There’s something very, very wrong with today’s public school culture.
I wrote that as a start for today’s excursion into the land wherein common sense has utterly fled … but without knowing whether I would dissect a Washington Times story about two Virginia Beach, Virginia, students suspended (perhaps for the entire year) for playing with an air soft gun in their own yards, or the Washington Post’s excellent coverage of a new test-score scandal.
The first story reflects both today’s crazed anti-gun culture and a sort of imperialism: educators seem to think that it’s their jurisdiction to judge how children behave at home, especially when it comes to toy guns, which they apparently deem inherently bad, etc., etc. Yes, Virginia educators insist on enforcing pacifism and disarmament as a settled matter, as if the Second Amendment didn’t exist.
Now, schools should not allow violence on school grounds or buses. And, if the kids who were playing with the toy guns were pointing and shooting with dangerous irresponsibility, and against city code, then maybe the school has a leg to stand on.
Nearby in Washington, D.C., in our second story, public school administrators have rigged the testing system to yield better math scores. Indeed, the district had boasted of a four-point gain. Then it was discovered that scores had actually declined, in part because of new rigorous tests. But instead of “biting the bullet” and taking a “temporary” hit, educators fiddled with the statistics and came up with phony bragging points.
Liars to the north of me; fools at another point in the compass, entirely.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Liars, Fools, Educators”
Thought crime being prosecuted against minors, and the public servants misrepresenting to the public they serve.
I believe the thought crime issue is the more serious, and the latter infraction is almost business as usual.
The founding fathers must be greatly disappointed.
Since we allowed lib/socialists (the Federal government & teachers’ unions) to take control of the American education system, costs rose as the quality of learning decreased in proportion. And, oh yes, school officials turned into idiots.
I think (at least in the first case) the reasons are more political– and the local powers want gun playing stopped. I doubt that it was a teacher – not working– who did the dirty work.
As to test scores– the schools are graded in wildly unusual ways. For example, ( true case) 1 school – 1 year – had 1 Hispanic student in a specific grade. The child was the child of a school employee). The enxt year, with the child (bright child) advanced a grade, there were NO HISPANICS in the grade – so the school got an F– HISPANIC SCORES DROPPED.
Follow the students, not the grade. But that is heresy.
AND STUDENTS LEARN AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS. AGAIN, HERESY.
And parents are often uninterested in what their children do. More interested in their latest lover; or booze or drugs. (I was ocne a teacher; and have family memebrs who were educators; and never did such stupid things).