This article was pointed out by one of my liberal cousins (she lives in Michigan, she can’t help it. I think it’s in the water).
Right off the top, the title signifies trouble: “Don’t hold teachers responsible for society’s ills.”
BZZZERT.
Sorry, that don’t wash. Teachers have kids in their classrooms all day. That makes them at least as responsible as parents for how kids ultimately turn out. If that’s not the case, if they refuse that responsibility, then they are nothing but glorified babysitters and we should start paying them accordingly.
The writer opines:
I cringe at grammar and spelling errors in communications from school. Also, I feel nausea at the news of an educator committing a moral or ethical breach.
But there are also bad dentists, bad doctors, bad lawyers. Why don’t we aim our collective anger there?
Well, mostly because we don’t have to. The licensing and legal system takes care of them, eventually. Sure, there are horror stories of bad doctors harming multiple patients, but in general such doctors don’t last long practicing bad medicine. And they can spend time in prison for some of the things they do, too. There is plenty of outrage when a male doctor or dentist is found to be sexually molesting his patients while under anethesia, for instance, or when a doctor is found to be prescribing pain medications for people who are addicted — two cases of the latter come immediately to mind, in fact: Jimmy Irsay and Michael Jackson.*
But when teachers turn out poorly-educated students, at least according to their union that’s the fault of the system, or of the parents, or of their environment. It never ever has to do with the incompetence of the teacher. Oh, no. Poor little underpaid, overworked, underappreciated teachers.**
The writer ultimately whinges:
To hold teachers responsible for the mess of society is just plain unfair. Overall, the profession is one of the most noble. How sad they have become punching bags.
They have only themselves to blame. Oh, and their liberal schools of “education” who taught them to be good little union soldiers and fight any kind of sensible reform that might be demanded from the people who pay their salaries. They must protect their phoney baloney jobs. Ain’t nothin’ noble about it.
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* [LATER] It occurs to me that doctors also have malpractice insurance to pay claims arising from lousy doctoring. How many teachers have malpractice insurance to pay claims arising from teaching kids a load of leftist bullshit? Do you have any idea what deprogramming costs these days?
** I had a great deal of trouble writing that sentence without laughing out loud.
I’m going to disagree with you on one or two points. We give teachers a job to do, and it is reasonable to expect them to do it. I agree with you on that. However some of our policies are to put it mildly, stupid. We need to restore discipline in the classroom. Including special ed kids in the normal classroom happens far too often. Kids should be grouped by ability. If a school has three fourth grade classes, one should be above average and one should be below average. Social promotion needs to end. Kids who are marginal on passing should wind up in summer school.
In many cases the parents are the problem. If your kid’s teacher tells you your child is misbehaving, it isn’t enough to talk to him. You need to set consequences for the misbehavior. Kid doesn’t do his homework? Remove the TV, video games and stereo from his room and send him there.
Dave, I don’t necessarily disagree with you, and I am sure there are exceptional teachers out there who do exactly as you say — but unfortunately there also seem to be plenty of teachers who refuse to take ANY responsibility for what their charges turn into and simply seek refuge in the “they’re not MY kids” defense.
Teachers can be mentors. Too many of them don’t seem to have time for that. As I said above, If they just want to be babysitters, fine. Let’s cut their pay and turn the public schools into daycare.