Texas Teachers all riled up

[Zero]

What is with the left's propensity to pathologize and "irrationalize" their opposition?

First, I’m not the Left

Second, in my experience you’ve never shown any inclination to extend even a little room for educators to be anything than self-serving. It’s kind of a consistent thing with you, which is fine, it just doesn’t lend itself to constructive conversation. It’d be like if I was incapable of criticizing public education, which I’m not. There’s always work to do.

[Speaker to Animals]

What is with the left's propensity to pathologize and "irrationalize" their opposition?

First, I’m not the Left

Second, in my experience you’ve never shown any inclination to extend even a little room for educators to be anything than self-serving. It’s kind of a consistent thing with you, which is fine, it just doesn’t lend itself to constructive conversation. It’d be like if I was incapable of criticizing public education, which I’m not. There’s always work to do.

(1) You certainly sound like one.

(2) When your conception of "education" is limited to government work programs, I guess you are right. When it comes to school choice or, in the case of secondary education, simply sending them to college or trade schools, then you are wrong. You simply try to paint alternatives to your education work camp as "irrational" and then pathologize those who would dare question the nobility and selflessness of government school teachers. Please.

At the end of the day, you are left with the problem of having to explain away the legions of functionally illiterate children government schools produce, at ever increasing cost to society. This obviously isn't working.

[Penner]

We don’t have unions.

But yeah, I agree. We need to take away undue influence of super wealthy ideologues who have decided they get to make the entire state follow their lead by buying up increasingly radical politicians. The Republican Party in Texas is snapping in half, not over abortion, entitlements, or immigration. Over education funding.

We used to have a governor (not the current one but the one before him) came in and cut the state's education budget in half, along with other departments/programs' budgets in half. He did it for like nearly his entire (one term) governorship, people hated him. In my opinion, you can only go so far in cutting education budgets before the people would rally against you.

[Okeefenokee]

Remember that video the other week where the school superintendent voted for his own pay increase and then threw out the teacher who objected to it?

That's the sort of thing people think about when people say the schools need more money.

[Speaker to Animals]

I don't think the government teachers realize how much the American people are getting riled up over this scam.

[Zero]

Remember that video the other week where the school superintendent voted for his own pay increase and then threw out the teacher who objected to it?

That's the sort of thing people think about when people say the schools need more money.

I do, remember. I hope he gets thrown out on his ass.

That’s not what I’m ever talking about, when I say we need more money. I mean, I don’t bitch about my own paycheck anymore, I’m doing ok. I’m comfortable. A state senator dangled an unfunded $1000, across the board raise for teachers last year that we rejected, because it would have cut extracurricular programs and support staff. I phoned her office and told her, if she could find that kind of cash, put it towards the kids and SpEd support. Her secretary chuckled and said, “I’ll let her know.”

This year, one of my classes is at 28, with 10 High needs SpEd and 4 504 kids, mixed in with habitual behavior problems and about 8 average kids and a few G/T, but low effort kids. That’s a lot of needs and differentiation - not a complaint - simply describing what it is. I’ve got one support teacher that gets push in minutes 3 days a week. I’d like the funds to get her in there 5 days a week and with common planning time so we can better coordinate.

I want us to move beyond the constraints of form so that we can better address function. That’s all.

[Speaker to Animals]

Another outrageous thing about this scam is that I have to pay for this bullshit every single month when I pay my mortgage, and then if I have anything extra I can spare each week, I drop it into the basket on Sunday so that kids can get a shot at a real education -- which I was supposed to be paying for in property taxes.

Why can't I just choose where to send my education dollars?? I would choose to send them to the local parochial schools. All of them. Divide that money up and send them to the schools that actually educate kids. But no. Most of it goes to the work camps that are nothing but jobs programs and state daycare that pass illiterate kids year upon year upon year.

[Speaker to Animals]

Right here:



Most of these students are ignorant of basic facts about American government and world affairs. The interesting result was that, when asked about it, the majority of them expressed great interest in learning about these things. They were deprived of knowledge they actually wanted to learn. And we paid for it.

[Fife]

It's getting close to the time to revise the pat answer about the impact of the French Revolution; i.e., "it's too soon to tell."

[Zero]

Right here:



Most of these students are ignorant of basic facts about American government and world affairs. The interesting result was that, when asked about it, the majority of them expressed great interest in learning about these things. They were deprived of knowledge they actually wanted to learn. And we paid for it.

The general trend lately is to focus more on skills based critical thinking approaches being that knowledge is no longer hard to acquire. So, in that clip they talked about alliances with Japan. Ideally, you could pose the question, they could research the answer and then extrapolate from there. Ideally.

Don’t know, it’s hard to ascertain from that short clip.