Bashing the education system

Reading the AJC’s education articles are always a source of malicious fun for me. The articles can be tedious, but the forums are always fun. For some reason people like to pretend that if only we could crack down on some group (the parents, the taxpayer, the students) the problem would solve itself. Grammar and spelling tend to leave quickly as well. This one was my favorite

I’m a career educator with more graduate degrees that the detractors of public education.

Let’s put it in a sports analogy so the neo-luddites can understand, break the legs of the starting offense of the GA Bulldogs and complain about why thy can’t win a championship.

He starts off with a misspelling, and then misuses “Luddite”. Luddite is a proper name, and has no sports meaning.

When one thinks about it, it’s amazing public education works as well as it does. When you have a system where the producer, the consumer and the financier are all different people, why should it work at all?

One other thing that annoys me is the pejorative refrain of “teaching to the test”. Of course, teachers should teach to the test the same way drivers should “drive to the road” and cops should “enforce to the law”. That’s their job after all.

As I’m in rant mode, I suppose I’ll share the other annoying shibboleth of the teaching establishment, which is saying someone is a good student “but doesn’t test well” which is like saying someone is very tall, “but doesn’t measure well”.