Posted on 04/23/2014 1:13:34 PM PDT by servo1969
I've commented before about the way in which America's teachers paint themselves as the hardest working, most pathetically abused people in America. In 2011, I noted that today's teachers work fewer hours and are paid more than my dad's generation of teachers, but the latter didn't whine all the time. Last year, I posited a reason for the unusual deference teachers get, and it's not because they're the overworked saints of their own heated imaginations:
At National Review, Jason Richwine points out that this martyrdom shtick benefits them in intangible ways, and is the flip side of the disdain with which doctors are increasingly treated in our society. This got me thinking about the fact that, in every society that socialized its medicine, doctor’s status instantly degraded. This is true whether you’re looking at the Soviet Union, Cuba, England, Canada, France, or anywhere else. This is true even though doctors have the longest education and apprenticeship of any job in America and, once they’re working, they truly hold our lives in their hands. Likewise, in every socialized society, teachers’ status improves. This is true despite the fact that their training places a moderate demand on their time and they don’t hold our lives in their hands.
Thinking about it, of course, this socialist inversion makes perfect sense. Teachers produce the next generation of socialists; doctors cost money by saving the lives of old socialists who no longer contribute to the commune. The relative values assigned these jobs in a socialist society has nothing to do with their contributions to the individual and everything to do with their contributions to the state.
Richwine and I aren't the only ones paying attention to this teacher worship phenomenon. Writing at The Federalist, Daniel Payne, a homeschooling parent, also asks “Why Do Teachers Complain So Much?” His theory is that teachers lack backbone. Products themselves of America's public school system, they have no ability to face adversity.
Reading his post, it also occurred to me that today's teachers, unlike teachers of yore and homeschooling parents today, have an infinitely harder time teaching, not because students are inherently worse behaved than they were 50 years ago, but because their pedagogical tools are so poor. Whole language is sneaking its way back into the classroom, despite a thirty year run of failures that saw the pendulum swing, way too briefly, back to phonics teaching. Since we have a phonetic alphabet, the latter is the only teaching methodology that makes sense. And those countries, such as China, that do not have phonetic alphabets, spend way more than 45 minutes per day, 5 days a week, making sure their students master “whole word” recognition.
Math too is becoming increasingly impossible because Common Core has also abandoned common sense. In addition, where teachers once taught English classes that focused on language and composition and history classes that spoke admiringly of our own country, their English classes are now Left value propaganda and their history classes are deeply depressing diatribes about how evil we are. Kids don't want to learn this stuff, and no wonder.
My conclusion would be that today's teachers whine partly because they're not as tough as past generations were, and partly because they teach in a socialized system that simultaneously elevates their status even as it makes teaching an impossible, demoralizing, and depressing job. The cognitive dissonance this forces on the teachers is an uncomfortable mental realm to inhabit.
I don’t envy teachers, not even for their short work years. As American families breakdown, and our culture declines, more and more gets thrown onto the backs of teachers. Send them undisciplined children who haven’t learned anything at home, including good manners and respect, and expect teachers to work magic. Parents have completely dumped their responsibility for their children’s education onto government schools.
There are bad teachers, and plenty of teachers who have been taught the wrong way to teach our children subjects like math and English. There are teachers who have never received anything but revisionist history and Marxist indoctrination. The left controls our educational system from one end to the other, and we have the brainwashed doing the brainwashing, because to them, it is what children should learn. But when it comes to wanting to teach our children the fundamentals, most teachers work hard to do it, and plenty try to do more.
We don’t hear much about good teachers, we hear about the bad ones, and it is a one rotten apple situation when it comes to public opinion.
My advice to parents is to take responsibility for your child’s education. Home school if possible, but if not, don’t expect to get excellent results by dumping your responsibilities at the doorsteps of public schools. Be a teacher.
Interesting to note that the reputations of both teachers and police officers have tanked over the past twenty years.
I bet you got A’s until you jilted his daughter then it was F’s
Ever since they both Unionized. Remember Obama’s ‘civilian security force’? I have read this will be the Police. He has confiscated all the Apache helicopters from the various State National Guards. And is giving the helicopters to the Police forces. Obama is also trying to take power away from the Sheriff Depts. They are too independent minded for this regime.
Teaching has always been a vaginocracy. The coursework in the teacher training centers is intellectually soft and not cognitively challenging enough, and it drives most men out for the sake of their sanity.
The party animals in colleges are the business majors, and the education majors who are on par with the various "studies"majors. It presents the wrong kind of filter, where those who have the intellectual horsepower are repulsed by the innanity and softness of it. The proper filters should be Calculus 1, Chem 1, Calculus based Newtonian Mechanics, at a minimum for even non-mathematics/engineering majors to drive out the weak minded.
My wife is a teacher. I wouldn't want her job. She makes okay money, but puts up with crap from every different direction ... government, school administration, students, parents that don't give a crap and their kids that have the same attitude.
This pic shows one of the main issues I'd have with her job ...
“It would also work better if more of the students in the schools were raised by male-female families instead of by single mothers.”
Agree. There is nothing dumber than a teenage boy. Every teen boy should have his @&& busted once a day just to keep him focused....
“Educators” whine all the time about being underpaid and over-worked. BS. They only work about 1/2 time, get great benefits and have crummy “education” degrees.
The real purpose of teachers these days, is to try to ensure that no conservative grows up to be successful.
Teachers are also among the lowest-scoring of all college grads. Doctors, of course, are more competitive in intelligence.
Why not?
Teacher friends: "Coal miners, of course!!!!".../sarc
We in the sciences used to say
Those who can do. Toes who can’t teach. Those who can’t teach teach teachers to teach.
I liked the Venn diagram.
It’s a good time to remind students in any English class: Pay attention to what the teacher says about the meanings of passages, because that’s what the test will be about. Oh sure, they tell you at the beginning of the Semester your opinion matters “if you can back it up,” but if your opinion doesn’t match his/hers, then you will never be able to back it up to their satisfaction. You will be failed if you try.
I was raised in 1969, and I was that kid. “Penmanship” was the subject I got the most trouble for. I was blessedly good in the academics. Never studied, drove ‘em crazy.
That’s why it’s important to lie to college professors about your beliefs. Pretend they’re doing a survey.
;^)
The moral of the story: if a child wants to learn to read, he or she will do so. Teachers are good for teaching grammar and showing students how to diagram sentences and compose literate paragraphs/essays. But they cannot instill a desire in a child to read. That must come from within. Once a child is exposed to the world of learning, he or she will either accept the challenge or remain ignorant.
Summer is fast approaching. I’ve received business cards from music teachers offering summer music lessons, ads for language lessons, teachers telling me they will be at XYZ summer camp for $$$ per week, reading and other tutoring - and this is in addition to their pay and benefits.
Part of this is the fault of feminism. Teaching was one of the few professions wide open to women. When liberalism took root, women who would have been excellent teachers became better paid HR personnel and managers and office staff. Those who remained in education programs are the ones who “love children” and are ideologically inclined to mold other people’s children to their belief system.
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