Reality intrudes again. On yet another issue, the Republicans are wrong on each and every point they are making about one of their ginned up issues:
To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.
Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.
“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”
Anyone who has ever sent their kids to school, and paid any attention to what teaching actually entails, knows all this is true. And yet, we are hearing on television, and from our politicians from the dark side, that it is all untrue, except that they agree that teachers are and should be treated like the scum of the earth. No small part of what is going on at the moment involves not just imposing financial harm. It goes beyond that, to humiliation. The goal is to render them powerless and to make sure that they know it. Of course, the ultimate objective is to destroy the public school system, so I guess it all makes sense. If you can’t afford to educate your child, why should the rest of us pay for it? What could go wrong if we create an uneducated generation or two?
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