15 February 2013 –
I am going to make this a short blog today. This will be the last I will say about the
President’s recent State of the Union Address.
I could spend a month on it, but I need to move on to kinder, gentler
things in my future blogs.
About a third of the way through his speech, the
President touched on his desire to control corporate and university job
training. That was consistent with his government-should-direct-all
philosophy. When he moved on to public education, I expected something equally
ill-conceived. I was not
disappointed. After the usual preamble about
teachers’ importance to students and their sacrifices for students, etc., the
President proposed two things. The first
proposal seemed odd coming from the President.
The second made me laugh out loud.
1. “Teachers
matter. So instead of bashing them, or
defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers
on the job, and reward the best ones.
And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop
teaching to the test; and, to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids
learn. That’s a bargain worth making.”
Everything you said, Mr. President is good. I agree.
But, it seems a bit strange for you, a most thankful recipient of the
support of labor unions such as the National Education Association, to actually
say that you want to endorse merit pay and give schools the flexibility to
replace bad teachers. Wow! I can only hope that you really mean it.
2. “When
students are not allowed [emphasis
mine] to drop out, they do better. So
tonight, I am proposing that every state—every state—require that all students
stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.”
Oh my. Let’s tease
this out. Let’s suppose that I am a
sixteen-year-old kid who, for pick a reason, am a troublemaker, poor performer,
and general disrupter of the desired studious atmosphere of high school. I often tell my teachers, the principal, and
Mr. Murphy, the no-neck truant and discipline officer (do they still have those
guys?), that they all can go straight to the infernal regions. Of course, I do this in a loud voice and with
the most inappropriate gestures in front of as many of my “peers” as possible. One
day, fresh from returning from a mandatory three-day expulsion for pushing a
freshman to the floor and kicking her math book down the hall, I hear of a new
rule. I now must stay in school until I
graduate or until I turn eighteen. Well,
well, well. What does this mean? I can’t
leave school when this idiocy gets too much to take? Does this mean that I can’t be kicked out of school
until I am eighteen? Hmm…just what kind
of a cell will hold me in check while I complete my prison sentence called high
school? They think they can control me
until I am eighteen? Well, we’ll see who
can outlast who[m] (sic). Does that
sound familiar?
I can only imagine how school administrators and teachers
would dread this law, if state legislatures were naïve or foolish enough to
pass it. Soon, it would be completely
unenforceable. My experience in the
public school system—as a calm, peaceful, studious, well-behaved model student—taught
me that there are teen-agers who do not belong in high school just as my time
in college taught me that there are a lot of kids who don’t belong in college. There also are people who don’t belong on the
streets. You pick the reasons; they are
numerous. To keep those students even one
day longer than absolutely necessary is a drain on the entire public school system
and a detriment to the other students. You
bet, Mr. President, I want my grandkids in those schools. The pampered boy wonder from Punahou High
School in Hawaii hasn’t a clue.
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