Posted on 11/04/2021 4:59:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Even after Tuesday in Va?
I taught in urban public high schools for decades. And I never once saw a teachers union influence a course of study. Never once. Those decisions were always made by the school board.
Before around the year 2000 a committee of teachers would work out a curriculum, then forward their proposal to the board. I myself served on a number of chemistry committees. But we could only suggest. The board always had the final say.
Today the courses of study are usually not picked by teachers, but by outside “educational consultants”. These folks are university types who know nothing about urban education. And many are social justice warriors. Most of their (stupid) suggestions are rubber-stamped by the school board.
The union is simply not involved in any of this. Some union leader might offer a personal opinion. But it carried very little weight. Trust me on that.
Now don’t get me wrong. Teachers unions dabble in politics. And they almost always support far-left candidates. I found that to be infuriating. But that’s another story.
Yea, I can’t argue your experience, but I’m not sure that school boards have that much say in what winds up in classrooms either...when the federal government is breathing down on their with carrots and sticks all over the place, plus state government too, to varying degrees.
> the federal government is breathing down on their with carrots and sticks... <
Yep. The state and federal governments exercise a lot of influence on local school boards these days. It’s a point I should have mentioned earlier.
As an example of that, the school where I taught had an excellent carpentry program. It might have been the best in the state. Then came George W. Bush’s idiotic ‘No Child Left Behind’ program. NCLB rewarded schools with good math and English scores, and punished schools with bad scores.
The trades weren’t included in NCLB. So our principal cut our carpentry program completely, and shoved those poor kids into advanced math and English classes. All to raise our NCLB scores. And I can’t blame our principal entirely. It was a matter of self-preservation. Principals with poor NCLB scores are often purged out of the system.
Sorry for the long rant. But I hate the ‘No Child Left Behind’ program. It wrecked the trades courses. And I hate George W. Bush for forcing it on the schools.
Who is the idiot who wrote this?
“Sorry for the long rant. But I hate the ‘No Child Left Behind’ program. It wrecked the trades courses. And I hate George W. Bush for forcing it on the schools.”
I agree. The high school that I went to had 3-bay automotive shop, and the other trades. My favorite class, by far, in high school, was auto mechanics - A skill that likely saved my hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next decades, simply by being able to keep my cars for closer to 20 years, rather than 5 or 10 years, and being able to fix just about everything.
Then, one day, everything was bricked over. And yes, the timing does seem to match “No Child Left Behind”...although I didn’t know the cause at the time. Heck, that may have done more to sissify the country than anything ever done by a Democrat.
“This. Exactly. Of course there are some bad teachers, and some that do nothing but teach CRT. The Union absolutely protects bad teachers, and definitely endorses Democrat politicians.”
...and to close the circle, the Democrats that the unions endorse then push down the policies that make it impossible to teach (including the inability to deal with troublemakers).
So, if the teachers’ unions perhaps wanted to act in the interests of the teachers to foster a learning environment, then they would support LAW AND ORDER politicians, which are usually Republicans.
But since the unions instead support this classroom anarchy, then sorry, they are a huge part of the problem and need to be OUTLAWED.
“Our”?
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