad students, so you end up with a situation in which the worst teachers and the worst students are in the same school.
    Please don’t tell me that all teachers are competent. Just as there some incompetent doctors, so there are some incompetent teachers.
    Regards. James

  3. The lecture form of education is all wrong and past it’s useful period in history. So is having central command of curriculum.
    But the public schools do provide value added baby-sitting K-6. Chaperone services 7-9. Intensified police/security round ups 10-12. Basically free for most of the non-property owning population. So it’s a great deal for exactly for people who tend not to benefit from public schooling in the first place. And for people who do they, they receive an education on top of these services.

    1. Lol, the term “public education” means by definition that you provide education for 100% of the population regardless of merit or ability, at least from age 5-18 (in the US). It’s impossible to legally deny someone entrance into their neighborhood public school if they haven’t done anything grievous enough to warrant being expelled.

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