DO AS I DO NOT AS I SAY

By their actions, public school teachers give very persuasive advice about their schools

"Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools for their own children, the study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found. More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools. In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.

Michael Pons, spokesman for the National Education Association, the 2.7-million-member public school union, declined a request for comment on the study's findings. The American Federation of Teachers also declined to comment.

Public school teachers told the Fordham Institute's surveyors that private and religious schools impose greater discipline, achieve higher academic achievement and offer overall a better atmosphere..... "Public education in many of our large cities is broken," the surveyors conclude. "The fix? Choice, in part, to be sure." Public school teachers in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, Rochester, N.Y., and Baltimore registered the most dissatisfaction with the schools in which they teach.

"Teachers, it is reasonable to assume, care about education, are reasonably expert about it and possess quite a lot of information about the schools in which they teach. We can assume that no one knows the condition and quality of public schools better than teachers who work in them every day."

More here

As Peg Kaplan points out, teachers are voting on public schools in the most persuasive way possible -- voting with their feet. And, as the articles says, they are in a position to know what really happens in schools




WHAT USED TO BE: EDUCATIONAL DECLINE

Bill Vallicella is peeved that nobody can pronounce his name

"Perhaps I should be happy that I do not rejoice under the name of Znosko-Borovsky or Bonch-Osmolovsky. Nor do I stagger under such burdens as Witkiewicz, Brzozowski, or Rynasiewicz. The latter is the name of a philosopher I knew when he taught at Case Western Reserve. Alvin Plantinga once mentioned to me that he had been interviewed at Notre Dame, except that `rhinoceros' was all Plantinga could remember of his name.

Actually, none of these names is all that difficult if you sound them out. But apparently no one is taught phonics anymore. Damn those liberals! They've never met a standard they didn't want to erode. I am grateful to my long-dead mother for sending me to Catholic schools where I actually learned something. I learned things that no one seems to know any more, for example, grammar, Latin, geography, mathematics. The next time you are in a bar, ask the twenty-something `tender whether that Sam Adams you just ordered is a 12 oz or a pint. Now observe the blank expression on her face: she has no idea what a pint is, or that a pint is 16 oz, or that there are four quarts in a gallon, or 5, 280 feet in a mile, or 39.37 inches in a meter, or that light travels at 186, 282 miles/sec, or that a light-year is a measure of distance, not of time.

Even Joan Baez got this last one wrong in her otherwise excellent song, Diamonds and Rust, a tribute to her quondam lover, Bob Dylan. The irony is that Joanie's pappy was a somewhat distinguished professor of physics! In a high school physics class we watched a movie in which he gives a physics lecture.

I was up in 'Flag' (Flagstaff) a few years back to climb Mt. Humphreys, the highest point in Arizona at 12,643 ft. elevation, (an easy class 1 walk-up except for the thin air) and to take a gander at the moon through the Lowell Observatory telescope. While standing in line for my peek, I overheard a woman say something to her husband that betrayed her misconception that the moon glows by its own light. She was astonished to learn from her husband that moonlight is reflected sunlight. I was astonished at her astonishment. One wonders how she would account for the phases of the moon. What `epicycles' she would have to add to her `theory'!"

More here. (Via Bill's Comments).

Bill (Guglielmo?) might agree with my comments on the way that place-names are routinely mispronounced





HOW THE BUREAUCRATS HATE HOMESCHOOLERS

It's a loss of control. How awful!

"In a federally funded exercise to prepare emergency responders for a terrorist attack, a Michigan county concocted a scenario in which public-school children were threated by a fictitious radical group that believes everyone should be homeschooled. The made-up group was called Wackos Against Schools and Education. The exercise in Muskegon, Mich., yesterday simulated a situation in which a bomb on board a bus full of children knocks the vehicle on its side and fills the passenger compartment with smoke.

Dan Stout, director of Muskegon County Emergency Services, told WorldNetDaily the choice of the fictitious group certainly was not meant to offend homeschoolers. "I don't think there was any particular objective other than to just have a name," he said. A WND reader who saw a story about the exercise in the Muskegon Chronicle, however, said he was "outraged" at the characterization of the terrorists.

Stoudt said the general idea for the type of group came from the website of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which suggests group names such as "Wackos Against Recreation" and other such such "causes.""

More here.





Prof. Bunyip's comment on the newish university where he teaches gave me a laugh but I think only Australian university people would understand it: "Sydney Orr University's start as the Workingman's Institute of Cobbling and Saddlery is largely forgotten these days, but a slight taint of humble origins lingers yet. You have your Sandstones, and below them, the Bricks, and humbler still, the Dumb-as-Rocks. Then there is our little oasis of the mind, which has its eye on Fibro and is pushing hard to make the grade." The oldest buildings in Australia's oldest universities are made of sandstone and Fibro is the now-obsolete asbestos-cement sheeting once used as siding in the cheapest buildings. "The sandstones" are Australia's nearest equivalent to America's "Ivy League". I have to confess that I did go to a "sandstone" -- two of them in fact. I also liked the good Prof's comment just below about "the cherished principle of the seventeen hour week". Academics do get it easy. A lot of the time I had only an eight-hour week. The good Prof. can't spell "Gorbals", though. Obviously not a Scot.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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