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Epidemic of Ignorance - Back-to-school blues.
National Review Online ^ | August 23, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 08/23/2007 10:49:01 AM PDT by neverdem







Epidemic of Ignorance
Back-to-school blues.

By Victor Davis Hanson



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: education; publicschools; school; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: Amelia

OOPS, I didn’t refresh the page before I posted ........


101 posted on 08/23/2007 8:35:57 PM PDT by Gabz (Don't tell my mom I'm a lobbyist, she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse)
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To: Gabz

“I’m a parent, not a teacher, and I have no problem with the majority of complaints from teachers about parents.”

I’m not saying its wrong for parents to take significant blame for the horrible state of public education. I’m just saying that the teaching profession in public schools is so badly infested with incompetence and self-interest that they need to clean their own house before they point the finger at anyone else. Until that happens I have no interest in their “professional” opinion on the problems of public education.


102 posted on 08/23/2007 8:37:50 PM PDT by RavenATB
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To: Amelia

And I say that is just a convenient reply with no basis in fact.


103 posted on 08/23/2007 8:42:17 PM PDT by TruthConquers (Delendae sunt publici scholae)
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To: Gabz
TruthConquers: The NEA does impact a majority of schools.

Gabz: I didn't say otherwise

I am glad that is cleared up.

104 posted on 08/23/2007 8:48:17 PM PDT by TruthConquers (Delendae sunt publici scholae)
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To: RavenATB

I am still not going to lay more blame on the teachers than I do on the “administrators” who, in my opinion, are even more incompetent than most parents.

Of the 3, I personally believe the teachers are the least culpable, yet the most excoriated.


105 posted on 08/23/2007 8:48:35 PM PDT by Gabz (Don't tell my mom I'm a lobbyist, she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse)
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To: TruthConquers
I am glad that is cleared up.

Glad to know you see things the way I do.

106 posted on 08/23/2007 8:51:14 PM PDT by Gabz (Don't tell my mom I'm a lobbyist, she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse)
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To: Born Conservative

public school ping


107 posted on 08/23/2007 11:00:14 PM PDT by neverdem (Call talk radio. We need a Constitutional Amendment for Congressional term limits. Let's Roll!)
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To: TruthConquers
And I say that is just a convenient reply with no basis in fact.

You're welcome to prove me wrong...or perhaps the above is just your opinion.

108 posted on 08/24/2007 2:56:08 AM PDT by Amelia
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To: ModelBreaker; Gabz; leda; Amelia
Your profile doesn't mention the state you live in, therefore I'm taking a shot in the dark as to your problem.

Gabz, leda, Amelia, and I all live in 'right to work' states. In these states, unions have little control and are reduced to little more than trade unions. They don't have the membership in these states to do more than an average size group of citizens petitioning the school board. In the county in which I teach, more members belong to the American Assciation of Educators, or the AAE, which is not a union, but a conservative organization that offers benefits. The AAE does not lobby and is non-partisan.

I suspect you work in an 'at will' state. In an at will state, employees in a huge variety of industries can be forced into a union, with dues taken from their paycheck. In fact, if one delves into the finances of the NEA, one finds that nearly 2/3's of their dues come from at will states. This is not just true for teachers, but for a surprisingly large spectrum of the population.

The answer in breaking the back of the unions is to change state laws to prevent employees from being forced into a union. That change will come from citizens petitioning their local and state governments, not from the feds.

109 posted on 08/24/2007 4:45:48 AM PDT by SoftballMominVA (Never argue with an idiot. He will bring you down to his level and beat you with experience)
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To: ModelBreaker
Sorry, I missed this post earlier - Colorado is an 'at will' state. Unions are very, very strong in your state - you are 100% correct about that. Comparing the strength of the unions from Colorado to Virginia is laughable as it can't be done. Unless you live in a 'right to work' state, you cannot understand how refreshing it is to not be forced into a union and have dues taken from your paycheck to support causes with which you fundamentally disagree.

But not only teachers are required to be in a union. Unions would be required for a huge spectrum of workers.

Change the state laws, and you will break the control of all unions. Again, this is a state-to-state issue, not a federal one.

110 posted on 08/24/2007 4:52:31 AM PDT by SoftballMominVA (Never argue with an idiot. He will bring you down to his level and beat you with experience)
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To: Gabz

Ahhhh, now I understand. Thank you cause I was very confused. I get that way sometimes. Sorry.


111 posted on 08/24/2007 7:57:10 AM PDT by taxcontrol
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To: eraser2005

Considering that most workers get NO pension other than what they themselves contribute to their 401(k), teachers at least have something a lot more significant.

If the average worker is lucky enough, they might get a company match for some part of their contributions.

Teachers contribute 10% ? Wow, that’s just devastating ! And 66% of their average salary of their highest paid years ? Here, that would be 66% of about $117k, or 72k per year for a pension.

Sounds pretty good to me.


112 posted on 08/24/2007 9:37:32 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

Exactly. The fact that teachers can’t get a 4th grade education instilled in most kids by the time they leave after 12 years speaks volumes to curriculum, teacher ability, and student motivation. 100 years ago the majority of citizens had only an 4th grade level education, and that probably the equivalent of what a lot of kids get by 8th grade today.

I keep telling people; I’ve never met a 6yo kid who wasn’t eager to learn. I’ve met a lot who were turned off by the time they were 10, however. And I blame that on administrators, curriculum, too long of a school day, and at the end, teachers.


113 posted on 08/24/2007 9:43:21 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: taxcontrol

Far off the mark ? I was responding to that comment that you pointed out in your own post#10 about teacher pay. Do you think somehow that does not merit a reply ? Why bring it up, then ?

Get the unions out of the teacher contract business and then we’ll see market wages.

There are is no such thing as “market wages” in an industry where unions are protected. Just ask the auto industry.


114 posted on 08/24/2007 9:51:17 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: Gabz

Did you read the article ? The term “average worker” referred to the average professional worker, not a blue collar employee.

Get that ?


115 posted on 08/24/2007 9:52:56 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: Amelia

You quote a liberal blog ? Oh boy. The writer is not an economist or knowledgeable in accounting or finance, so his analysis is a bit suspect on the subject of pay.

But OK, from the blog:

The very first sentence: “Teachers learned last week that they are overpaid.” Greene and Winter didn’t say they were overpaid, they merely pointed out that they’re not underpaid, either. Not being an economist, this writer did not put any value on 2 months of vacation. Yet, if you talk to teachers, it’s one of the things they enjoy most about their jobs. Many studies have noted that almost all professionals would accept being paid a bit less if they had an option for more free time. It’s one of the reasons women are routinely paid a bit less than men, because women typically take more time off to be with family.

And more: “Greene and Winters can be extraordinarily glib: “Metropolitan areas with higher teacher pay do not graduate a higher percentage of their students than areas with lower teacher pay.” “Metropolitan areas” sound like such sophisticated places. In Greene’s and Winters’ universe, poverty, asthma, untreated eye, ear, and teeth problems, malnutrition, single-parenthood, inadequate prenatal care, low birth-weights, gangs and other achievement-lowering characteristics of “metropolitan areas” don’t exist.”

We are supposed to substitute compassion for fact here ? The very first thing teachers unions do is cry that they’re underpaid every time they’re asked how to improve schools. Greene and Winter pointed out that they’re not underpaid. Then this apologist for teachers tries to excuse a high failure rate among high school graduates as being entirely out of a school’s control; it’s all the fault of kids, parents and society. People all over the world, with the same or worse issues than those found in NYC, learn to read and do math better than our kids in situations far more dire than we will ever see here. These are just excuses for poor schools. No country spends more on public education than we do.

The fact is that teachers are, in general, grossly undereducated compared with other professions. An accountant must have graduated with a major in accounting and to get anywhere in their field, earn a CPA license. A teacher ? They take an education degree, some with a few more courses in science or math or another concentration, and they get a teaching degree for elementary ed or secondary ed. On the coasts (and maybe elsewhere in the US), if they take a 1 year master’s degree in education, they get a salary jump over other teachers. Teachers in general (and there are always exceptions), are the least educated of all professionals. Look at all the teachers who cannot pass standardized tests for their profession - in Massachusetts wasn’t it 33% the one year they tried ? And yes, other professions than teachers must do continuing ed thruout their working lives, just the same as teachers.

Let me get real world in a subject with which I am very familiar. In every suburban school district outside Philadelphia, teachers with 10 years are making about 60k per year. By retirement time, at 25-30 years, most of these same teachers are making 100-128k per year (depending if they have a masters degree). So around here, a 25 year teacher with a masters degree is making 117k per year for 10 months of the year, and at age 47 can retire with a pension of around $60k per year.

I call that well paid by any standard.


116 posted on 08/24/2007 10:29:15 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: cinives

“I keep telling people; I’ve never met a 6yo kid who wasn’t eager to learn. I’ve met a lot who were turned off by the time they were 10, however. And I blame that on administrators, curriculum, too long of a school day, and at the end, teachers.”

And don’t forget the excessive, boring, useless homework assignments they hand out at the earliest stage possible. This really does kill the desire to learn.

Case in point. My daughter was at a ballet camp for 5 weeks. Her roommates were death on reading, hated LOTR, got their Harry Potter books, but couldn’t read more than 4 chapters. My daughter was considered a child prodigy by them because she finished the book within 24 hours of getting it, while still taking her ballet classes during the day. These were 13 to 14 year old’s. But they could watch endless DVD’s of various chic flicks that my daughter had a very low opinion of. (I was sooo proud of her!)

These girls were very advanced in their being”turned off” to school and learning.


117 posted on 08/24/2007 10:31:07 AM PDT by TruthConquers (Delendae sunt publici scholae)
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To: Gabz
My parents weren’t involved in my education at all, other than making sure I got out the door to school every day. We walked to school, we walked home, they only went to school on parents night (and sometimes my father was working so he didn’t go), and they never gave me any help with homework. (More accurately, I don’t recall asking them for help either).

Yet, I skipped a grade, excelled in school, and didn’t cause problems.

Parents shouldn’t need to be involved in a major way, because then parents undercut the kid’s initiative to handle their own problems.

My sister, on the other hand, skipped days of high school, didn't do work in classes she despised, and my parents never knew about it until the report card came home. The school didn't see the need for parents to assume any of the responsibility that properly belongs to the kid, and they assumed, usually correctly, that bad grades would galvanize student and parents to fix the problem. We are infanticizing our kids by butting in to solve those problems for them, while preventing them from suffering the consequences of their own actions.

118 posted on 08/24/2007 10:41:10 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: TruthConquers

Sounds like your daughter and mine are very similar. She was in a 4 week away summer camp when she was age 10 when the 5th (I think) Harry Potter book arrived in her mailbox. She finished it by the next day, and she then spent the next few weeks reading it to some of her fellow campers who couldn’t read it for themselves.

Yet those same “popular” kids, in a school setting, ostracized her because she was a “geek”. Luckily, she didn’t care and I pulled her out of school in 6th grade to homeschool because the anti-academic bent of the school was overwhelming. And this was in a highly-ranked suburban school district.

Sadly, 3 of her 6 teachers participated, encouraged, or allowed putdowns of academically-advanced kids in class.


119 posted on 08/24/2007 10:52:19 AM PDT by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: cinives
Wow, you don't get it, do you?

The "pension" the teachers get is essentially no different than a 401(k) where your only choice for withdrawal is an annuity...

The "pension" is funded almost entirely out of teacher's own contributions. As I pointed out before, a 401(k) with a historically average return would produce a larger nest egg for retirement than the teachers' pensions. In other words, if the money the teachers contribute gets just an average rate of return, then their pension is equivalent to a 401(k) in which every employee contributes 10% of their salary and for which the company has a negative match. That's right - its equivalent to a company taking away part of your investment. That is a ROTTEN deal. Show me a single company which has a negative match for some part of the employee's contributions. It wouldn't be legal in any other system.

To state it again.... if you look at the pension plan teachers get, it is exactly like a 401(k) plan in which you put 10% of your salary in, get average rate of return of about 9.8%, and in which the company matches absolutely nothing.

Compare that to the average 401k plan which matches 3% of the total salary (http://www.econ.brown.edu/econ/sthesis/MattPapers/Paper8.html).

If teachers here had that level of match from the state, then they would need to average a gain of 8.6% on their investments to fund their pension.

What if a teacher had invested that 10% of their salary in the S&P 500 (11.4% return from 1970-2005)? According to that "pretty good pension" you're jealous of, they would have had enough to retire with a pension 40% higher than the one they actually got.

In other words, the teachers have fully funded their own pensions through the 10% contribution, and the state has skimmed off the top. Not only that, but all funds from the pension after death go back to the state, not to descendents.

Do you really want that deal?!?!?!?
120 posted on 08/24/2007 11:02:23 AM PDT by eraser2005
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