Let the educators educate, not the unions.

Those who don’t learn can not teach what they didn’t learn.

There are two types of teachers: those who really want to be teachers and those who settled to be teachers because they could not figure out anything else to do. The problems with this situation are twofold. First, those who want to be teachers are almost always females who want to eventually settle down and have a family. They are not in it for the pay, but for the profession itself. They either leave the profession when they marry or when they start having children. Thus we lose the good few we have to be parents of their own children instead of trying to be parents of 30-50% of their students.

Second, those who are doing it because they cannot do anything else and/or have no clue what to do their life end up doing it for their entire lives. They form even a majority at a small, fairly socially conservative liberal arts college like where I am finishing my undergraduate work. They form a vast majority at public universities. Most troubling, they are the worst students by far.

Most of our current teachers take jobs in education because it’s the default option for someone who’s too stupid to actually get a real job. Having been a TA at a big University, the future teachers are by far the worst students. In a calculus class, I once had a future math teacher who was unable to divide fractions by hand and had already failed Calculus I twice. I assume this is why she’s going to be teaching math rather than actually doing it. I think it was at this point I decided that, if I ever have children, there’s no way in hell I would send my children to be “educated” by some fool whose credentials consisted of an undergrad or masters-level degree in education.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s time to end the strangle-hold the teacher’s unions have. We should fire the whole lot of them and hire minimum-wage babysitters in their place — we’d get the same level of service until we could train some real teachers.

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You mean $6500 right?

This sounds like the pro-choice argument to me, and I completely agree with it.

Herodotus: I have seen the inner working of public school systems, and it completely boggles the mind. Still, what you guys are saying sounds a lot like saying that we are giving up on these children. That troubles me. Without an education they will never be able to pull themselves out of poverty.

I also agree that good parenting matters, but it isn’t a kid’s fault that they have crappy parents and we shouldn’t be punishing them for it.