If you have ever wondered what happens when a country turns the education of its youth over to its least and dimmest, look no further than America.
Students who can’t find major countries on a map. Voters lacking any concept of cause-and-effect or history. Teachers whose lesson plans – in High School – consist of using some idiot star vehicle like Far and Away to teach 19th-Century immigration (really – happened in my son’s HS).
An entire generation with zero sense of responsibility.
This is what happens.
Politics of yelling and screaming instead of policies and ideas. Head-in-the-sand responses to unsustainable entitlements. A Congress unwilling to do anything other than whine and complain – and pass pork-laden farm bills enriching the corporate farmer and destroying nascent farmers trying to legitimately raise their standard of living in the Developing World.
It’s a wonder Third World farmers don’t resort to cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Oh, wait…
It’s past time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by unionized teachers, by the lack of recognition by Conservatives of the value of good teachers – and the competitive salaries they require and professionalism with which society must treat them.
You could double my property taxes to pay teachers what they are worth. But not these teachers, and not any teacher protected by a union.
“Professionalism” means hire/fire/salary/promotion based on merit alone. Professionals aren’t unionized for a reason.
America no longer can afford those with the lowest SAT scores and the least-challenging under- and post-graduate curricula teaching those who will need to pick up after the detritus of the Baby Boomer generation.
Businesses yammer non-stop for immigrant visas because of the lack of well-educated workers.
If business leaders had any sense they’d be taking on the teachers unions to fix the problem. And that means destroying these rent-seeking organizations or demanding Congress do so.
Because America no longer can afford the education we’ve been giving our kids for 40 years.
The future demands education. Unionized teachers are not providing it.
And this must change.
