Teacher Unions: For the Children!

[Tokenconservative]

he quit. and to paraphrase: you sir, are no jaime escalante.

OH! I am slain!

LOL....did I say I was? He quit because the admin backed down from approving his no-nonsense approach.

Tokie

[Tokenconservative]

Can I ask you a point-blank question: Do you believe that I am a teacher?
Oh sorry, I must have read the wrong playbook. I read the one where industrialists, 150 years ago, decided that they needed more educated workers, so pushed for mandated schooling. Entirely reasonable at first blush. The goal was to produce more worldly workers with greater knowledge of technology. So I was wondering why they would want people to be dumb.

There you go again. Notice how I said "If the military-industrial complex ...". I was responding to Jerome's suggestion to read Gatto. I believe Gatto has an issue with industrialists' influence on schooling.

You don't seem to be able to have a conversation without jumping to conclusions about the politics of the people having the conversation.
~~ Paul

1. Not sure. You are pretty cagey. And because of that, I assume that the answer is "yes."

2. Actually, the Colonial Americans had a public school system that WAS designed to make more "worldly" citizens; that was not widespread. Basing itself on the German model, when the industrialists in the US pushed for the establishment of a nationwide system of public schools, it was not as you ignorantly claim, to produce more "worldly" citizens, but rather to produce people who could read simple instructions and understand simple math and physics as this nation moved into industrialization. It's purpose was not egalatarian, but practical, and it was a good idea established for these selfish, profit-motivated reasons.

That was um...I hesitate to point out, at risk of scaring you into a coronary...a LONG time ago. The schools pretty much ran on that model until the mid-1960s (with a little hiccough in the mid30s, when Dewey and his crowd of communists tried to take them over for indoctrination purposes...the mood of the country then was not such that it would permit this, and so this went into hibernation). Starting in the mid-1960s (and no, there's no link--LIIIINNNKKKKKKKK!!!!--where you can go to specifically see photos and tracts and papers saying "this is what we gonna do!") as leftists gained more and more institutional and bureaucratic power both at the state and federal levels, and as the NEA, as leftist a union as has every existed in the US came into its own, the schools were subtely (then) shifted from, as the NEA president stated they would be in 1972, from places where teachers were mere dispensers of information, to places where teachers would become de-facto parents who would instead dispense values desigend to battle and displace those horrid, outdated, anti-socialist values so many children were coming into the schools with.

And that's just what they did.

Unchallenged? No, but by and large, today, the American public school system bothers very little with education...with the amount of $$ we spend, our native abilities, if you will (you won't, but that's because you are a leftist and believe that America is a cess pool) our drive and ambition as a people, could be the most educated nation on the planet--in real terms. Instead, while our kids come out of school parroting leftist thought and with very high "self-esteem" they are, on average, intellectually and knowledge-wise, dwarfed by every other industrialized nation, many emerging nations and even a few third world nations.

3. If you are having a private conversation with Jerome...take it private.

4. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. When I see a feathered creature that waddles and quacks I "assume" it is a duck, even if it rushes up to me and, shaking off pond water quacks, "I'm not duck! I'm a...a HAM SANDWICH!!!"

Tokie

[Tokenconservative]

So the school system is one giant vocational school? I did not know that.

~~ Paul

Then you either don't have kids in school or pay so little attention to their schooling that you should be ashamed of yourself.

Anecdote warning!!! Danger Will Robinson, DANGER!!!!

We put our kids in the local ele for 4-5/5-6th grades. When we were fighting with the princi"pal" over moving them up to the next grade after a few weeks, he got a little...flustered with me (some of you might be able to imagine this happening. I was shocked--SHOCKED!) and whipped out this list of companies who "approved" the district curriculum.

What? I thought the curriculum was approved by parents, teachers and "educators." He told me (paraphrasing) that the curriculum and the speed at which it was taught was exactly what all these transnational corporations expected of the public schools.

Hmmm.....Even in the begining of the PS system in the US, the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and other "robber barons" who pushed for it did not involve themselve so much as to tell the schools: we need these kids educated ONLY to this level, and not further. As long as the three "Rs" were taught, the robber barons and other industrialists didn't give a damn how "over" educated the schools made kids.

Tokie

[volatile]

Hmmm.....Even in the begining of the PS system in the US, the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and other "robber barons" who pushed for it did not involve themselve so much as to tell the schools: we need these kids educated ONLY to this level, and not further. As long as the three "Rs" were taught, the robber barons and other industrialists didn't give a damn how "over" educated the schools made kids.


So you disapprove of private finance in schools, and a state-mandated curriculum? That doesn't sound very "Conservative" to me, TC.

Are you feeling OK? We actually agree on this one!

[Tokenconservative]

So you disapprove of private finance in schools, and a state-mandated curriculum? That doesn't sound very "Conservative" to me, TC.

Are you feeling OK? We actually agree on this one!

I'm not even sure what you are asking me.

Tokie

[volatile]

I'm not even sure what you are asking me.

Tokie

Why your normally rabidly-conservative bent has cooled when it comes to discussing state-mandated curricula and the problems of allowing corporate interests to effect pedagogic practice. Your opinions expressed above, namely that educators should devise the curriculum and that companies have no place in school financing, is decidedly un-Conservative.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

1. Not sure. You are pretty cagey. And because of that, I assume that the answer is "yes."
Then you are a lazy fool. Two minute's work on the Web will reveal exactly what I do.


Then you either don't have kids in school or pay so little attention to their schooling that you should be ashamed of yourself.
I have two kids in school, neither in the regional voc tech school. I can't figure out which vocations they are being trained for. Can you help me with this?

~~ Paul

[joobie]

LOL....did I say I was?

no, you inferred it. besides, it was a joke i made purely for my own amusement.

He quit because the admin backed down from approving his no-nonsense approach.

ah, so he wasn't fired, after all.

:)

[Tokenconservative]

Why your normally rabidly-conservative bent has cooled when it comes to discussing state-mandated curricula and the problems of allowing corporate interests to effect pedagogic practice. Your opinions expressed above, namely that educators should devise the curriculum and that companies have no place in school financing, is decidedly un-Conservative.

Ah...now I see. You hold to the (false) SOP/Playbook definition of "conservative."

The problem here is not MY opinion, but YOUR perception. It's not conservatives who want transnational corporation to run the schools.

That would be ah, um...liberals.

Tokie

[Tokenconservative]

Then you are a lazy fool. Two minute's work on the Web will reveal exactly what I do.

I have two kids in school, neither in the regional voc tech school. I can't figure out which vocations they are being trained for. Can you help me with this?

~~ Paul

Hmmm...well, I don't "google" people. I guess for some reason, the 20 seconds it would take for you to write what you do is too time consuming for you.

Not sure whether the second part of this is aimed at me. If so, then no...it's not my place to even offer an opinion on something like that, especially with so little data. Outside my own very limited area of expertise, I wouldn't hazzard to guess what you two kids in or out of vo tech school should be looking at doing.

Sorry.

Tokie

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Hmmm...well, I don't "google" people. I guess for some reason, the 20 seconds it would take for you to write what you do is too time consuming for you.
That's not the point. The point is that you made an assumption without any information. You should have asked, instead of saying:

1. Not sure. You are pretty cagey. And because of that, I assume that the answer is "yes."



Not sure whether the second part of this is aimed at me. If so, then no...it's not my place to even offer an opinion on something like that, especially with so little data. Outside my own very limited area of expertise, I wouldn't hazzard to guess what you two kids in or out of vo tech school should be looking at doing.
I didn't ask what you thought they wanted to do. I ask what vocation(s) they are being forceably trained for. I ask this because of the following exchange:

So the school system is one giant vocational school? I did not know that.

Then you either don't have kids in school or pay so little attention to their schooling that you should be ashamed of yourself.

~~ Paul

[Tokenconservative]

That's not the point. The point is that you made an assumption without any information. You should have asked, instead of saying:

I didn't ask what you thought they wanted to do. I ask what vocation(s) they are being forceably trained for. I ask this because of the following exchange:

~~ Paul

Oh, well...we're back to that cagey thing....

You should've just said, rather than being so cagey.

They are being trained to be good little socialist drones who will be employed under a Paki or Indian manager working in a transnational company.

Tokie

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Oh, well...we're back to that cagey thing....

You should've just said, rather than being so cagey.
You mean asked whether you were making unwarranted assumptions about my business? I did!


They are being trained to be good little socialist drones who will be employed under a Paki or Indian manager working in a transnational company.
... run by a few rabid right-wingers in Chicago who love to outsource jobs to cheap labor. Or perhaps not, but it is certainly one scenario.

~~ Paul

[Darat]

"Personal" derail removed - please remember this is the "Education" section, if you wish to discuss other subjects take it to the appropriate sections of the Forum.

[Darat]

This thread has devolved into a disgusting mess. I do not have the time to attempt a clean up or issue the appropriate infractions (another member of the Mod Team may get the time to do so before I do) so I am closing it for now (at least)

[Cuddles]

Even more personal attacks and derails have been removed. Keep it civil or the thread will face moderated status or permanent closure.