Cafeoutdoors.com: Good Teacher

Sptsman is right, but it is not up to the teachers to reform the NEA and the broken system. That is a political matter, and it is we the people who have to demand change, and break their stranglehold on our education system, because they are strangling it.

It seems to me that the good teachers are the ones who concentrate on fighting the daily battles in the classroom. Much like HO says, they try to force some discipline, good habits, good manners, and maybe even a little knowledge into the heads of children who are not being taught those basic things at home. They do this while trying to teach those kids that are taught to behave at home.

The ones who are not living in the microcosm of the classroom, but are rather taking an activist view, and trying to indoctrinate children into one particular way of looking at things and thinking about things are simply not teaching. These people only have about five hours a week with the kids. There is only so much you can do in a limited amount of time.

The fact is that all of the things that HO thinks are important to teach our children are now considered ?conservative?. That is a shame in and of itself, but I can assure you that all of those things are the hallmarks of success. If you have those attributes, and you have been taught to critically consider the world, and MAKE JUDGEMENTS about what is going on around you, you are going to end up being a conservative, who does not have time for people who act and think like a looser.

Rich and poor, young and old, one line of political thought in this country plans for failure, and looks for someone else to save them WHEN they fail. The other believes that everyone can be successful with the talents that God has given them as long as they are prepared and have the discipline to sacrifice for success. One line of thinking believes that life conspires against us, and the other that life provides us with opportunities to adapt, overcome, and prosper.

Isn?t it logical that our teachers ought to be inspiring our children to greatness, rather than preparing them for failure.

When the St. Louis Public Schools brought in Roberti (a paid consultant acting as Superintendent) the Post and all quarters attacked him as if he were Satan. He was dragged through the mud for doing what hadn?t been done in fifty years. He took on the bureaucracy, and fired 2/3s of the people. He sold lots of rotting assets, and streamlined from the top down. The system was/is bankrupt, and he treated it thusly instead of pretending that everything was fine and keeping the failures in place.

One afternoon he sat in on a high school economics class. In that class the teacher was teaching the students how to apply for food stamps and economic assistance. He blew a gasket, and tried to get that teacher fired (he failed). He railed against the teaching method and curriculum, and argued that that teacher should be teaching how to balance a checkbook, and teaching the kids about credit, and how important it will be when they?re out on their own. He demanded that the kids be taught that they would be successes and taught the tools to succeed. He was so terribly upset, because this teacher was not teaching the kids how to succeed, but rather how to fail, and what to do when that inevitably happened. He got fired. The school board and the people in the city would rather be told that everything is ok, than be forced to look in the mirror. Fortunately, in his short tenure, he did a lot of good that the impacts of it are still being felt. We?ll see how this State Board does, but they could hardly do any worse.

Roberti believed in winning and success. He wanted a school system that taught that to the kids. It is a shame that it has come to this, but the great divider is not really left or right, rich or poor, but those who believe in success and the pursuit of happiness (however each individual may define it), and those who believe in pessimism and failure. We ought to keep the latter away from our children for as long as possible, because lord knows they will have to deal with them once they get out there in the world.

--------------------
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." - President Ronald Reagan

Post Extras