Ah, so you're a spouse that sees how hard your teacher works and has ignoramouses always talking about how unintelligent and lazy teachers are, too? It's enough to make you want to scream, isn't it? We see bad teachers too, so it isn't that we are blind to the bad-teacher component of the education problem. But they do not represent the majority. And they just make my husband's job all the harder. Teachers deserve a lot of respect. Given what I read far too often on FR, it's no wonder that the little darlings in the classroom don't respect their teachers, making it all the harder for them to do their job.
"Ah, so you're a spouse that sees how hard your teacher works and has ignoramouses always talking about how unintelligent and lazy teachers are, too? "
You got it!!
And let me guess...might you be the spouse who hears her husband complain that since he is a male in a female dominated industry - he gets the honor of having "extra" duties?
are his classes strangely loaded with troubled boys as compared to his female counterparts?
Is he paid more for taking on these responsibilities?
"We see bad teachers too, so it isn't that we are blind to the bad-teacher component of the education problem. But they do not represent the majority."
It's like anything else. No one gets noticed for doing their job - for doing what they're supposed to do.
The ones that get all the attention are the pitiful incompetents - and when they're bad, they're REALLY bad.
"Given what I read far too often on FR, it's no wonder that the little darlings in the classroom don't respect their teachers, making it all the harder for them to do their job."
Yes. My hubby gets "talked down to" quite a bit by non-educators who know better.
They let him know how he should really be doing his job.
These folks don't work with children. They cruise the internet and think they know everything because they've read articles.
Of course - these folks are strangely absent during school board meetings, and even don't show up to vote during budget time.
Regardless of what you may think expectations are being lowered, and kids from broken homes en-masse are helping this process, along with bloated admin staffs, under-trained teachers, etc. Public education in the US is in a vicious circle from which there is no return. We can go all day with who did what wrong, but the sooner people stop getting divorced and essentially hanging the kids out to dry nothing will change. You don't like each other - tough sh#* if you've got kids, stay together for them at least.
Maybe there ought to be schools for kids from divorced families and other schools for kids from intact families? Feminists probably wouldn't like that, but there again I guess there would have to be two separate "Winter Holiday" programs.