In this post, I will address problems with the educational system without once calling the teachers unions venal.
It is beyond the scope of this humble blog to identify all the problems with the American education system. However, I recently read a news story that perfectly encapsulates one of the significant challenges faced by those who want to reform the system:
Many school administrators are complete cretins whose degrees in education and years in the educational system have atrophied their brains.
A great example of this comes from (where else) California. As graduation approached, school officials wanted to communicate to the students the dangers of drinking and driving. To make the message extra memorable, they brought highway patrol officers into 20 classrooms and had them lie to students and tell them that some of their classmates had died in car wrecks over the weekend. To make sure that the students were aggrieved enough, they told them that TWENTY-SIX of their classmates had died (I guess it would be inappropriate to make a joke about an army of Ted Kennedy’s swerving around the streets of Oceanside California, drunkenly crashing into carloads of students).
Predictably, pandemonium ensued. According to the AP news story:
Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.
A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.
The best part of the news story is where the school guidance counselor defends the brilliant plan:
“They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized,” said guidance counselor Lori Tauber, who helped organize the shocking exercise and got dozens of students to participate. “That’s how they get the message.”
Some might say that she wanted to traumatize some students to justify her job, but actually she wanted to traumatize them to help them “get the message.”
The only thing I can conclude is that getting a degree in higher education administration (or guidance counseling) causes some form of cognitive breakdown. Lying to teenagers and telling them that their friends have died is acceptable, but using red pens to grade papers is prohibited because it could damage students’ fragile self-esteem. Well reasoned!
One Response to “In this post, I will address problems with the educational system without once calling the teachers unions venal.”
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Occam, you are unfortunately missing the big picture. School officials did this because they are not given enough of our tax dollars to educate our kids properly. Duuuuh.
“They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized,” said guidance counselor Lori Tauber
This exact statement made by a non-liberal radical would have resulted in calls to have everyone involved arrested and fired.
Heck, maybe these school officials deserve a vote of no confidence. They actually DID something that caused harm to the students.