It's For the Children™

"Clearly what the schools need is more money and higher salaries for principals. That will fixe [sic] everything." Jerry Pournelle's sarcasm pencil is sharp today. :-) Of the top five problems I see in "prisons for kids" (also disingenuously called "public schools") today, every level of administration has to rank close to the top. I have been privileged to know two intelligent and capable principals. Neither are principals, now. One retired and another was promoted to his level of incompetence. The rest? Object lessons in how idiots, bullies and poltroons suck up public funds. While I have never found the axiom "Those who can do; those who can't teach" to be a universal truth (I know some very fine teachers), I know of only two exceptions to this axiom: "Those who can teach bust a gut to do so in the face of almost overwhelming opposition from theose who can't teach: administrators." Of course, many who can teach simply leave in the face of such overwhelming opposition to teaching/learning, often leaving a sad mix of beaten down teachers and lazy (and sometimes even stupid) bums putting their time in until retirement. *Remove remote dictates to local schools. And invite to a "tea party" then shoot (or hang, I don't really care) the politicians and bureaucrats who attempt to insinuate themselves into local schools from afar. *Fire (or hang, for all I care) all the administrators (and mourn for the few good ones caught in the housecleaning). *Require responsible behavior from both students and parents (dump—"viciously" prune from the student body—students who refuse to learn. Put 'em in labor camps for all I care.) *Sweep out the bums marking time to retirement. Buying them out would be better than letting them stay. ("Three generations of idiots is enough" *heh*) *Burn to the ground all the colleges' and universities' education departments. Send the professors to labor camps to work alongside with the products of their theories. I know this may sound a bit harsh, but It's For the Children™, so surely it'd fly... All one need to is repeat the mantra over and over, It's For the Children™... It's For the Children™... It's For the Children™... And you know the really neat thing? Since Judge Greer has laid down the principal that severely mentally/physically handicapped people can be... capped, all that would be needed to get the ball rolling would be for a judge to declare some "school" administrators to be in a "Persistant Vegetative State" and there we are! I'm sure that after that, we'd have "education" professors lining up and begging for slots in work camps... Neat, huh?