The Patriot Post® · Our State of Geniuses

Wouldn’t it have been marvelous if the 3,000 Tennessee school teachers who stood forlornly in Saturday’s rain on March 5 to scream and shout and wear free tee-shirts had protested the fact that Tennessee ranks 46th in the amount of money each state spends to educate a child every year?

But, no, the people we have who teach our children were in Nashville for a somewhat laughable show of solidarity for the teacher’s union, which in my opinion is today no more than a misguided method used so that crummy teachers can keep their jobs.

Tenure for teachers is equally ridiculous and the reason it is now under fire is for the same reason the Tennessee Education Association will soon become extinct – neither work anymore as they were once intended and you won’t find many souls who can argue about that.

Are you kidding me? We’re in “the bottom ten” of the entire country in education. If I was a teacher I would have been too embarrassed to show up, much less side with a group of other do-nothings and some lame politicians who pretend they still might make a difference in what will happen when some important bills go before a determined legislature this week.

You’re darn right I’m one of thousands who are mad about the results Tennessee continues to produce by using the methods that the Department of Education, still top-heavy with “good ol’ boys,” wants us to think is just hunky-dory. I’m for tossing them all out, even if there is a baby or two in the bathwater, because the stark fact is that we still aren’t teaching our young.

Let me tell you what education has become all across this state – we don’t teach children, we teach a test. That’s right, we’ve allowed everything from federal money to an individual teacher’s yearly assessment to come down to one stinking test and all we can do is hope and pray it will be given on a day the poorer students get breakfast.

There was a brilliant essay that appeared in “Education Week” back in the fall where a California teacher, Kelly Gallager, wrote, “My highest priority is to design lessons that enable my kids to think critically and to give them the skills they will need to live productive lives. I want my students to grow up to be problem-solvers, not test-takers. I want them to be innovators, not automatons.”

Guess what? Every noble teacher in America feels that exact way. We’ve burdened the lesson outlines with the most ridiculous word in all of education (besides tenure) called “standards.” In Kelly’s essay, he serves up a typical 10th-grade history standard that goes like this: “Relate the moral and ethical principles in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, in Judaism, and Christianity to the development of Western political thought.”

As you ask yourself how long it would take to teach that to a 15-year-old with acne – a week? a month? – please realize the ever-pressing state test allows virtually no time for a good teacher to come anywhere close to performing such a miracle. That’s a fact no principal in this state will dispute.

Mr. Gallager points out we have eliminated the necessity of thinking with a multiple-choice question, one where elementary-school logic calls for the highest number to be cast aside, then the lowest, and therefore gives a kid a 50-50 chance with the remaining two answers. I’m serious. And it is the only basis we use for validation for the whole year!

Now, you can go to almost any school in the country and find a lulu or a bozo in one of the classrooms. Goodness knows Tennessee has proven it time and time again. But the TEA, we learn, is adamantly against ending collective bargaining rights, ruling by decree “the central office” can neither judge nor reward individual teachers because the union’s true purpose is “to protect the weak.”

Boy, that really makes sense, doesn’t it? But some old biddy, who worries more about her feet that hurt instead of hammering the multiplication tables, really loves such a life-insurance policy. Suddenly the legislature has an opportunity to rectify the system and 3,000 of the state’s teachers use taunts and slurs like grammar school kiddies at recess. Puh-leeze!

There is another bill that calls for ending automatic check deductions. Can you even believe there is such a law? But to squelch it is a ploy that has effectively caused a 30 percent drop in union dues elsewhere. Why? Because – guess what – the same ones who rang Saturday’s cowbells and screamed for rights and respect … er, no longer make their payments. You think I’m making this up, but it’s true.

I’m telling you that the TEA has loused the system up in a way that most Tennesseans could care less what is their stake and why. Let me be clear (a common political phrase) – America is fed up with mediocrity.

What the TEA should have done long ago was oust its worst teachers, demand Tennessee educational indicators ask for a higher standard rather than a lower one, and railed instead for more money-per-student so that many of our teachers wouldn’t have to buy classroom supplies with their own money. Just the reality of what has happened is absurd.

What the Tennessee legislature must do is take pro-active steps to abolish the public-sector unions and if you don’t believe it look all across the country. Every other plagued state has had enough of collective bargaining because it has resulted in mediocrity in almost every area.

Of course, Tennessee education is worse but that’s the figure nobody on either side wants to be brought up. We are in “the bottom ten.” We are clearly the worst and nobody can dispute that either. What better example, then, is demonstrated when a full 3,000 of our modern-day educators stood out in the rain on a Saturday when most of those on Capitol Hill were gone.

A bell-clanging mob that spews out its venom, history has shown time and time again, accomplishes nothing more than identifying the fools among us. In this case, it was our own teachers who taught us panic, desperation and needless vitriol in what will eventually morph into a clear illustration of stupidity.

Do we have geniuses in this state of bottom-dwellers or what?

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