Right Wing Nation

One of the many problems with education is the educators. And this cuts across all spectra. Some of the worst excuses for teachers I’ve seen had PhDs. But when you get education school types, well, that’s manslaughter waiting to happen.

Let me explain. There I was, trying to get a lot of work done in as little time as possible, minding my own business at my desk, when in walks not one, not two, but three moonbat teachers.

I briefly considered ignoring them, but I’d tried that before and it’s not effective. So I turned toward them.

“Yes?” I said, and I might add, in quite a polite helpful tone of voice, with a smile on my face.

They just looked at me. I waited. They kept looking at me.

“Did you need something?” I asked, in the same sweet voice with that same now-freezing smile on my face.

“What should we do in class today?” one asked.

Unfortunately, I was responsible for these twits — all of whom had been nothing but a pain in my ass from the day they started teaching. I knew there was no point in asking, but I had to, you understand.

“What are your goals for today?” I asked. I took a quick look at the class schedule over my desk out of the corner of my eye, and noted that two of the three moonbats were due in class in under an hour — and they had no idea what they were going to do.

Though it’s worse.

My question floored them. Deer in the headlights.

“Goals?” one finally asked.

“You know, what are your goals? What do you want the students to learn? What are you supposed to be covering?”

Moonbat the first shook her head, perplexed. The other two furrowed their brows. If I didn’t do something fast, their heads were going to explode.

So I took the initiative. I glanced again at the schedule to remind myself what each of them was teaching, then started asking appropriate questions about what they had and had not covered so far.

It wasn’t enough initiative. Still deer in the headlights. So I just told them what to do.

“You two cover paraphrasing and plagiarism,” I told two of the moonbats (who taught the same class), “And you,” I addressed the third as I pulled the last test scores, “looks like you need to work on basic paragraphs.”

Still deer in the headlights.

“Am I missing something?” I asked. By now that smile was so frozen I could see the carbon dioxide fumes rising in front of my face.

“But what do we DO?” one wailed.

“I could look through that activities book …” one started, and though I should have known all along, it hit me.

Content, as in curriculum, didn’t concern them; finding some little activity that would be “fun” was all they cared about.

You’re thinking this was in a kindergarten or elementary school, but you’re wrong. This was a university.

“Uhm,” I began, “How about actually doing something educational instead?”

“Oh, this book of activities, they’re GREAT educational games!” one started enthusing.

“Is that the book I got that TV crossword from?” another said, “That was SUCH a GREAT activity!”

You know, I could have let them go their merry ways, doing nothing whatsoever of any pedagogical benefit and instead playing cute games, but there were two problems: first, I took my job seriously (that was a mistake), and second, their students would eventually become my students.

“Here,” I said, digging around in my desk. I found the folder and handed it to one, “These are some examples of paraphrasing, and a few handouts on plagiarism,” I looked at the other moonbat, “You can copy them.” I dug deeper — it had been a while since the last time I taught a low level class, but found it. “You can use these, basic paragraph writing stuff.”

They looked through the folders. Back to deer in the headlights.

“But what do we do with this stuff?” one asked.

There comes a point when you do not understand why somebody else isn’t getting something. If you teach, that’s a very frustrating thing — cause how do you explain something if you don’t know why they’re not getting it? But it’s a great deal more frustrating when you have three idiots standing in front of you, basically asking, “What are we supposed to do with these classroom materials?” when they’re supposed to be professionals.

“And what do the students do?” another popped up.

“You’re teaching writing classes,” I said, “How about having the students write?”

“My students could never do that!” one said.

“Do what?” I asked.

“This,” she pointed to the examples of paraphrasing, and the accompanying exercises.

“Have your students ever written anything?” I asked. We were halfway into the semester.

“We wrote an essay on the Three Things I Miss Most About My Home Country,” she said.

“An essay. One?” I asked.

“We’ve been doing crosswords and write-arounds!” she said, and she was getting perky again. I was vaguely curious, but I knew better than to ask what a “write-around” might be. I was sure it was one of those things I didn’t want to know.

“How about some more writing?” I was getting close to the breaking point.

“But what do we DO!” Moonbat the third, and she was getting frustrated.

“Look, little puzzles and activities are fine for parties, but we’re not here to entertain the students,” I said, and I could feel my smile cracking, “I’ve given you materials, I’ve given you topics for the day, what do you want, do you want me to teach your classes for you?”

Anyway, you get the general idea. I went through this every day, “teaching professionals” who had never thought of giving a thought to curriculum, who had never thought of giving a thought to topics or goals, who every day wanted me to hand them a bunch of fun little games to play, and trust me, I did want to strangle them.

There were some really good teachers. I had tried to get these bozos to observe them, but they weren’t interested. I had sat in on their classes and tried to give them pointers, but they weren’t interested. All they were interested in was coming to me day after day and wanting me to give them cute little activities and self-esteem building games.

“You have the materials, now go use them,” I said, entirely out of patience, “I have work to do.”

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The problem is education programs turn out dolts like this and dump them in the schools. They howl about “teaching to the test” because they don’t want to do anything with any educational value instead of playing games. They have never given a thought to curriculum, or goals, or pedagogy.

Add to that the fact that they’re all indoctrinated with this feel-good ultra-liberal ideology and all believe that the classroom’s primary purpose is to indoctrinate students, and you get crap like this, or this, or this, or this.

Schools don’t need more money. Schools need to stop hiring idiots, and school administrations need to stop encouraging idiots to turn students into idiots. But as long as education programs turn their students into idiots who believe it is their job to turn their students into idiots, that won’t happen.

Private schools aren’t much better, either. They get their teachers from the same education programs. The administration may be less idiot-friendly, but take my advice: homeschool your kids before they come home with tofu for brains.