More Prisons for Kids
This ought to be at least a weekly gig Lotsa resources all over the web, with people a lot smarter and better-informed than I deal with the problems of so-called public education in the U.S. of A. One resource that has some of the brightest thinkers around—some teachers, some ordinary joes and some folks that are smarter than you and me put together—approaching this topic from time to time is Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor in Perspective Current Mail pages. Here's a (very) brief portion of one of Dr. Pournelle's responses to a correspondant:
Just pop over to Jerry Pournelle's site and do an onsite search for "education," "public schools," "teachers," etc. Be prepared for some reading. And after perusing Dr. Pournelle's site for a while, ask yourself what could drive a teacher to write an essay like the one described here. Sure, I've known a lot of incompetent (and even some downright stupid) public school teachers, but most of them do their best to teach the children who are their charges. And many of them are bright, competent people who must endure administrators who are mostly dolts, poltroons, incompetents and bullies to boot, while attempting to civilize little hellions who have been ruined by excrebly bad or nonexistant parenting. Our schools are worse than just bad curricula, bad teaching, *spit* politicians *spit*, hellions and well-schooled idiots and their "parents," and venal administrators who are dumber than rocks (but crafty politicos) all added together and minmastered to carefully devised, stupid homogeneity. The sum is far worse than its parts, I'm afraid. I'm glad my youngest nephew is being homeschooled. He's far too bright to be subjected to the lobotomy-by-millimeters factories that are our public schools. |