.......I have at least one beloved but deceased Aunt who was the BEST TEACHER that ever lived. She taught Science for 30 years in the 9th grade at a Texas Junior High School.
Almost daily, she received mail from students that had long since moved on and got jobs and had kids etc; By the hundreds, they just loved her and for all the right things as they all said they actually “learned something” in her class. She was the type person, rare indeed, who could command respect without saying a word.
So, your right. There are exceptions to the rule, even in government schools. But, my public school is not even recognizable to me. I sat in many of my kids classrooms when they were growing up. Very little teaching went on so I moved my son to Marine Military Academy and my daughter to a Catholic School. The classroom environment at MMA was night and day difference with a typical “government school” today.
I agree with your last sentence and assert that this can’t go on. Poor kids deserve good schools and good teachers too............NOT Government Schools run by NEA teachers.
Government schools were always a bad idea.
Back in the 50s when the principals and teachers had more sway (before unionization made most teachers into loony leftists), many teachers were hired who had not themselves been indoctrinated by the ludicrously left-wing Departments of Education at universities. Ordinary, decent women with a basic liberal arts degree could become teachers, as could men who had engineering or English degrees or some form of life experience that could inform their curriculum. One of my high school teachers had been a Colonel in the U.S. Army during WW2, and his explanations of history were spell-binding.
Our class loved our sixth-grade teacher so much, and benefited by her instructions so much, that we had a reunion for her when she was in her 80s. She told us that she took a teaching job because it was advertised after her husband was transferred to a strange city, and she was a little scared. She called her dad the day before she was to start her job and asked him for advice. He told her, "Just love the children."
I can tell you that is what she did, in addition to teaching us with joy and enthusiasm, and she also disciplined us. One of our "bad boys" had a "conduct book" in which to write his progress at achieving self-control. We adored that teacher, and I personally am indebted to her more than I care to say on this forum.
She told me, when I was an adult, that her personal by-word in life was "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)