Saturday, March 13, 2010

I Think Bill Is Right

This is a very funny, very true video on the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island. Yeah, it's Bill Maher and yeah, he's irreverent and often over the top but this time he is so right. Education begins at home. The only thing he got wrong was that George W. Bush went to Yale -- not Harvard.



I know a lot of my readers are teachers and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts they will agree with Bill. I refused to teach after student teaching at a local high school because no one can teach anyone anything if they don't know how to sit down and listen. And that, my friends, starts at home. And yeah, there are some pretty awful teachers (who the unions protect) but most are okay and some are brilliant.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Blogging!!!!!

Kay

6 comments:

  1. I think Obama was catering to a certain mentality which is not to his credit. Maher was right. I saw it also last night.

    Fortunately Obama is trying to redo the teaching disaster that all this required teaching to past tests has been; so that's a plus in his corner. This thing was not.

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  2. Anonymous7:49 PM

    I could never teach high school algebra like my daughter has been doing since 2003. And, guess what, she is now chairman of the math dept. I admire her fortitude so very much.

    As for furlough Fridays, can't be helped. There's no money for teachers.

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  3. You can laugh at Maher, but he's so often right. And, I think the ratio of amazing teachers to poor teachers is still working in our favour.

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  4. Everyone wants to play the blame game for what has happened to our schools. What I think happened is that we decided as a society that the sole criterion of worth was money, profit, the bottom line.
    These days all I observe is people hanging out their shingles, so to speak, trying to sell whatever it is they have for whatever they can get for it. They figure that public employees like teachers are bums who are using "their" money.
    And teachers and other public employees are taking the blame for the sorry state of the schools, when it is really due to starvation of the public sector due to insufficient taxes and downright theft.
    What we're seeing here are people who want to take over public education through charter schools. There is a lot of federal money available for this endeavor. I also read in the NYT about schools such as The University of Pheonix that are making huge profits by recruting students who have Pell grants and such. They stiff their teachers, but the teachers often can't get any other work.
    The educational system is haywire, as is the health system, and the underlying causes are the same. It's all about money. And now we're running out of it.
    I know families, some of them very conservative, who have lived off government money for generations. They will find as time goes by that many of the perks they enjoy now will disappear.
    We have to pay for all that fun we had in the 90's.
    Sorry for the digression, but that's how I see it.

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  5. Rain: Amen!

    Gigi: Neither could I. I won't even consider subbing.

    Lorna: Sometimes the reality is funny. And I agree -- I think most teachers are good.

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  6. Hattie: I deleted a comment on this. I really need to shut up sometimes. After this week I am on overload about some things.

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