Once he said that, I thought "Okay, who is this guy. Clearly has no idea what it's actually like being a teacher." So I paused it, went and looked him up, and he's been a car rental agent, a pilot, an editor, and a... well, a pundit, frankly. And no, he's never been a teacher.
Let me tell you about teaching, and you can listen to Bill Whittle who has never done it, or you can listen to me who has done it for 10 years: no one ever checks on you. They throw you into a room with 25-40 kids, some of whom seem to be feral, and then the principal breathes a sigh of relief because the hallways are quiet again, and if you stay in there with those kids and no one comes out dead, they are pretty darn happy. You turn in your paperwork, you keep things under relative control, nothing catches fire, and you can do what you want in there.
And it's always going to be like that because even as top-heavy as education is, NO ONE wants to be in that room with those kids. People in administration and upper level education are in administration and upper level education because they could not STAND being in the room with 32 cheeky adolescents. There aren't many who can. Of all the people who become teachers, about 70% get the heck out of there as fast as they can, either by leaving the field entirely or by moving up the ladder with a speed born of desperation. From there they live in theory land. They tell you what they want you to teach the kids. Do they actually come to your room and see that you are teaching that? Well, no. There aren't enough and they don't particularly want to be there. And that is not going to change.
So I'm going to say again what I have said for years here on Free Republic: If you really believe in organic, grass roots, bottom up, local control, start in the classroom. Become a teacher, because we need conservative teachers. Take over the field of education! Or just keep whining on-line about it. I mean, hey, it's worked so well so far.
I find it interesting that you dismiss Bill Whittle as not “actually saying anything” in that video, and further denigrate and dismiss him because he isn’t a teacher, or because he sold cars for a living.
What’s wrong with selling cars for a living? When a person goes home from their job of selling cars, do they simply drink beer with their gut hanging out, or is it remotely possible that someone who sells cars for a living might be well read, or dare I say, intelligent? Or does a car salesman require a college degree to be viewed as qualified to have an opinion on anything?
Or is only someone who works with the The Chicago Annenberg Challenge worthy to have an opinion on Education? It sounds like you would trust the judgement of someone like that over someone who sells cars even if he is certifiably wrong and his policies are destructive.
Just because a person has been immersed in education doesn’t mean their viewpoint is, by default better than a viewpoint held by Bill Whittle who was, after all, only a lowly car salesman. It *might* be better, and their viewpoint *might* have insight the car salesman doesn’t possess, but immersion in a system doesn’t make viewpoints more valid or sound. Otherwise people like Al Gore really would be experts on how to run a government.
You don’t need to be a pilot to have the viewpoint that when a plane crashes, what kept it in the air was not working as designed. Likewise, you don’t have to be a teacher to see that the smoking wreckage of education and understand it doesn’t work, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at it. Just because someone says that there is a problem with the smoking wreckage of education, be it a Freeper or a Car Salesman, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are talking about.
I haven’t seen the video in some time, but the main concept he conveys is not difficult to grasp, unless you don’t understand a basic conservative tenet: When possible, decision making of all types should be kept as close to those affected by it as possible, and people should have the opportunity and right to change to a different situation to address it.
An overarching, bloated, federal government, state government, town government, or school district is the epitome of that thought process, and Common Core is simply another expression of it. It is a 3000 mile long screwdriver being wielded by people in in the Lyndon Baines Johnson building (how fitting) to tighten the screws on people who deal with environments and demands that are foreign to them. But hey, they have expert “educators” manning the hallways there, and they know best. Not like they have ever gotten anything wrong before. As you seem fond of saying, “I mean, hey, it’s worked so well so far.”
You take offense that people on this site see it that way, and that puzzles me only if I discount the possibility you aren’t a conservative, you are too deeply entrenched to see it the way conservatives view this issue (unless comparing everyone on Free Republic to General Jack Ripper) or you personalize the issue so much that you are unable to view it with anything other than emotion.