Demonic Duck wrote:
As for religion atheism is just like any religion. There are people who want to push it on people and there are people who just want to practice their beliefs and be left alone. Mac please feel free to do all those things while I want Mike to have the right to do the things he mentioned. Just don't force anyone to do it if they don't want to!
I agree with this statement. Certainly I have no issue with what
Mac says above, about his own beliefs and practices. But when you hear, for example, about some atheist group that has rented a large billboard at Christmas time, showing a picture of the Wise Men journeying to Baby Jesus, with the caption, "You know it's just a myth"--well, it's hard to argue that at least some atheists aren't trying to proselytize for their own viewpoint. At the very least, some of them are being deliberately offensive.
The problems with public education are very complicated. My husband has been a public school teacher for about twenty years now, I guess, and I did it for one year myself, about ten years ago, so I am pretty well acquainted with the issues. Conservative groups (and I am a Conservative myself) often blame the teachers and the system of tenure for the problems, but from where my husband and I sit, there are other, more urgent issues. For one thing, teachers have been left very little authority within their classrooms by the government, especially if one or more of their "problem" students are special needs. Special needs doesn't mean only kids in wheelchairs with obvious disabilities. It can, for example, mean kids with anger management issues. Case in point: When my older son was in the 6th grade, one of his classmates, a 12-yr-old boy, went berserk and started throwing desks and other objects around the classroom. The teacher, a petite woman, couldn't control this nearly-man-sized boy physically. But this kid got very little punishment for what he did. I think he got an out-of-school suspension for a few days. Why? Because he was special ed, and his IEP identified his problem as anger management. Legally, he couldn't be punished for his area of special need. The teacher's husband was furious and consulted a lawyer. He wanted to sue the kid or his family, but the lawyer told him it wasn't possible. The teacher's husband said, "You mean, this boy has all the rights, and my wife has none?" And the lawyer said, "You've got it."
Several times over the past 15 years, when there have been school shootings, my husband has read in the fine print about one or more of the shooters being on a certain drug. He is a special ed teacher himself and knows which drugs are given for particular conditions, and when he reads about them, he will say, "You know what that means? Special ed!" Basically, it means these kids were untouchables, untouchables from the POV of the authorities, that is. It isn't true that teachers don't know which of their students are dangerous and likely to "blow." They always know, but legally, they can't do anything about it.
Now consider the case of kids who don't have the IEPs, but who know that they are living in the era of "No Child Left Behind" (a Republican initiative, I know, but as my husband, the poli sci major, likes to say, "The one law always passed is the law of unintended consequences"). NCLB sounds benign and totally focused on the best interest of the child, but what it translates to in practice is, No Child Can Fail. Now, how do you motivate a classroom of moderately intelligent students, when they know and you know that no matter how poorly they perform, they cannot be failed? If they are failed, it is the teacher and the administration of the school who will be punished for it, not the kids.
There will always be a handful of students in every generation who genuinely want to learn, and who will learn no matter what the conditions are. My older son is one of those, and so is my daughter. My middle boy? He is more like the majority of people, who are content to put out the minimum effort to get the desired result. Now go into a classroom and see how successful you are, teaching a group of students who are willing to do only the minimum effort, if that, and who are occasionally peppered with special needs crazies.
There is a third problem I hesitate to mention, but I do believe it also affects education. Teaching has always been a poorly paid profession, but at one time it was at least a respected one. Now it is not. Early in his career, one of my students asked my husband, "Mr. _____, you are so smart, why do you teach?" How do you attract the best people into a profession like that? When the assumption, even of the students, is that a smart person would be doing anything other than teaching? I think most teachers are people who are not primarily attracted by a lot of money, but many of them (myself included) do thrive on a degree of prestige or respect for what they do. And that respect is largely non-existent today. There is a terrible attrition rate among younger teachers. They don't want to stay in the profession. Others, like my husband and my cousin in FL, have been in it so long they can't afford to leave now. So they hang in there for the retirement, such as it is.
I think teaching got along for many years on the energy and intellect of bright women who didn't have many other professional options. However, beginning with my own generation, bright women had virtually every profession opened up to them. So that pool of recruits is not nearly as deep as it once was. For example, my SIL won the state math competition every year she was in high school. In another generation, she would most likely have become a high school math teacher. But instead she has spent her career with NASA. She was assigned to the Space Shuttle project for decades. Great for her, not so great, perhaps, for all those kids who might have been her students.
