Posted on 03/10/2019 3:38:51 AM PDT by robowombat
Hey Marxists, try banning homeschooling and we’ll go underground. Do you think you’ll win CW2?
Any teachers out there, here’s my perspective.
You know what kids are like going into the job. No one forced you into it. Yeah, you work late some nights grading papers, and yes you care. Some parents are complete a-holes. You aren’t going to be rich teaching, but a vast majority of teachers across the nation make higher than average salaries where they live.
That being said, the school year is about 9 months. During that 9 months, you have 2 weeks off for Christmas. You have 1 week off for spring break. You have many upon many days off and early outs that cause hardship upon other working parents and families. You can take some classes in the summer, sure; but you don’t have to.
All in all. It’s a great job with lots of time off. I am sick of hearing about how tough it is. The rest of us have tough jobs and work all year round. It is what it is, you chose it. /End rant.
I just finished speaking in several sessions to the Texas Homeschool Convention. These kids are really smart-—OR, it’s that homeschooling makes ordinary kids learning at what used to be ordinary levels appear very smart.
We developed a full history curriculum now based on “Patriot’s History” for grades 8-12, and rolled it out at the convention (www.wildworldofhistory.com). I saw several 7th graders who easily could have done this curriculum.
This is a huge battle here in highly liberal Marin County California
The “stand” people are opposed to the charter school which is touchy-feely and kind of Waldorf like
They have protest hurl insults them and put up signs saying that there are racist and discriminatory and all kinds of other liberal epithets
My wife was PTA president for two years trying to keep peace between these people and there still a tremendous enmity
My question I bring up a cocktail parties is “‘I want a show of hands for all parents who don’t want to good education for their children!”’
I’m also fond of saying all I care about is mathematics
Unions aren't great, but they are the only things keeping teachers from being the complete scapegoats for the ugly failures in parenting.
I understand that you are a dedicated supporter of unions, but I am one who, long before it was popular, thinks that they do not give good service to their members. I left a position once because joining a union was mandatory.
I agree with you that parents are the real problem. We have all witnessed disruptive behavior in stores, restaurants, colleagues sharing stories of unruly children, but that is not the whole story. It doesn’t help for students to see their teachers’ actions blaring on TV.
I have a feeling that, at one time, teachers had far more support from parents and the general public than they have now. That may be my imagination.
It is a problem and if you are a teacher, you sound more reasonable than some I have heard.
Already they take no responsibility for anything. When kids don't learn, do you hear parents coming forth to admit they handed their child a phone or a tablet when it was 3 and they rarely looked up again from their own phone to see what the kid is up to? They don't know when the kid goes to bed, don't know what the kid is doing online, and certainly have no idea what he's doing in school (or not doing). It's not unusual at all for our school to spend months trying to get a parent to come in and when they do, they claim they had no idea Junior was failing. All the report cards got lost in the mail. All our phone calls must have been to the wrong number...
As for administrators and educational theorists, have you ever heard any of them admit that their schools are out-of-control jungles and the educational theories they push upon their teachers were hammered out by Ed grad students who live from grant to grant cranking out programs and packages that are bought, implemented, found unworkable, and abandoned just in time for the next quick fix to come down the pike from some professional office-dweller?
No, of course not. It must be the teachers. I will tell you this, there is ONE THING that guarantees at least reasonable success in a child's education: involved parents. You should see parent-teacher night at most schools where I work. The 15% of kids who do well are the ones whose parents come in. The other 85% are nowhere to be seen. It's mostly a mutual admiration society, and I spend the majority of the night telling glowing parents how wonderful their child is. The only time I meet the parents of a child who is failing is generally when I meet a single mom who is desperately worried (rightly so) and dad is not around, and those are sad cases, because it's clear that Junior is acting out against what's going on in the family. Again, not something a teacher can do anything about.
If you have a good kid who is passing 6 classes and failing number 7, and so are half the kids in that teacher's class, THEN you might have a bad apple being protected by the union. But this is pretty rare. We teachers are the only ones willing to spend our days dealing with children, many of whose own parents don't even seem to care about them. It's bloody hard work. And the only thing protecting the profession from becoming either slave labor or temp work... is that union. So as I said. Take it away and see what you get.
All the people who say that are the ones who wouldn't do it at gun point. It's such a great job... but for some reason you want nothing to do with it.
Completely convincing, as usual.
They think THEY you don't know how to raise your kids.
It's always about POWER and CONTROL.
I have done it.
Sure you have.
Unions aren’t great, but they are the only things keeping teachers from being the complete scapegoats for the ugly failures in parenting.
Yeah, parents don’t like anyone pointing it out, but if their kid has failed all through school, either the 40-odd teachers Junior had from K-12 were all bad, or their parenting failed. So which is it? Oh, well, OBVIOUSLY it’s all bad teachers. (snort)
And you have? Don’t believe it.
Good. Freepers hate teachers, so if you don’t think I’m a teacher, we’ll get along a lot better. Conservatives left the field of education to liberals and now we have what we have, don’t we?
What we have is teacher unions trying to shut down home schooling and eradicate or prevent the creation of charter schools which might forego liberal dogma, but worst of all, could loosen the union grip on educators.
Look, I know conservatives hate teachers with a blinding passion. They want to see the profession turned into temp work with no security, presumably because they think all teachers are liberals, and deserve it. Of course, if liberals are dominating the teaching profession, it's because most conservatives flatly refuse to do it. They claim it's a great job, easy, lots of time off, etc... but they won't have anything to do with it, for some reason. So they abandoned it, and now they hate what it's become, and want to destroy it the way Lyft and Uber are decimating the taxi system.
Hey, go right ahead. I have no kids, and as a matter of fact, I am near retirement. I intend, in 2 more years, to retreat to the most remote place I can find. But let me tell you, turning teachers into temp workers will get you even worse results, in the long run, than what you have now. The real solution is for conservatives to take back the profession, not to destroy it. But that's too HARD.
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