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You are here: Home / Economics / Fuck The Middle-Class / Let’s Not Overthink This

Let’s Not Overthink This

by $8 blue check mistermix|  March 3, 20117:20 am| 159 Comments

This post is in: Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Assholes, Teabagger Stupidity

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The New York Times is having a hard time figuring out why the right wing is making teachers scapegoats. I’m sure ED has a nuanced take on this at his new blog, but I’ll blunder in and take a crack at it.

If you have a political movement that energizes some of the most ignorant members of society by telling them tall tales, I’m just going to guess that those ignoramuses don’t know enough to give a shit about the quality of teachers. And, if they’re anything like the snowbilly grifter they worship, they also resent the teachers in their past who tried to tell them they’re wrong.

Add into the mix a group of elites who will educate their children at private schools or “centers of excellence” in their walled burboclaves, and you’ve got a movement that’s more than happy to throw teachers under the bus. The majority of them can’t appreciate a good education, and the rest of them don’t expect the public school system to provide one to their children.

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159Comments

  1. 1.

    cleek

    March 3, 2011 at 7:29 am

    $50K for babysitting?!
    for all that money, why are our children so dumb?!
    teachers = academia = liberal!
    they only work half the year!
    they get out at 3!
    buncha women and eggheaded men!
    that’s not. work try lifting boxes for a living!
    etc..

  2. 2.

    aimai

    March 3, 2011 at 7:39 am

    What happened to Mastermix? Bring that guy back.

    But yes. Yes to all your points. My internet connection is bad but I did catch a few seconds of the Jon Stewart show where they showed clips of Fox and Friends and shows like that. All of them were attacking teachers. Juan Williams tried to tone it down a bit but some bald Master of the Universe kept ranting on and on about how “my mother was a teacher” and she “didn’t work hard” she was “shopping every day in Loehmann’s at 3:00.” I wished his mother would come right out of the audience and kick his fucking ass for that.

    Plus, also, might I add that when women take their sons shopping at exactly three o’clock its because they need to get the little fuckers new clothes and picking them up from school and doing it in a rush before going home to make dinner and mark papers is the only time they can do it. What? Is it not work unless the teachers are prison guards on a strict 24 hour schedule of lockdown?

    aimai

  3. 3.

    Amy

    March 3, 2011 at 7:40 am

    The thing is, it turns that most people don’t hate teachers or cops or firefighters either. All the screaming from the right that these are “leeches” overlooks the fact that an awful lot of people have folks in their families who have these jobs or once did. Heck, turns out that Jon Stewart’s mom was a public school teacher.

    The right can demonize public sector workers but the argument is just not working. And the numbers in the NBC/Wall St Journal poll are stunning — Nearly 80% of people are paying attention to what’s going on in Wisconsin. About 75% support the right to bargain collectively AND want the wealthy to pay more in taxes. Now, if only we could get national Democrats to realize this and to go out and push an argument against the Republican fiscal crisis line.

  4. 4.

    RSA

    March 3, 2011 at 7:45 am

    I’ll suggest that part of it is the history of the teaching profession in America. If I remember Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in America correctly, a good deal of primary school teaching before the 20th century, especially in the more rural areas of the U.S., was done by unmarried women and men with limited ability to do manual labor. Ever wonder why a student might bring an apple to a teacher? Because teaching was often the kind of job that wouldn’t earn you enough money to afford your own lunch. Given the long association between teaching and “women’s work” (e.g., 96% of preschool teachers are women, and until you get to the university level women outnumber men), it doesn’t surprise me that social conservatives would object to teachers who expect to be part of the middle class.

  5. 5.

    kd bart

    March 3, 2011 at 7:48 am

    “…but some bald Master of the Universe kept ranting on and on about how ‘my mother was a teacher’ and she ‘didn’t work hard’ she was “shopping every day in Loehmann’s at 3:00.”

    My thought when I saw that was way to throw your mom under the buse and make her life seem so worthless. Your mom must be so proud of you.

  6. 6.

    gypsy howell

    March 3, 2011 at 7:49 am

    Pretty much what I’ve thought since this demonization began — these are a bunch of people who always hated their teachers, going back to first grade.

    The republican party really is self-selecting now for the meanest and the dumbest, with a tiny sliver of the very richest pulling all the strings.

  7. 7.

    NobodySpecial

    March 3, 2011 at 7:50 am

    “Burboclaves” is an awesome word, and I am stealing it, like a good leech of productivity should.

    (Insert denunciation of Stalin’s Broccoli here)

  8. 8.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    March 3, 2011 at 7:52 am

    Here’s how it works:
    A certain subset of losers live vicariously through the people they’d like to be: Rich, selfish, vicious assholes.

    When anyone dares to question the authority of the rich, selfish, vicious assholes, the losers take it personally and shriek.

    People who make their living off the losers join in the shrieking and we get unattractive displays such as the one aimai describes:

    some bald Master of the Universe kept ranting on and on about how “my mother was a teacher” and she “didn’t work hard” she was “shopping every day in Loehmann’s at 3:00.”

    Yeah, trashing your dear old mother might appeal to a few unbalanced fucksticks, but everyone else will think you’re a repulsive arsehole.

  9. 9.

    M-Pop

    March 3, 2011 at 7:53 am

    Thanks for reminding me about ED’s new blog – it’s a very enjoyable read and an important topic.

    @RSA: My mother-in-law taught in the rural areas of Minnesota before grad school and lived with the families of the children she taught to make ends meet. This is definitely the history of elementary education in America.

  10. 10.

    dsc

    March 3, 2011 at 7:53 am

    ancient ruling classes, the Catholic Church, Kings of European Empires, pre-Civil Rights Southern elected officials, any TAliban at any time anywhere, and the whole private school, voucher supporter, homeschoolers KNOW:

    You teach people to read, don’t circumscribe their access to sources, or allow “other” interpretations not controlled by “authorities” and what do they do? DFHs, well they start asking questions, looking behind the curtains and under the rugs, checking their pay stubs and wondering about their working conditions, reading the beatitudes instead of Leviticus, pointing out scientific facts that fly in the face of the “official version.”

    What many Americans hate hate hate about the left is the idea that anyone should QUESTION AUTHORITY; it makes them crazy. They hate the idea that history isn’t “settled.” They hate that the long glorious history of American exceptionalism is ever called into question because “we are the best.”

    You can’t burn a flag; you can’t object to the posting of the TEN Commandments (fer God’s sake); you can’t build a mosque–this is a Christian nation (if they could, they wouldn’t let synagogues be built either); you can’t protest WAR or corporate profits or health care inequality, because AMERICA is the BEST!

    Ignorance is their ONLY path to bliss.

    My FOX loving family tells me, at least once a month, that college “ruined” me.

  11. 11.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 3, 2011 at 7:54 am

    The New York Times is having a hard time figuring out why the right wing is making teachers scapegoats.

    That’s odd, considering elements of the NYT was demonizing teachers in this Sunday’s magazine section, calling them “welfare queens”.

    To paraphrase Bush, the left hand of the NYT doesn’t know what the right hand of the NYT is doing.

  12. 12.

    Davis X. Machina

    March 3, 2011 at 7:56 am

    The first person a lot of people ever heard the word “No” from was a teacher, and some of them never recover from the shock…

  13. 13.

    M-Pop

    March 3, 2011 at 7:59 am

    @Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Haha, Jon Stewart commented on this on Tuesday – great takedown of that guy’s false memory – I wonder if MotU’s mother heard that quote and swatted him on the back of his head.

  14. 14.

    christian mistermix

    March 3, 2011 at 8:03 am

    @NobodySpecial: It’s from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

  15. 15.

    Napoleon

    March 3, 2011 at 8:04 am

    @Davis X. Machina:

    The first person a lot of people ever heard the word “No” from was a teacher, and some of them never recover from the shock…

    A woman I know who teaches one of the early grades actually told me recently that is exactly the reason it is tough to teach those grades.

  16. 16.

    christian mistermix

    March 3, 2011 at 8:05 am

    @kd bart: You’re totally misreading Jon Stewart – he’s being sarcastic. And he says that his mom worked hard.

  17. 17.

    ET

    March 3, 2011 at 8:11 am

    Glad you used the word grifter for she who shan’t be named. Have always thought was an excellent word for that kind of person.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    March 3, 2011 at 8:11 am

    @ dsc:

    The only thing these American exceptionalists are doing is ensuring that America will be an exceptionally stupid country for decades to come.

  19. 19.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:12 am

    @dsc: My family isn’t made up of Fox lovers–they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses–but they think college ruined me too, because I’m not one anymore. There are some similarities between the two groups, and a willingness to reject empirical evidence and accept blindly what the authority figure tells you are probably the two biggest.

  20. 20.

    fucen tarmal

    March 3, 2011 at 8:12 am

    see the right wing doesn’t think of itself as stupid, or uneducated. the uneducated part is kinda weird because most of them went to the same sorts of schools they now rail against…but anyway, you can’t get lost in that sort of nuanced hypocracy.

    you see the right wing views the teachers as lazy and greedy, and wholly responsible for the condition their students arrive to school in, poverty, crime, drugs, it all goes back to teachers being too lazy to teach.

    then when and if the teachers do teach, its always some idiot leftist crap, not the important and useful stuff they know.

    the teachers are lazy because of the crime and poverty in society, because they are lazy, and in a union and can’t get fired, which makes them even lazier, they are greedy for wanting anything, because poor people aren’t supposed to want anything, which also helps, i am guessing, explain why the teachers are responsible for poverty.

    now when poverty drugs and crime aren’t an issue, like where they live, and where they grew up, the teachers are all commie pinkos who don’t teach anything about how lazy they are, and how they cause poverty, just some junk about social problems, and things that cost money and aren’t cops or military weapons.

    so really, if teachers would just teach what right wing people believe, they would probably get a lot smarter, and even less lazy, there would be no more crime poverty or drugs.

  21. 21.

    OGLiberal

    March 3, 2011 at 8:15 am

    The GOP also depends on old white people and in my experience with local school board elections, these people often tend to be anti-teacher/school budget. Board elections often have low turnout but the seniors vote like crazy in those elections. Why? Because the anti-teacher candidates target them and because they no longer have kids school and their grandchildren go to school somewhere else. In the town where I grew up the anti-education board candidates would swarm to the two senior housing facilities with stacks of absentee ballots in hand, telling these old folks, most of whom moved to the town well after retirement, that the teachers wanted to take away their money so they could take even more time off and so administrators could buy stuff – you know, like updated textbooks – that the kids really didn’t need.

    This behavior and the hordes of scooter-bound seniors that make up at least half of every tea bagger rally makes me think of these lyrics from Frank Turner’s “Thatcher Fucked the Kids”:

    You’ve got a generation raised on the welfare state,
    Enjoyed all its benefits and did just great,
    But as soon as they were settled as the richest of the rich,
    They kicked away the ladder, told the rest of us that life’s a bitch.
    (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjfSucUhJiQ)

    It’s as true here as it is in Turner’s home country. Many of the same folks who became middle class because of government programs like Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill, etc, and because unions protected their jobs now want to make sure that nobody else gets to enjoy those same benefits. I don’t know if it’s because they just don’t care, if they think the young punks and brown people don’t deserve what they got for their patriotic, hard work, of if the GOP has truly convinced them that the Dems are coming for their Social Security and Medicare checks so they can give them to strapping young buck and BMW-driving co-payment shirkers. (even while the GOP is the party that really wants to gut these programs)

  22. 22.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    March 3, 2011 at 8:15 am

    @christian mistermix: No wonder it sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it.

    That motherfucker knows how to write;, he just doesn’t know how to STOP.

  23. 23.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    March 3, 2011 at 8:17 am

    @christian mistermix: No wonder it sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it.

    That motherfucker knows how to write; he just doesn’t know how to STOP.

  24. 24.

    kay

    March 3, 2011 at 8:17 am

    I don’t know why the NYTimes is “wondering”. They’ve done more to promote Governor Christie than anything else I read. I laughed out loud when the article states Christie is a “star”. Sort of silly in a paper that had a huge role in his marketing.

    I do wonder how kids see this. Telling them over and over again that public school teachers are greedy babysitters, from the governor on down, can’t be great for how they perceive their own teacher. Most kids go to public schools. Are they supposed to make some distinction between the reviled “teachers” in conservative-media lore and their own teacher? Good job, conservatives. Way to promote education. Tell the students they’re sitting at the babysitters, wasting time and money.

  25. 25.

    cat48

    March 3, 2011 at 8:18 am

    Morning Joe is also encouraging this by rooting for the Class War President, Christie, who was first to make beating up on teachers popular. I know there has been classwar forever, but not to this extent. He’s always on the Sunday shows every week & even the liberal NYT just gave him the Sunday mag cover. I didn’t read it yet because he’s offensive to me. There’s nothing attractive to me about powerful people beating up people less powerful than them. I don’t see how this wins hearts & minds because most people are poor or middleclass, but maybe I’m just wrong. I’m really liberal & my mind just doesn’t work this way. I can’t identify with it.

  26. 26.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:21 am

    You know, I had an idea a while back that we should offer whoever wants one a free ride in any degree at a public university in exchange for two years in a public school classroom after graduation. The primary goal here was basically to reduce class sizes with an ever replenishing group of teachers, so burnout would be less of an issue. Some of those would do their two years and then go on with the rest of their lives, some would stay in the profession, and some would buy their way out of the service by paying back the tuition upon graduation. But the overall effect would be that we’d have a huge influx of teachers every year and we could get classes down from 30 to maybe 20 or even lower.

    But the other reason I’d support this sort of thing is that it would give a larger percentage of the population a sense of what it’s like to actually do the job. They’d see the work it takes on a daily basis to plan lessons, to teach kids who are often unprepared or horribly distracted, sometimes abused and malnourished, and to do the job while underfunded. It wouldn’t take long, I think, before there was a groundswell of support for funding schools and paying teachers a decent wage. Yes, there would be a subset of assholes who would walk away from the experience talking about how they did it in their sleep, but most I think would come away with a greater appreciation for just how hard the job is.

  27. 27.

    Rick Taylor

    March 3, 2011 at 8:23 am

    I think it’s simpler than that. Teacher’s unions tend to support Democrats.

  28. 28.

    kay

    March 3, 2011 at 8:24 am

    @cat48:

    Do conservatives repeat the dogma at home? “Teachers suck and they’re greedy, we resent paying them. Now get on the bus and go to school, where you won’t learn anything”.
    Great. Good plan.

  29. 29.

    Cliff in NH

    March 3, 2011 at 8:25 am

    @christian mistermix:

    Nope, that comment was about the MOTU’s mom, not stewarts, and stewart said hey you ever think that maybe your mom was a Bad teacher?

  30. 30.

    rapier

    March 3, 2011 at 8:26 am

    Ending compulsory education has always been the goal since minorities demanded and started getting a better share of the money. The tiny corner of radical anarchist that lives in most of us can sort of see the point as in ‘we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control…” Their point however is simply more power and the entrenchment of an aristocracy. What is little understood is that this aristocracy is being divorced from the state, the nation. They don’t need no stinking nation for they are global citizens. Well that’s the top. Their followers down below are just useful idiots.

  31. 31.

    PIGL

    March 3, 2011 at 8:29 am

    @Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: you note very correctly that

    A certain subset of losers live vicariously through the people they’d like to be: Rich, selfish, vicious assholes.

    Where I would disagree is the term “loser”. Rather, they also selfish, vicious assholes who happen not to be rich. The problem is not the being losers, the problem is being selfish vicious assholes. Or to return to my epithet “vicious pricks”.

    The Republican Party is the party of vicious pricks.

  32. 32.

    PurpleGirl

    March 3, 2011 at 8:30 am

    @RSA: No, they want them to part of the middle class but gentile and poor. A woman should teach until she gets married and then stop as soon as she starts making babies.

  33. 33.

    MeDrewNotYou

    March 3, 2011 at 8:31 am

    @Rick Taylor: I think that’s the best explanation. Just add in a healthy dose of, “If the Democrat Party is fer it*, I’m agin’ it!” Sure, there are some bashing teachers for reasons others mentioned, but this is mostly a way to bash Democrats.

    ETA: *Democrats being in favor of education funding, supporting schools, etc.

  34. 34.

    gnomedad

    March 3, 2011 at 8:32 am

    @NobodySpecial:
    “Burbclaves” are featured in Snowcrash; don’t know if this is where mistermix got it.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    March 3, 2011 at 8:32 am

    The right is putting middle class people against middle class people in order to divert the blame from the true culprits.
    If teachers weren’t making so much, I’d be rich because I wouldn’t have to pay so much in taxes. yadda yadda yadda
    The right wants to do away with public education and what better way to do it then by blaming those who a part of public education. Initially public education was only for the well-to-do and the whackos want to go back to those times.
    People buy into the teachers are bad because they can point fingers at other schools not the ones they went to.
    In NJ most of the schools excel but because of lack of funding and such, cities such as Newark are failing. The governor can point to those schools and say…see…bad…see…bad. He ignores the other schools in his state.

  36. 36.

    fucen tarmal

    March 3, 2011 at 8:34 am

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus):

    you ever try teaching a college graduate how to work?

    i mean the basics like get up every day(put the bong and the beer down before 4am) and go somewhere? then try and get something out of them? we would need more administrators than we currently have teachers, just to try and keep a warm body in front of the class rooms on a daily basis.

    especially if this was fulfilling a requirement, and not what they were going to do when they got their “real job”.

  37. 37.

    kay

    March 3, 2011 at 8:37 am

    Conservatives represent vast stretches of rural area in this country, and Governor Christie might not know it, but public schools are “it” in rural areas. There’s no “choice” because high school classes have 25 people in them. The public school in rural areas is the absolute center of activity.

    I’d be interested in asking the vast number of rural area conservative legislators if they adhere to the Party line on public schools. Let them answer that question in the towns and districts they represent, where everyone is connected to the public school, in one way or another.

  38. 38.

    superdestroyer

    March 3, 2011 at 8:38 am

    From Kindergarten to being a senior in high school, people are exposed to over 50 teachers. Probablity will tell you that out of that 50, a few of them will be terrible teachers and a few will be really good teachers.

    Maybe many of the people who hate teachers unions and public schools had more bad teachers and good teachers and those who unquestioningly support teachers just had a few more good teachers.

    Most people hated being in school and do not look fondly at being high school students. Why would you expect those people to support the teachers unions?

  39. 39.

    stuckinred

    March 3, 2011 at 8:38 am

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus): It is called “The GI Bill” except you do it in reverse of what you propose.

  40. 40.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:39 am

    @fucen tarmal: I teach at a university, and most of my students are from working class backgrounds, which means they’re balancing classes and a job and a social life and everything else. I don’t have to teach them how to work–they already know it. And while the kinds of people you describe exist–I do see them on occasion–they’re not the majority. They’re a tiny percentage of the people who complete their degrees.

  41. 41.

    gene108

    March 3, 2011 at 8:40 am

    Add into the mix a group of elites who will educate their children at private schools or “centers of excellence” in their walled burboclaves, and you’ve got a movement that’s more than happy to throw teachers under the bus.

    Note, these elites include both Democrats and Republicans. This includes our current President, who never went to public schools.

  42. 42.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 8:44 am

    In a little-noticed event, Koch-related groups went on major market tours in January for an “Education revolution” using a “hilarious” logo featuring 2+2=5.

    Among the speakers, Denny Hastert, Dick Morris, Steve Moore, et al, etc.

    This was planned, and is a coordinated move on the part of the “school choice” movement, which brings together dumbasses, “anti-gummint,” end-timer religious fanatics and old line segregationists.

    Who are against education, of course, because they ain’t got none. Parallel to their reason for being agin’ teachin’ “evolution.”

  43. 43.

    Napoleon

    March 3, 2011 at 8:44 am

    @gene108:

    Actually I think he had at least one year at a community college, and was his entire elementary education private?

  44. 44.

    Napoleon

    March 3, 2011 at 8:45 am

    @Hart Williams:

    I have been convinced from the get go that the school choice movement is nothing more then a dressed up attempt to break teacher unions.

  45. 45.

    RosiesDad

    March 3, 2011 at 8:48 am

    My mother taught 3rd and 4th grade for about 30 years. Yeah, it was a 9 month job except…she spent countless hours every summer thinking about how to update various things in the class curriculum. And I can’t count how many years she would drag us into her school in June to help take class materials down for storage and then drag us back for a few days in August to put the room back together to greet her new group of students at the beginning of the school year.

    But my proudest moment for her came the year my youngest brother graduated from high school. The valedictorian of his class talked about the people who had most influenced her life and the first person she cited was mother, who had been her 3rd grade teacher. She thanked my mom for teaching her to love learning, to love reading and to look at the world every day with a sense of curiosity and wonder.

    Yeah, teachers are a bunch of worthless, overpaid babysitters.

  46. 46.

    stuckinred

    March 3, 2011 at 8:48 am

    @gene108: From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School

  47. 47.

    jwest

    March 3, 2011 at 8:50 am

    9% of the Milwaukee minority 4th graders can read at grade level.

    9%. (Let that sink in for awhile)

    If you support a system that cares more about the job security of teachers over their performance in the classroom, you are responsible for that number. That leaves one question:

    How do liberals sleep at night?

  48. 48.

    RosiesDad

    March 3, 2011 at 8:50 am

    @Napoleon: Not to mention his years in the madrassa when he lived in Indonesia.

  49. 49.

    Xenos

    March 3, 2011 at 8:51 am

    A couple years ago I read an interesting book about the Vichy regime. They justified themselves as the only people to preserve French culture, and in a small way, the French Empire. They absolutely hated the public school teachers, who as a bunch of overeducated jumped-up working class intellectuals were their greatest domestic enemy because they had inculcated a couple generations of French children with class consciousness and a critical reading of History. Luckily the Vichyists were too busy trying to manage their relationship with the Germans to get around to purging the teachers, but they definitely had the same sort of resentment of teachers I hear from modern conservatards.

  50. 50.

    Xenos

    March 3, 2011 at 8:52 am

    @jwest: Correlation, causality: How the fuck do they work?

  51. 51.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:52 am

    My partner just wrote this piece up about the amount and kinds of work that teachers do. It’s a Facebook note, so I’m not sure how much (or any) of it you can see. Let me know if it’s inaccessible and I’ll see if she has posted it elsewhere. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150113347747520&id=548948553

  52. 52.

    stuckinred

    March 3, 2011 at 8:53 am

    @jwest: Listening to assholes like you is more effective than counting sheep.

  53. 53.

    OGLiberal

    March 3, 2011 at 8:53 am

    @JPL: It’s been the same old story since our country was first colonized. Edmund Morgan documented it wonderfully in “American Slavery, American Freedom”. After they started brining in Africans because of increase labor demands – mostly as indentured servants or cheap labor – the wealthy minority in the old Jamestown-era Virginia colony face a big problem – the white indentured servants and former indentured servants found that had a lot in common with the new black workers. And this scared them because if those two groups ever teamed up against the wealthy landowners, those landowners would have found themselves thrown in the James River or, more likely, hanging from a tree. (in fact, there actually were some poor white/black uprisings) So they pitted the two groups against each other (they first used the Indians but a) there weren’t enough of them and b) they didn’t control most of them), turning the new African workers into slaves and sowing racial resentment by warning the poor whites that if the blacks were free that they’d take their land, jobs, and women. They threw the poor whites a few small bones – you can own a small patch of land rather then rent it from me. (but we’ll control prices and taxes so you’ll still be dirt poor) But in reality the top 1% were screwing all of them. And they got away with this because the bottom 99% were too busy hating on each other.

    I live in NJ and while we certainly have some bad school districts (I live in one of them, although it’s worlds better than Newark), I believe NJ consistently ranks in the top 5 in all of the standard educational standard rankings. People move to NJ for the schools but Christie makes it sound as if our school system is in a tie for the bottom with states like Mississippi and Louisiana.

  54. 54.

    jwb

    March 3, 2011 at 8:54 am

    @Xenos: jwest knows what jwest knows and ain’t nobody gonna tell jwest no different.

  55. 55.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:54 am

    @jwest: I sleep very well at night, mainly because I’m exhausted from all the shit I’m doing in the classroom every week. I don’t get to sleep long most nights, but when I’m there, I’m sleeping like a baby. Moron.

  56. 56.

    dianeb

    March 3, 2011 at 8:55 am

    5 to 10 years from now if there is a critical shortage of teachers many, including the New York Times, will wonder why. It is so shortsighted, not to realize that teens are watching this and probably thinking “no way.” Why be the target of all this vitriol when they can major in something that won’t get them thrown in jail–like business?

    I think some of this rage against teachers may be because people who have lost so much can’t actually get near the ones who made billions from the financial train wreck. Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Goldman Sachs God-workers aren’t around, but the teachers are.

  57. 57.

    JPL

    March 3, 2011 at 8:56 am

    @jwest: You’re missing the overall point of the discussion. Should all teachers be labeled as bad because of the test scores in one city?

  58. 58.

    jcgrim

    March 3, 2011 at 8:56 am

    News Flash to the NYTImes: The republicans took the strategy straight from the business class edu-investors- hedge fund managers, Goldman Sachs, Rupurt Murdoch.The times reported this story last year, duh.
    Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan’s deforms efforts simply advance the policies to de-professionalize teachers and increase class sizes. Gotta churn those long-termers and expensive salaries and bring in the young and cheap.
    Reform = Privatize = Profits

    Furthermore, the NYTimes also has an ongoing love affair with Bloomberg who has done more to demonize teachers in NYC than anyone since compulsive gambler, Bill Bennett.

  59. 59.

    RosiesDad

    March 3, 2011 at 8:56 am

    @jwest: Do you think that is all on the teachers or are there other mitigating factors at work here? Where were their parents? And how do the resources and class sizes of these children compare with other school districts where minority children perform better?

    I think it is hard to look at one statistic like this in the absence of any context and then draw broad conclusions.

  60. 60.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 8:57 am

    @JPL: To be fair, the only point jwest has any experience with is the one atop his head.

  61. 61.

    Nick

    March 3, 2011 at 8:57 am

    @Amy:

    Now, if only we could get national Democrats to realize this and to go out and push an argument against the Republican fiscal crisis line.

    Yeah, if only more people in the Democratic Party acted like Alan Grayson, they’d be winning more elections

  62. 62.

    MeDrewNotYou

    March 3, 2011 at 8:59 am

    @Xenos: I know they say there are no dumb questions, but yours qualifies. They work just like magnets, obviously! ;)

  63. 63.

    stuckinred

    March 3, 2011 at 9:00 am

    @JPL: You think this shithead wants to “get the main point”? Come on.

  64. 64.

    kay

    March 3, 2011 at 9:01 am

    I don’t think it’s that complicated. Conservatives plan to privatize schools so they can get state funding, taxpayer guaranteed loans, etc. and make a profit.
    All that money is flowing, and there’s no “free market” middleman capturing his rightful 15%. That has to end.

  65. 65.

    Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods

    March 3, 2011 at 9:02 am

    The majority of them can’t appreciate a good education, and the rest of them don’t expect the public school system to provide one to their children. want their children to spend more time with brown people/heathens/liberals than is absolutely necessary

    Fixed

  66. 66.

    Victoria

    March 3, 2011 at 9:02 am

    A very powerful influence here is the religious right. They don’t want their children being exposed to evolution so they send them to church brainwashing centers “academies”. They couldn’t give a shit about what happens to those secular devils.

  67. 67.

    Napoleon

    March 3, 2011 at 9:04 am

    @jwest:

    Yeah, because 100% of that 9% is the fault of teachers and not kids who are coming from a disfunctional background that effects their learning ability.

    I have a 5 year old neice who will be going to school next year who can read, write and do math. I bet someone like her is a lot less likely to show up in the Milwaukee system.

  68. 68.

    Xenos

    March 3, 2011 at 9:06 am

    True anecdote. My 12 year old daughter had a friend whose father was a baptist preacher in a rural area of Western Massachusetts. She was invited for a last day of school party at their house. Aside from the snacks and lounging in the pool, the main feature was a bonfire in which the kids were encouraged to burn their notes and papers from the year. Special attention was paid to History, Math and Biology notes. It was all good fun, as far as they were concerned. And their daughter, who was heading on to the lowest ranked vocational school in the region, apparently did not need them any more.

  69. 69.

    jwest

    March 3, 2011 at 9:06 am

    Washington D.C. was able to achieve 14% (among all 4th graders) with an overall per pupil spending of $24,600/year.

    Conservatives don’t hate teachers, we hate a system that rewards bad teachers and penalizes good teachers, made possible by democrats trading the education of children for the votes of the teachers unions.

    Hang your collective heads in shame, liberals.

  70. 70.

    rikryah

    March 3, 2011 at 9:07 am

    snowbilly grifter?

    ok, I’m stealing that one..LOL

  71. 71.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 9:07 am

    @Napoleon:

    I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Going after teacher unions is SECONDARY. They go after the teachers because they’re in the WAY.

    Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.

    This is about a fundamental attempt to create an “educated” population stuck in a self-referential loop. Real education mitigates against that, therefore, get rid of the real educators.

  72. 72.

    ornery curmudgeon

    March 3, 2011 at 9:09 am

    @dsc: This is the explanation, education threatens authoritarians, but for some reason people go on and on talking from their ‘gut’ and making up more personally comforting answers instead.

    Same thing with major media: its failures are just from trying to get ‘both sides of the story’ or it just wants access or whatever … overlooking the fact the media is not just bought but OWNED by the corporate forces that control events in our world.

    Same thing with the Dem Party leadership: instead of simply seeing that the failures come because most are paid facilitators of wealth’s agenda, people twist themselves into contortions to claim the Dems are cowed, distracted, weak, spineless, confused, out of touch, craven, disorganized, keeping their ‘powder dry’ etc, etc.

    The truth is too scary I guess? Not exactly sure. But I try to remember that I don’t know ‘why’ people cannot see the simple truth and instead make up a bunch of comforting illusions.

  73. 73.

    Xenos

    March 3, 2011 at 9:11 am

    @jwest: You know, I thought I got the Insane Clown Posse quote wrong, and indeed, upon looking it up, I did. So I reiterate:

    ‘Fucking correlation and causality — How do they work?’

  74. 74.

    Punchy

    March 3, 2011 at 9:13 am

    If you support a system that cares more about the job security of teachers over their performance in the classroom, you are responsible for that number.

    I could feed the entire field at the Kentucky Derby with that much straw.

  75. 75.

    Nick

    March 3, 2011 at 9:14 am

    @jwest:

    Conservatives don’t hate teachers, we hate a system that rewards bad teachers and penalizes good teachers, made possible by democrats trading the education of children for the votes of the teachers unions.

    some teachers unions actually support getting rid of bad teachers, the problem is, what’s a “bad teacher?”

    Here in New York City, “bad teacher” means whoever teachers in a neighborhood where kids often don’t show up to school because they get shot, molested, or have to buy their dad crack.

  76. 76.

    Sly

    March 3, 2011 at 9:15 am

    They do it because its easy.

    There’s a lot that goes into teaching that’s under the hood; practices to which the vast majority of those who aren’t in the profession remain (blissfully) unaware. The common belief is that teacher’s only have to work 9-10 months out of the year, only three or four hours a day, and are overcompensated for the amount of work they actually have to do. Meanwhile they’re actually working ten or eleven hours a day, working on weekends, working over their “vacations,” and are required to continually expand their own education largely at their own expense, are underpaid compared to professionals with similar levels of education and training, and have to maneuver through a job market that vacillates between “I guess I’ll have to put in a year as a permanent sub or take a leave replacement before something semi-permanent opens up” to “I’d cut my own mother’s throat just for an interview.”

    Many of those outside the profession that do understand these things sit back and say, “Well, what do you expect? Teaching is a calling. You should expect a high workload, substandard pay, and vanishing benefits because you have high job satisfaction.” These are the people who tend to lead local school choice movements, purely by coincidence.

  77. 77.

    Napoleon

    March 3, 2011 at 9:15 am

    @Hart Williams:

    I have no doubt that is the primary motivation factor for many. I actually think it is a twofor for the right.

  78. 78.

    urbanmeemaw

    March 3, 2011 at 9:19 am

    @Rick Taylor: I was going to make that same point – Teachers’ Unions do support Democrats. And these anti-union initiatives are also about denying Democrats campaign funds. But the Times certainly couldn’t admit to that. Though Sheperd Smith on Fox could. And, (OTO) surprise, SB5 passed in Ohio. The fetuses at Uterus U are going to pah-tay like it’s 1899.

  79. 79.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 9:20 am

    @Napoleon:

    I strenuously agree. The pawns don’t have any interest in the bigger picture of the ‘kings.’ A lose-lose, since, in a profound sense, neither seems to have any appreciation of the real value of education.

    It seems to them an impediment to power.

  80. 80.

    Chyron HR

    March 3, 2011 at 9:21 am

    Why don’t you libs just admit that the reason Johnny can’t read is because teachers are OVERPAID and class sizes are TOO SMALL. Once the Messiah Walker starts paying teachers minimum wage and puts sixty students in a classroom, every student will start getting straight As.

    And if they don’t, it’s because teachers are still OVERPAID and class sizes are still TOO SMALL…

  81. 81.

    Citizen_X

    March 3, 2011 at 9:22 am

    @superdestroyer:

    Most people hated being in school

    Uh, yeah. And then the vast majority of people GREW UP.

    We’re talking about the ones that didn’t.

  82. 82.

    ornery curmudgeon

    March 3, 2011 at 9:23 am

    @Hart Williams: Bingo.

  83. 83.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 9:24 am

    @Chyron

    Which is why Walker is the poster boy for the uneducated ideological cannon-fodder they want to manufacture. An oxymoron, with “oxy” as optional.

  84. 84.

    rikryah

    March 3, 2011 at 9:25 am

    Teachers in urban areas shouldn’t be talking about merit pay. they should be talking about getting COMBAT PAY. Most of the mofos flapping their yaps about what teachers do or don’t do in urban areas couldn’t last a half a day in an average urban school. if all teachers had to do was TEACH, then I’d be harder on them. Most teachers are doing at lears 5 different jobs when it comes to urban youth and getting paid barely for the one that they were hired to do. thing is, they have to do the other 4 jobs, just so that they’d get a chance to do the one they were hire for – teaching.

    don’t get me started on the cluelessness of the American public on what teachers in Urban America have to deal with on a daily basis.

    then to see those fuckers like Governor Porker of NJ disrespect teachers as he does? fuck him and all his ilk.

  85. 85.

    gene108

    March 3, 2011 at 9:26 am

    @Napoleon: He went to school Indonesia, which was private and to the Punahou School, when he returned the U.S.

    He went to Occidental College, which is a private four year college in Los Angeles, before transferring to Columbia.

    I think Bill Clinton may be one of the few Presidents we will ever have, who went to public schools.

  86. 86.

    Ash Can

    March 3, 2011 at 9:27 am

    @jwest: Which, of course, is entirely the fault of the teachers and their union.

    I sleep fine at night. I only wonder how you’re able to dress yourself in the morning without help.

  87. 87.

    piratedan

    March 3, 2011 at 9:29 am

    @Napoleon: @44 don’t forget the need for southerners and suburbanites to keep their children away from “those people”.

  88. 88.

    timb

    March 3, 2011 at 9:29 am

    There are 2 reasons they attack teachers: Their ranks are filled with old people who don’t have kids and don’t care about teachers AND Teacher’s unions support Democrats.

    The latter outweighs the former by about a million percent. The NYT will never figure this out if they don’t even ask the question.

    Power politics is all conservatives have. They do not represent 50% of the American people, thus they try to keep voter turnout low by making it harder to vote, by making politics uglier than it already is, by thinking as a Borg, and by attacking the fund-raising of their opponents. These people can’t win a fair election, so they make sure our elections suck and their message gets out. 50%+1. For instance, compare the number of people who voted in 2008 and the number in 2010 and recall who says their 30% of the American people IS the American people

  89. 89.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    March 3, 2011 at 9:31 am

    The majority of them can’t appreciate a good education

    Judging by the teabagger signs and interviews where they don’t appear to know how the government works or the difference between, say, fascism and socialism, I’d say they were totally failed by their teachers.

  90. 90.

    aimai

    March 3, 2011 at 9:31 am

    @Napoleon:

    Yes, I think his elementary school education in the US was largely public. He did go to a select private highschool.

    But I think this whole public/private thing for children of elites is a red herring. I went to public grade school, private highschool and private college. My children go to private grade school–they will end up in private school all the way through, probably. But going to private school didn’t make me an entitled asshole who thinks that public school is for losers, or the poor. I pay the same taxes–since I live in the same town I grew up in–that pay for public school and I pay them willingly. I’d pay more if I were asked to do so. Going to private school taught me very early on that people in private school aren’t “the best of the best”–elite schools aren’t elite because they are a meritocracy–but because the families have the money to put them there. That’s a rather salutory lesson, actually and I’m sure its one the Obama’s well understand.

    But on the plus side a good side effect of a top notch private education is that you grasp that great students and great teachers need lots of money, time, small classes, and beautiful spaces if learning is to happen. I don’t want to see charter schools or school vouchers “privatize” public education. I want to see us take the lesson of great private education and supply every public school with beautiful classrooms, on staff school nurses and doctors, afterschool homework help, dance, art, technology and woodworking. In short. I know that we can offer all our children a whole lot better than what they are getting and I want the government and the taxpayers to pay for it.

    aimai

  91. 91.

    Buffalo Rude

    March 3, 2011 at 9:33 am

    Just thought I’d share what I found on FB this morning:

  92. 92.

    piratedan

    March 3, 2011 at 9:34 am

    @jwest: @68

    ahhh but charter schools that often don’t regulate the qualifications of teachers and tap dance around state curriculum requirements without any oversight are the free market godsend to solve our educational crisis right?

  93. 93.

    jwest

    March 3, 2011 at 9:35 am

    Here’s an idea.

    Perhaps liberals could apply some of the “open mindedness” they are famous for and admit the current system doesn’t work. They could realize that it’s time to try something different because the results, as they stand now, are totally unacceptable.

    If they did this, they could use their time to travel from one urban area to another, apologizing to generations of blacks that were doomed to ignorance, poverty and misery because of misguided ideology and the need for union votes.

  94. 94.

    gene108

    March 3, 2011 at 9:36 am

    @stuckinred: He went to a public school for one year.

    I’m just pointing out that people seem to wonder why Obama supports something like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind, which have been criticized for their negative impact on public education, I think it may be because Obama is not a product of the public education system.

    The statement mistermix made at the top of the thread about elitists not caring about public schools, because they went private schools, I think also applies to Democrats, as much as it does to Republicans.

    I don’t think the Democrats have the same hostility towards education as Republicans do, but they probably become more likely to push for charter schools, for example, rather than putting more money into public schools and other reforms, which aren’t popular with proponents of public schools.

  95. 95.

    aimai

    March 3, 2011 at 9:36 am

    OK, I would have edited it but I got the black screen of death. I want to make clear that I’m totally opposed to charter schools and magnet schools and school vouchers. We should accept no excuses from districts about the quality of their schools. Great schools for all kids, where they live, and how they live, should be our goal. Its going to cost a ton of money but its absurd and illogical to think that a major undertaking that costs upper class parents 30,000 a year or more (much more when you factor in health care, transit, ballet classes etc..) can be done any more cheaply by local communities. It could be done a little more cheaply since bulk discounts would do a lot but if you want every child to have a fully enriched childhood and education its just going to cost money. And it should. Education isn’t free.

    aimai

  96. 96.

    master c

    March 3, 2011 at 9:39 am

    I have been suggesting prison inmates do the teaching for free, that’ll show those teachers. They make so much money.

  97. 97.

    piratedan

    March 3, 2011 at 9:42 am

    @jwest: hey jwest, here’s another idea… how about we invest some taxpayer cash in restoring faith in the public school system by hiring more teachers and building more schools and introducing subjects like PE, Art and Music back into the curriculum instead of teaching to standardized test scores and continuing the debacle of shackling schools to “no child left behind”.

  98. 98.

    aimai

    March 3, 2011 at 9:44 am

    @jwest:

    jwest: the educational crisis in this country is not limited to urban new york, or urban areas in blue states at all. In fact, the worst educational outcomes have always been in non unionized southern states which are classified as Red and in which “democrats” either don’t now exist or were previously the conservative/anti black demographic. In those southern states there is no history of public education precisely because public education would have educated black people. Local education in the south was in private, sectarian, “christian” academies because those could discriminate against the non white population.

    The explosion of a ghettoized urban african american population in the north was the direct result of Jim Crow laws in the south that forced african americans to move north *in order* to educate their children. The schools they were moved into wrestled with their own financing issues and their own issues of racism and exclusion because local ethnic whites then competed for control of education and teaching positions with their new african american neighbors.

    If we had a national system, instead of state and community level financing for schools, we’d collect taxes on a national basis and dole it out on a per capita/per student basis and resolve some of these internal funding issues. But whoever you blame it on you can’t blame it on the teachers. If cities and towns want to ghettoize and defund their African American populations that’s a bipartisan game that the teachers are the least players in.

    aimai

  99. 99.

    jwest

    March 3, 2011 at 9:47 am

    A hundred years from now, a child will be learning about this era in history.

    The child will learn how liberals repeatedly denied minorities the opportunity to get an education in order to gain the votes of unionized teachers. He or she will read of the poverty and crime caused by this Faustian bargain and how it took brave conservatives to change it.

    The child will then return home and ask his grandparents “You weren’t liberals, were you?”

  100. 100.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 9:48 am

    @gene:

    No presidents went to public schools?

    Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton all attended public schools, to name the most recent.

  101. 101.

    fucen tarmal

    March 3, 2011 at 9:48 am

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus):

    i have a lot of those same kids when they get their first “real job”. there are many of them that feel they are “done” learning, and a good enough percentage of them, not all, of course, who are stuck between college habits, and learning work habits.

    its a tough transition, no doubt, and i won’t act like my own was seamless, but i don’t think unloosing that population on our schools is going to better them. especially if their hearts aren’t in it, or they are merely filling out one of life’s requirements.

  102. 102.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 9:48 am

    @aimai: I’m not opposed to charter or magnet schools as long as they’re recognized for what they are–experiments and training grounds. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law both teach in a charter school in the Denver area that’s doing well by their students, but they both acknowledge that it’s more because of the charter’s ability to pick its students and less because of anything special they’re doing. And my daughter attended a magnet school for music here in Fort Lauderdale for one year (after Katrina)–it seemed a good use of resources to me, because it gathered the students with this particular interest together into a single place instead of duplicating those areas of study across the county.

    But the thing is that we have to use charters and magnets as adjuncts to the educational process, not as a panacea. They’re not scalable, and to act as though they are means we neglect the real problems in the system as a whole.

  103. 103.

    Chyron HR

    March 3, 2011 at 9:49 am

    @jwest:

    Libs are hypocrites because Rush told me you believe anything you hear and you don’t believe ME so there.

    You do make a convincing argument against the public school system, I’ll give you that.

  104. 104.

    Brian S (formerly Incertus)

    March 3, 2011 at 9:57 am

    @fucen tarmal: Nobody would be forced to join the program, and if the student didn’t want to do it once they finished school, they could simply pay back the tuition they’d received while they were in school. We could even work out an easy payment plan. The goal isn’t to get everyone doing this–just a larger percentage of the population than is currently involved.

  105. 105.

    Ash Can

    March 3, 2011 at 9:57 am

    @jwest: Come on, admit it — you have absolutely no knowledge or understanding of, or experience with, the public education system in the United States, now, do you? You don’t know any teachers, you don’t have kids in school, you don’t participate in any PTA or school council or volunteer activities having anything to do with education, do you? Come clean. If you can.

  106. 106.

    Librarian

    March 3, 2011 at 10:00 am

    That’s why it drives me crazy when Sully considers right wing education policy (vouchers, charter schools, merit pay, union-busting, etc.) as serious policy which is sincerely supposed to improve education. Hey, Sully, I got news for ya, sweetheart: the GOP doesn’t give a shit about education, all that stuff is just crap that they’re using as a crowbar to destroy the public school system. Sorry to smash your illusions.

  107. 107.

    Xenos

    March 3, 2011 at 10:01 am

    @jwest: Now you are just trying too hard. Tighten up your schtick – it is getting flabby.

  108. 108.

    chopper

    March 3, 2011 at 10:04 am

    @Rick Taylor:

    ding, we have a winner. if the teachers’ unions supported the GOP like the police did there wouldn’t be a peep outta the goopers.

    i must say as an aside, the idea that at least some teachers try to teach children critical thinking skills scares the hell outta the social conservative. their whole shpiel is rooted in the concept of leaving your brain at the door when you come in.

  109. 109.

    redoubt

    March 3, 2011 at 10:06 am

    @jwest: A hundred years from now, a child will learn about this era by word of mouth, if you guys have your way. There won’t be any history, there won’t be any science, there won’t be any unions, and there won’t be any schools for non-whites. (If you had your way, a hundred years from now there wouldn’t be any non-whites.)

  110. 110.

    jwest

    March 3, 2011 at 10:07 am

    Chyron HR,

    I understand your reluctance to accept responsibility for the misery you and your fellow liberals have inflicted on African Americans over the past 40 years. You meant to do good, your intentions were the best, but the reality of the results would be too hard to take.

    Not to equate the two, but I would assume the feelings of the German citizens who worked on the trains that took Jews to the death camps were similar. They knew in their hearts what the truth was, but their sensibilities wouldn’t allow them to admit it to themselves because the reality was just too horrible.

    Of course, Hitler was only killing people, not sentencing them to multiple generations of ignorance, poverty and hopelessness.

  111. 111.

    jrg

    March 3, 2011 at 10:07 am

    @jwest:

    If they did this, they could use their time to travel from one urban area to another, apologizing to generations of blacks that were doomed to ignorance, poverty and misery because of misguided ideology and the need for union votes.

    I live in a non-union state. There’s still a disparity between whites and minorities in educational achievement.

    So, you’re a fucking liar.

  112. 112.

    Chyron HR

    March 3, 2011 at 10:09 am

    @jwest:

    You forgot to mention teleprompters. Try harder, or you won’t get your Sarah Palin keychain.

  113. 113.

    Woodrowfan

    March 3, 2011 at 10:09 am

    I’ve had a lot of interesting jobs in my half-century plus. I worked on a GM assembly line, I student-taught high school, I mowed lawns, I worked in a government desk job, I taught adult (post college) students, I was a dish-washer, a busboy and a grill cook. I worked in IT, I worked in a non-profit, and now I teach college. I’ve done 12 hour swing shifts, 8 hour 9-5 and working at home.

    By far the most tiring work I ever did was my semester as a student teacher trying to teach high school kids. I come from a family of teachers and engineers and TEACHING IS HARD WORK. I love it but anyone who thinks it’s easy is either uninformed or a liar.

  114. 114.

    chopper

    March 3, 2011 at 10:11 am

    @jwest:

    lol. this is some crappy fanfic right here. you should team up with tim lahaye.

  115. 115.

    chopper

    March 3, 2011 at 10:12 am

    @jwest:

    Of course, Hitler was only killing people, not sentencing them to multiple generations of ignorance, poverty and hopelessness.

    course not, we had to wait for reagan for that bit.

  116. 116.

    Woodrowfan

    March 3, 2011 at 10:13 am

    @Xenos:

    True anecdote. My 12 year old daughter had a friend whose father was a baptist preacher in a rural area of Western Massachusetts. She was invited for a last day of school party at their house. Aside from the snacks and lounging in the pool, the main feature was a bonfire in which the kids were encouraged to burn their notes and papers from the year. Special attention was paid to History, Math and Biology notes. It was all good fun, as far as they were concerned. And their daughter, who was heading on to the lowest ranked vocational school in the region, apparently did not need them any more.

    OK, that give me a chill, literally.

  117. 117.

    Nick

    March 3, 2011 at 10:16 am

    @jwest:

    The child will learn how liberals repeatedly denied minorities the opportunity to get an education in order to gain the votes of unionized teachers.

    Take note firebaggers, this is why the “bully pulpit” won’t work for shit

  118. 118.

    Chyron HR

    March 3, 2011 at 10:19 am

    Remember, Republicans don’t hate teachers. They just think teachers are worse than Hitler.

  119. 119.

    Jonny Scrum-half

    March 3, 2011 at 10:34 am

    Republicans don’t hate teachers. They hate the teachers’ unions, which pour money into the Democratic Party. That’s why public-school teachers have a target on them.

  120. 120.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 10:37 am

    No. Republicans hate EDUCATION.

    Reality and facts having that well-known “liberal bias.”

  121. 121.

    tomvox1

    March 3, 2011 at 10:38 am

    @kay:

    I laughed out loud when the article states Christie is a “star”.

    Yes, exactly. Should read something more like this, I think:

    Gov. Chris Christie’s dressing down of New Jersey teachers in town-hall-style meetings, accusing them of greed, has touched a populist vein and made him a national star…due to relentless fluffing by breathless beltway insiders and Fox News.

  122. 122.

    OGLiberal

    March 3, 2011 at 10:49 am

    @jwest: Mr. Godwin….Paging Mr. Godwin….

  123. 123.

    gene108

    March 3, 2011 at 10:50 am

    @aimai:

    magnet schools

    ???????????????????

    Magnet schools, at least the ones I attended, were public schools. They were set up as a creative way to address integration. Rather than shipping poor kids across a county to white neighborhoods, you offer programs not available at other schools, to get the best and brightest to go to poor neighborhoods.

    I’m not sure why you are lumping them in with vouchers and charter schools.

  124. 124.

    Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back

    March 3, 2011 at 10:51 am

    Hey, there is nothing wrong with the magnet school model when applied properly. See Bronx High School of Science & Stuyvesant High School, alma mater of a combined eleven Nobel prizes.

  125. 125.

    toujoursdan

    March 3, 2011 at 10:52 am

    @aimai:

    If we had a national system, instead of state and community level financing for schools, we’d collect taxes on a national basis and dole it out on a per capita/per student basis and resolve some of these internal funding issues. But whoever you blame it on you can’t blame it on the teachers. If cities and towns want to ghettoize and defund their African American populations that’s a bipartisan game that the teachers are the least players in.

    This. This. This. This.

    National equal per student funding is the best way to end the kind of class apartheid that exists in the U.S. It would also help end the cycle of poverty that exists where poor kids end up in bad schools staffed by teachers who have inadequate resources, then receive a poor education in a culture where college isn’t considered an attractive option, which leads to another generation of poor kids.

  126. 126.

    Ash Can

    March 3, 2011 at 10:56 am

    @jwest: OK, I call spoof now. That was just hilarious. But I do think you could learn a thing or two about brevity and timing from “David Koch.” S/He is simply amazing.

  127. 127.

    Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back

    March 3, 2011 at 10:57 am

    Well, not the prizes, per se, but the emeriti. Apologies.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Once

    March 3, 2011 at 11:03 am

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus):
    The link worked perfectly … and that’s the best summary I’ve ever read of what teachers (at least non-elementary level teachers) do. As I read, I just kept saying, “Yes. Yes. That’s it, exactly.” BTW, I do not mean my previous statement to be a dismissal of the work done by elementary teachers. From what I’ve seen, their work is even more challenging. I taught both Advanced Placement English and remedial reading for ninth graders … and I never worked less than 70 hours a week. During the eleven weeks of summer “break,” the time not spent taking continuing ed courses was devoted to revising curriculum, preparing the classroom, etc., etc. Please thank your partner, not only for what she has written here, but for all she does.

  129. 129.

    Judas Escargot

    March 3, 2011 at 11:04 am

    @Buffalo Rude:

    Yeah, that pretty much sums up what I’ve ever found on Facebook, too.

  130. 130.

    Jay in Oregon

    March 3, 2011 at 11:05 am

    Add into the mix a group of elites who will educate their children […] in their walled burboclaves

    +1 internetz for referencing Snow Crash!

    I’m waiting for La Costa Nostra Pizza to make its appearance…

  131. 131.

    gene108

    March 3, 2011 at 11:06 am

    @toujoursdan:

    National equal per student funding is the best way to end the kind of class apartheid that exists in the U.S. It would also help end the cycle of poverty that exists where poor kids end up in bad schools staffed by teachers who have inadequate resources, then receive a poor education in a culture where college isn’t considered an attractive option, which leads to another generation of poor kids.

    That was sort of the official point of underfunded schools, until the last 40 years. To make sure there’s a pool of cheap, exploitable labor.

    It really was official policy to underfund the hell out of black schools, because the power base wanted them for cheap labor. They probably didn’t mind poor whites, in places like West Virginia, where there weren’t poor blacks having bad schools for the same reason.

    Of course no one wants to admit this.

  132. 132.

    Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back

    March 3, 2011 at 11:09 am

    Jay in Oregon: Careful: if you keep humping Stepenson, the ‘tako-chin might show up.

  133. 133.

    Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)

    March 3, 2011 at 11:09 am

    Hey, there is nothing wrong with the magnet school model when applied properly.

    That ‘applied properly’ is the rub.

    In my city, the well-connected keep trying to funnel more and more funds to the ‘magnet schools’ that only their kids seem able to get into.

    At everyone else’s expense, of course.

  134. 134.

    Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back

    March 3, 2011 at 11:16 am

    Judas Escargot: ‘Applied properly’ is always the rub, but we musn’t throw the magnet school baby out with the bathwater. Hell, I’m still on the fence when it comes to charters, but it’s the implementation that is key.

  135. 135.

    Sloegin

    March 3, 2011 at 11:19 am

    1. The (R) machine doesn’t work unless there’s a group du jour to demonize.

    2. Edumacated peoples are slightly harder to propagandize.

    3. All that fancy book larnin’ causes the proles to demand better wages and working conditions.

  136. 136.

    Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy

    March 3, 2011 at 11:25 am

    And DC Public anything shouldn’t really be used as a measure of anything until some of the structural issues that plague the city are addressed, first and foremost the depressed and limited tax base.

  137. 137.

    Hart Williams

    March 3, 2011 at 11:40 am

    The irony being that according to David McCullough, the USA at the time of the Revolution was a country with a 90%+ literacy rate. (Women in New England were over 90% literate).

    Education HAD always been the ticket to a better life. Now it’s the ticket to marginalization, seemingly.

  138. 138.

    timb

    March 3, 2011 at 11:51 am

    @piratedan: Here in Indianapolis, we have golden palaces for the suburban kids and schools with no AC for the poor kids. If anyone needs to apologize to the African-American, it’s the school superintendent of Indiana, who, as the NYT article discusses, is trying to bust the teachers union without actually, you know, helping the kids

  139. 139.

    timb

    March 3, 2011 at 11:54 am

    @jwest: True, our intentions were good….what were yours? ‘Cause I’m thinking it was segregated schools and Jim Crow

  140. 140.

    justanotherjones

    March 3, 2011 at 11:56 am

    I don’t think it’s so hard to understand. If you completely discredit and reduce the numbers of public school teachers you can then continue to de-fund public schools, making them more and more ineffectual. Combine that with the latest push for private school vouchers.

  141. 141.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    @timb: In addition to good intentions, groups of generally liberal people have devoted their working lives to making the schools work. Also, schools have never gotten everything that liberals have wanted them to have, so you can’t really say that liberal policies have failed.

  142. 142.

    RosiesDad

    March 3, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus): Hey Brian: Thank Amy and thank you for caring about being good educators. It is hard as hell to be a good teacher but it’s clear from reading “Teachers’ Hours” that Amy is passionate about her chosen profession (and I take it on faith that you are as well) and I am sure that your passion makes a difference in the classroom.

  143. 143.

    JWL

    March 3, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    It’s likely been noted up-thread, but the aging demographic of the U.S. likely plays a role in the attack on the teaching profession.

    My parents always voted in favor of school bond measures. Twenty-some years ago, they retired and moved to a small-yet-prosperous town (in Ca.) with a elderly population of respectable proportion. A school bond initiative was on the first ballot they cast there, which would have raised taxes by a paltry sum (I forget the amount, but my father laughed in disgust when he told me this story). It went crashing to defeat, because the majority of old folks were unwilling to pony up any dough for the young ‘uns.

  144. 144.

    Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods

    March 3, 2011 at 1:06 pm

    @jwest: And if that’s how history is written and understood at that time, then we’ll know that the GOP’s crusade to destroy education had succeeded.

  145. 145.

    Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods

    March 3, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    @aimai: Fucking Magnet Schools? How do they work?

  146. 146.

    Sad_Dem

    March 3, 2011 at 1:20 pm

    The Right has always hated do-gooders and moral improvers, and it has always hated schoolteachers. Schoolteachers were targets for right-wing death squads in Spain during its civil war and in Latin American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, among others, during their periodic waves of government-sanctioned violence against citizens. Teachers, after all, promote literacy and the asking of questions. It was illegal in this country to teach slaves to read.

  147. 147.

    Original Lee

    March 3, 2011 at 1:50 pm

    @Brian S (formerly Incertus): Thanks for sharing that. My father was a math teacher, and everything in that letter is so true. I remember sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, and Dad would be sitting there, too, grading papers or writing letters of recommendation or preparing tests. Dad taught AP calculus. This meant he had to go to Calculus Camp for a week or so every summer (unpaid). And he had to go back to school two weeks ahead of the other teachers to get set up (he always taught a couple of classes via television and needed the two weeks to get all the technical parts working properly). He always had a summer job, so we only took family vacations twice during my entire childhood. These were mainly menial jobs, until the advent of PCs, because he wanted the break from the mostly mental work of teaching. After PCs, he discovered he could make a pretty good living by helping the parents of his students get their home systems set up, and helping the local farmers get their bookkeeping and whatnot set up. So he spent many a summer like an early version of Geeks on Call. Under the terms of his contract, he was not allowed to tutor any students that he taught, but he spent many evenings helping kids who came to our house for extra help for free. We cherished the times we had him all to ourselves, which were mostly in the car going to and from church and a few other regular occasions, because we had to share him with the kids at school so much.

    I remember back in the day when he only got one paycheck a year – on Oct. 1, his entire salary in a single lump. Boy, you really have to budget well to make it through 12 months on one check. Then it got a little bit better – they divided his pay into 9 monthly checks, again starting on Oct. 1. Finally, he got a biweekly check spread over 12 months, so yeah, technically he was getting paid all year for “only” working 9 months, but since he was regularly working 60-hour weeks, I don’t really see what the problem is. I really want to ask some of these people if they have ever had their teachers “work to rule” for an extended period of time – that’s when you really find out how much extra they are doing!

  148. 148.

    chopper

    March 3, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    the really funny thing is, we really should respect teachers far more than we do at the very least because our kids have to rock HS more and more just to get by.

    used to be you could sail through HS and get a decent blue collar job, with benefits, that could support a middle-class family. nowadays most all of those jobs are gone. everybody thinks (and it’s mostly true) that you need a college degree to get a middle-class job, yet college is not only more expensive but harder to get into than it used to be – you need better test scores and a CV chock full of interesting extracurriculars. it’s much more competitive.

    yet ironically, teachers were respected far more back in the day, by both kids and parents, when paying attention and doing well was less important for long-term employment.

    all those asshole parents who piss on teachers and let their kid get away with goofing off and not paying attention and shit are going to be mighty pissed when that kid is still living in their basement at 35 because he couldn’t get a decent-paying job with an associate’s from the community college down the street.

  149. 149.

    Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    March 3, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    @Sad_Dem: Damn straight. The confederate precursors of today’s Rethuglicans hung and shot the teachers who traveled south to teach the children of slaves to read and write. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

  150. 150.

    matoko_chan

    March 3, 2011 at 7:02 pm

    @NobodySpecial:

    “Burboclaves” is an awesome word.

    Actually, the word is burbclaves from Snowcrash. mistermix mixed it up with bimboboxes, Y.T.’s word for minivans.

  151. 151.

    matoko_chan

    March 3, 2011 at 7:16 pm

    Hai guys. Heya, where is EDK?
    Oh, yeah…..he got a paying gig at one of those wretched hives of glibertarian scum and villany, right?
    Do you feel it yet juicers?
    EDK used his formula of “run a conservative meme up the flagpole, get ass kicked in comments, rinse, repeat” until he hit pay dirt with the unions and the teachers.
    So now he can front as a “reasonable libertarian/liberal-tarian” and churn out free market chum larded with a few bits of BJ sanity at the Forbes bullshit mill.
    That would be BJ sanity that he stole from you guys. :)
    You see ……it doesnt come natural to EDK. That is why is was so incredibly hard for him to give up on fetus=slave. He doesnt really see anything wrong with it.
    For example…..

    Quote for the day
    __
    by E.D. Kain
    __
    “And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.” ~ Barack Obama in 2007 on the campaign trail.
    __
    Guess that means the President is headed for Wisconsin, folks.

    Glibertarian playbook page 21….snark about something Obama once said. Make it about Obama.
    You see…..EDK doesnt have any integrity of his own….so he had to borrow some from you….long enough to a get a column at Forbes.
    Forbes has to have “reasonable” libertarians to give cover to the endless stream of trickle-down-free-market-innovation-supply-side wankery that they pump out.
    And EDK is just the ticket.
    Has he been around much lately?
    Pass the hat!
    I betcha he’ll come back if John Cole pays him.
    ;)

  152. 152.

    matoko_chan

    March 4, 2011 at 4:16 am

    Is that crickets I hear?
    And BTW……did you all notice EDK’s name has disappeared from the masthead?
    Because I sure did.

  153. 153.

    matoko_chan

    March 4, 2011 at 4:22 am

    Kain doesn’t have many comments yet. Perhaps the juicers should run over there and make a bunch of comments telling him how great his “conversion” is. I’m sure he would love you to pieces for it. Don’t you miss him?
    ;)
    wallah, does this ever sound familiar.

    These are both really great comments, and I’m really grateful to have teachers commenting on the blog, because too often this debate is had with pundits, wonks, and politicians – and teachers are left out in the cold. That seems exactly backwards to me.
    __
    And I agree! Small classes might not be the best thing for every class – it really depends on a lot of things from support to resources to the luck of the draw. I substitute taught special ed behavioral classes where it was one-on-one, one teacher to each student. That was the hardest thing ever.

    Translation from EDK speak…as if y’all need one.
    Oh pleasepleaseplease like me! I’ll do anything. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.

  154. 154.

    matoko_chan

    March 4, 2011 at 4:33 am

    And actually…..don’t. Don’t comment there, don’t link him. Don’t give him any traffic or any controversey to get hits.
    I expect that is is what he would like, is bunchs of glorious hits.
    After a while…since no one will read his lame column except other glibertarian wankstahs…. he’ll get the hook he has always so richly deserved.

    these things do
    best please me
    which befall prepost’rously
    O Lord what fools these juicers be

    Is Shakespeare still allright as atypical use of language, John Cole?
    I do lurve the Bard.

  155. 155.

    matoko_chan

    March 4, 2011 at 4:46 am

    EDK among the LoOGies.

    So look, I believe that free markets are absolutely the way to go. Don’t go with the central planners – who wants wage controls dictated from the top down? Things didn’t work out so well for Soviet Russia. State capitalism has its benefits as China has discovered, but some serious downsides as well.

    A headline from one of EDK’s co-whankstahs.

    Yesterday
    When Governors Say No to Federal Crack
    MERRILL MATTHEWSRight Directions

    Don’t link, but feel free to laff off your heads.
    Balloon Juice nutured its very own scorpion in its bosom.
    Sad isn’t it?
    Do you know what we muslims say? Of course you don’t.

    The cure for the scorpion is the sandal.

    So much more pragmatic…and well….empirical, those muslims.

  156. 156.

    matoko_chan

    March 4, 2011 at 5:00 am

    More classic EDK from the LoOG.

    I wrote recently about wanting to co-opt and redefine Arnold Kling’s ‘Civil Societarianism’. I’ve given this more thought over the past few weeks, and have some observations and thoughts that should help clarify my thinking on this, and how it intersects with my political evolution.

    wallah, I wish I could comment there…..I have the perfect name to clarify EDK’s thing and intersect with his …..political “evolution”.
    He can call it Distributed Jesusland.
    Where the bankstahs and the wankstahs and the socons merrily skip along clasping hands and pick oakeshottian roses beside a hayekian stream under a burkean sky.

  157. 157.

    THE

    March 4, 2011 at 5:44 am

    Where the bankstahs and the wankstahs and the socons merrily skip along clasping hands and pick oakeshottian roses beside a hayekian stream under a burkean sky.

    LOL.

    I’d better make sure I never, ever ban you on my blog.

  158. 158.

    THE

    March 4, 2011 at 5:46 am

    I’d be safer banning myself. ROFLMAO

  159. 159.

    Michael

    March 8, 2011 at 1:46 pm

    How about, the undereducated have fewer options in life and have to take whatever employment gruel you feed them. Also, too, undereducated people are easier to fool and manipulate and fearmonger into voting for the guy who says all your problems are caused by and I can fix it for you if you just elect me and allow me to suspend just a few of your basic human rights for a while.

    The republican machine feeds off ignorance and rage.

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