Has the NEA destroyed public education?

[Queasy]

Link

I'm no fan of the National Educational Association (aka Teachers Unions)...and this article really rips in to them.

First few paragraphs:

The union that killed education

If you have a child in public school, you need to read "The Worm in the Apple: How the Teachers Unions Are Destroying American Education," a new book by Peter Brimelow.

Public schools are run by the National Educational Association. They are not run by people you can hold accountable, such as teachers, superintendents and school boards. The NEA opposes merit pay, charter schools and any decision by any school administrator that has not been determined in advance by collective bargaining. Simply put, the NEA opposes everything except its own power.

In Connecticut, the teachers union filed a grievance demanding pay for an extra two minutes a week that the union claimed teachers worked. In Pennsylvania, a grievance was filed because coffee and doughnuts were not provided during a teacher training day. Jaime Escalante, a teacher whose extraordinary success in teaching calculus to inner-city Hispanics resulted in a Hollywood movie, was run out of his California school district by the teachers union. Escalante, it seems, violated union rules by complaining about teachers who used the teachers' lounge as a real estate office and called in sick to extend their weekends. A high school principal who requested that teachers write daily objectives on the classroom board was denounced by the union as a "draconian zealot."

Meanwhile, kids aren't learning. The vocabulary of the average American 14-year-old has dropped from 25,000 words to 10,000. San Francisco Examiner reporter Emily Gurnon asked teen-agers to identify the country from which America won its independence. Among the answers: "Japan or something, China. Somewhere out there on the other side of the world." "It wouldn't be Canada, would it?" "I don't know; I don't even, like, have a clue." "I want to say Korea. I'm tripping."

Brimelow next introduces the teachers. Sara Boyd, a recipient of many awards and accolades during her teaching career, experienced difficulty passing a mathematics competency test. She sued the state of California, claiming the test was racially discriminatory. But at her deposition she was unable to answer the question: "What percent of 80 is 8?"

Teachers can't teach because the union won't let them. Perhaps it is just as well. Here are some course listings in the education department at the University of Massachusetts: Embracing Diversity, Diversity and Change, Oppression and Education, Introduction to Multicultural Education, Black Identity, Classism, Racism, Sexism, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Oppression, Jewish Oppression, Oppression of the Disabled, Erroneous Beliefs.

 

[0roo0roo]

i know, there is a direct link to teachers and the enron executives and the presidents inability to speak correctly.

 

[0roo0roo]

its a stupid article. you wouldn't believe how competitive some schools are in california. they have workshops mapping out a kids 4 year plan.. in high school.


course you can always use the jay leno "jay walking" method to find evidence of stupidity. u think any person of intelligence is going to get screen time? hahahah

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its a stupid article. you wouldn't believe how competitive some schools are in california. they have workshops mapping out a kids 4 year plan.. in high school.


course you can always use the jay leno "jay walking" method to find evidence of stupidity. u think any person of intelligence is going to get screen time? hahahah

Well, that's the point...some schools are competitive. Meanwhile, a lot of the inner city schools are atrocious and those children don't have the option or opportunity to go elsewhere. Go look at how much money New York City schools spend and look how atrocious their public schools are. Same thing for Washington D.C.. Almost none of the Congressman and Senators send their children to public school.

 

[CallTheFBI]

The NEA is a liberal organization. Therefore it was liberals who destroyed public education.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: CallTheFBI
The NEA is a liberal organization. Therefore it was liberals who destroyed public education.

<-------- Shakes sarcasm detector

 

[yowolabi]

For the author of that article it must be great to be able to make any kind of outlandish claim and then not have to furnish evidence.

I can't really analyze the book itself until I've read it. As far as the article goes, it doesn't stand on it's own. A few unions filed stupid grievances. A union called someone "draconian", without giving us the full context or a hint of the other side. Conspiracy theories about the AP deliberately falsifying a newspaper report. Isolated incidences of unintelligent children. I could look at blank map of the world when I was in 4th grade and identify every country and capital city. Does this mean that the NEA was good?

Nothing is offered in the way of proof anywhere in the article to support the thesis of the article that the NEA is responsible for ruining public education. That's the kind of unsubstantiated drivel you usually what you get when someone tries to look at a lasting, complicated problem and pin it all on one person or entity.

 

I have found the Connecticut School System and it's teachers to be very dedicated to it's students, my little guy was having serious trouble with math, they dedicated extra time and effort to his education and I sincerly believe that they do truely care about the welfare and education of our young.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: axiom

Originally posted by: CallTheFBI
The NEA is a liberal organization. Therefore it was liberals who destroyed public education.

Well the beginning of Federally subsidized education began in the days of Mr. Liberal, FDR. During the Great Depression the people would buy just about anything the government told them. Imagine being in a state where you don't know if you'd have food next week. Sh*t, you'd support anything that was 'different'. The first universities in the United States all educated clergy and ministers. These clergy and ministers would then go to their respective communities to build schools and train teachers. Ask Harvard about their history of teaching religion. I wonder if they even mention it in their Bio. Now that Universities are pretty much an educational device for creating liberals our teachers, boards and media that cover them leave students with racial and cultural diversity and sacrifice intellectual diversity.

which is why people..i mean "liberals" come from around the world to study at our institutions.


right.



back when religion was in schools... there was a time when textbooks declared catholics to be bad🙂

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: vi_edit

Originally posted by: CallTheFBI
The NEA is a liberal organization. Therefore it was liberals who destroyed public education.

<-------- Shakes sarcasm detector

There is some truth to that statement.

 

[Queasy]

Yowolabi, it is called an op-ed...an opinion article. Its purpose is to take a point of view, run with it, and spur debate.

Now that said, is the education system in this country in serious need of fixing? IMO, yes...especially in the inner city schools. The NEA is but one component of what is wrong with the education system. Corruption (the Federal Education Department has lost millions of dollars..literally, they don't know where it is), apathy, political correctness, a thinking among our representatives that more money is always the answer, and a lowering of standards has all led to the point where we are now.

My wife and I see what is happening at school and school boards around the metro Atlanta area and we are now considering either scrimping for a quality private school or home-schooling our son. We have that choice because we earn enough money to do so. Others, are not so fortunate and are trapped in their current school. The NEA is a large opponent to allowing students vouchers to escape their horrible public school and moving to another quality public school or private school.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Has the NEA destroyed public education?

no.

The article is wrong so many times its hard to know where to begin.

First, the author is obviously BIASED against the idea of unions.

Second, its presents a few notorious cases as being normal.

Third, the author argues that education across the board has declined, without really providing any data (other than antidotal -spell-) or discussion of that data.

Fourth, ignores other causal factors such as funding, inner-city related problems, etc.....

Fifth, ignores causal factors that relate to quality teaching.

Sixth, unfairly represents the training that teachers receive.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: yamahaXS

Has the NEA destroyed public education?

no.

The article is wrong so many times its hard to know where to begin.

First, the author is obviously BIASED against the idea of unions.

Second, its presents a few notorious cases as being normal.

Third, the author argues that education across the board has declined, without really providing any data (other than antidotal -spell-) or discussion of that data.

Fourth, ignores other causal factors such as funding, inner-city related problems, etc.....

Fifth, ignores causal factors that relate to quality teaching.

Sixth, unfairly represents the training that teachers receive.

maybe the author is the product of a horrible inner city public school🙂


or maybe he's just a fundie conservative🙂


intellectual honesty? bah! liberal ideas!
journalistic integrity? more liberal brainwashing!!

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

heard this on the radio coming into work today.... seems especially fitting here.

It's the birthday of Carl Bernstein, the journalist of Woodward and Bernstein, authors of All the President's Men (1974), born in Washington, D.C. in 1944. He said, "The lowest form of popular culture-lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives-has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."

 

[0roo0roo]

of course there are problems. but throughout the history of public education, it has done a decent job at raising the education level of americans since its inception.

problems? we can't even solve poverty. you can't reasonably expect schools in poor areas to create miracle students when many social economic problems still plague us. the discrepancy between rich and poor continues to grow for one.


we continue to expand our prison system which consumes funding that could go to schools. in many places schools have their budgets cut, and prisons get hikes. like in california. a "liberal" state. last time i checked prisons and the act of filling them with non violent drug offenders is NOT liberal.

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: Queasy
Yowolabi, it is called an op-ed...an opinion article. Its purpose is to take a point of view, run with it, and spur debate.

Now that said, is the education system in this country in serious need of fixing? IMO, yes...especially in the inner city schools. The NEA is but one component of what is wrong with the education system. Corruption (the Federal Education Department has lost millions of dollars..literally, they don't know where it is), apathy, political correctness, a thinking among our representatives that more money is always the answer, and a lowering of standards has all led to the point where we are now.

My wife and I see what is happening at school and school boards around the metro Atlanta area and we are now considering either scrimping for a quality private school or home-schooling our son. We have that choice because we earn enough money to do so. Others, are not so fortunate and are trapped in their current school. The NEA is a large opponent to allowing students vouchers to escape their horrible public school and moving to another quality public school or private school.

I understand it's an opinion piece, but pretty much all writing is. What bothers me is the difference between identifying something as the cause for a problem and showing sound arguments for how you arrived at that conclusion, and just stating it without anything solid to back it up. The things he claims as evidence not only do not prove causation, they don't even show correlation.

I completely agree with your second paragraph. That isn't the comprehensive list, but all of those things contribute to the problems in inner city schools. I have done tutoring in multiple inner-city schools in both Washington DC and Chicago, and there are many other things like a lack of family support. The parents are often uneducated and can't or won't assist in the child's education. Distractions in class such as behavior problems make it impossible for teachers to teach. There are a lot of underqualified and apathetic teachers, but in my experience, even in the worst schools most the teachers really want to teach but are prevented from being effective by other factors.

I have mixed feelings about vouchers. In a perfect world, they would be the answer to all our problems. In reality, you can't take a high school of 4,000 poorly educated students and move them into the elite private school on the other side of town. The good private schools already have all the enrollment they need. They don't want students that will bring their test averages down. There also isn't room for the great percentage of these students. Most of them will end up in the same school they were in, except that school now has even less money than before and is left with the worst students because the best ones are the only ones that managed to escape.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: axiom
0roo0roo: Are Public Schools working?

If not, what is wrong?

In no specific order, and by no means a complete list -

- apathetic kids that have no interest in school
- apathetic parents that have in interest in their childrens schooling
- far too bloated operations/upper level positions
- poor spending of money (largely due to the above)
- *some* very poor teachers
- lower caliber of talent vs. other career fields (why teach when you can make 2x-10x the salary in the private business sector?)
- increased regulations and stress of offending someone leaving teachers with their hands tied

There is no single reason why schools are "failing". I personally think that smaller schools (200-500 students) offer a much better education than large schools (1000+ students). It's been my experience that students who came from a small town school are more well rounded in their education, have better work ethics, and are better prepared for college. Most of the problems that I hear about school districts "failing" are from larger schools in larger cities.

I dunno, maybe I'm naive, but that's just what I've witnessed.

 

[Ferocious]

Good grief.

The abiliity for workers to participate in collective bargaining in a fully democratic process has had absolutely nothing to do with the education of kids.

Except perhaps the result in a decent wage which might help kids a bit since the teachers don't have to go out and moonlight to supplement what otherwise would be a low income.

btw, Townhall is a very conservative entity. So they of course would try and find ways of attacking any group that generally supports Democrats...or candidates who are the least anti-worker.

 

[woodie1]

Originally posted by: Ferocious
Good grief.

The abiliity for workers to participate in collective bargaining in a fully democratic process has had absolutely nothing to do with the education of kids.q]


LOLFOMC. Good one!

 

[0roo0roo]

btw, i want my military voucher so i can buy my own plastic sheeting and duck tape, and perhaps an ak.

hey, its my money right?

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
btw, i want my military voucher so i can buy my own plastic sheeting and duck tape, and perhaps an ak.

hey, its my money right?

while you are filling out the forms for your military voucher, you might as well apply for your justice system voucher, homeland security voucher, etc... 😀

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: axiom
Does the constitution call for the Federal government to protect its people?

Does the constitution call for the Federal Government to educate the population?

I don't think it says in there anywhere that they need to support interstate highways either, but nobody is complaining about that.

 

[LeeTJ]

I know for a fact in NJ the Teachers Union is a real problem.

 

[vi edit]

I'd also like to say that unions have caused a ruckus in MANY industries. Anybody recall some inconveniences a couple months ago when dock workers were striking?

How about airline delays when mechanics were striking?

Anybody who lives in central Illinois knows about the major problems caused when Cat/DSM workers go on strikes.

Or, how about the unionization of medical workers jacking up the prices that nurses and techs are paid. That certainly helpled lead to higher medical costs that everyone loves to bitch about.

Bottom line is, unions bring good and bad. We only see, hear, and remember the bad.

 

[LeeTJ]

Why don't people consider Unions a Monopoly?? Why is it ok for an organization to have a monopoly on supply of workers but not monopolys on goods to be sold?? aren't workers just another commodoty being sold? if a union has control of a supply (and teachers unions are stronger than most other unions) why is that NOT considered a Monopoly??

from an economic standpoint, i can tell you that Teachers monopolys do definitely impact market forces and impact them negatively.

Unions are necessary, but mb more than one union per field. mb there should be more than one teachers union in each state. force the same type of regs on them w/ regards to monopolies that you do on all other corporations. if many corporations got together and formed a UNION for prices of a product it would be called PRICE fixing. Isn't that what unions do for workers?