Replies

Fighting in Vietnam and holding down day jobs.

Not a good answer. Many Dems (including Gore and Kerry, etc.) went to Nam. Academia is a very important day job — it's all about our kids and our future.

Want to try again?

Not a good answer.

Too bad, because it's the right one.

The draft deferment rules during Vietnam encouraged those who were opposed to the war to go into academia.

The universities swelled with thousands of humanities graduate students who hated America and the military.

Academia is a very important day job — it's all about our kids and our future.

Cute sound bite, but academia is about giving self-important individuals tenured positions which pay them a decent salary while requiring them to work maybe 15 hours a week.

In my four years of college at a "prestigious" institution in the Midwest, out of the dozens of faculty members I dealt with only two gave a tinker's damn about their students and they both became full professors before the Vietnam War.

I think the original poster was correct... My parents were Assistant Principals in the NYC school system for years. As a kid, I heard them talk about male teachers who had no idea what to do in the classroom, mostly because they didn't care. They were just happy to be anywhere else than Vietnam. I met some of them. Even as a kid, I could tell they were worthless- They were in it for the deferment, and also the summer vacation. My Mom tried to have an ESL teacher fired for incompetence- The teachers' union backed him, there were hearings, he was transferred out of the classroom, but eventually won. We heard that he just retired. My Mom has been retired since the mid 80s! These are the ones who are running the system right now. They're either retired, or are getting ready to, and they have trained the current crop of "Teachers". The City recently eliminated the Board of Education. Sounds good on the surface, but the same people that ran the board are running the Dept. of Education. Until they're gone, and the UFT no longer has politicians by the b***ls, then nothing will EVER change.