This is kind of embarrassing for them.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 1:18am PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

Pretty much all the other people being interviewed sounded idiotic.

I am trying to wrap my head around why you promoted this at 1 in the morning.

Charter schools perform a good deal worse than public schools on average*. The few charter schools that do outperform public schools typically are far more expensive than public schools*. Public funding for public schools. Private funding for private schools.

*http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

But it's really private funding for public schools too, isn't it? Yeah. It is. Sorry.


>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Public funding for public schools. Private funding for private schools.

I have to admit: That reason.tv is still having this up, with this reporter asking idiotic questions and getting schooled hard by all these educators, speaks for a potential ability to know when they are wrong. (Yes it was unwise to confirm the demand for a billion dollars per child, but the question was so mindbendingly stupid i'd probably have answered the same just to avoid a follow-up question by this ideologue.)

But I fear reason.tv has this still up because they think they are right for asking these idiotic questions.

>> ^blankfist:

^But it's really private funding for public schools too, isn't it? Yeah. It is. Sorry.


Do you mean, that when every single tax-payer pays for public schools, every single one of them is privately funding public schools?



If not, I don't get what you mean, please explain.

If yes: WOW that is some grade A ideological thinking.

Pretty much all their answers are half truths or platitudes. They're impassioned rather than particularly fact backed.

1 - It is hard to get a teacher fired in a private school in the US, the job security is markedly better than in other private jobs.

2 - Not all teachers go into teaching because they are necessarily passionate about it. The work hours are only long if you put in the hours to prepare for classes. The mandated aren't very long, yes you have to cover supervise sports, participate in events which all adds up but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now.

3 - A portion of all professions are bad at what they do, and yes it is more likely that with increased job security that there are more lingering in teaching than other professions.

4 - Teaching is not free and the amount of taxpayer money it is apportioned at least partially depends on the reputation it has for delivering results. Particularly given the mood in most rich economies right now of debt reduction that's a terrible attitude if you want to improve the results of students with limited money.

As far as I'm concerned, schools should be focused primarily on teaching the skills that will enable them to achieve in a workplace. Yes arts/music are great, but only if the school is already achieving good standards on the core learning that is required in most jobs like reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. Having these core skills will ultimately allow them, coming from either a rich or poor background to make a living comfortably and ultimately spend money on developing any number of those skills later in life.

>> ^RedSky:

Pretty much all their answers are half truths or platitudes. They're impassioned rather than particularly fact backed.
1 - It is hard to get a teacher fired in a private school in the US, the job security is markedly better than in other private jobs.
2 - Not all teachers go into teaching because they are necessarily passionate about it. The work hours are only long if you put in the hours to prepare for classes. The mandated aren't very long, yes you have to cover supervise sports, participate in events which all adds up but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now.
3 - A portion of all professions are bad at what they do, and yes it is more likely that with increased job security that there are more lingering in teaching than other professions.
4 - Teaching is not free and the amount of taxpayer money it is apportioned at least partially depends on the reputation it has for delivering results. Particularly given the mood in most rich economies right now of debt reduction that's a terrible attitude if you want to improve the results of students with limited money.
As far as I'm concerned, schools should be focused primarily on teaching the skills that will enable them to achieve in a workplace. Yes arts/music are great, but only if the school is already achieving good standards on the core learning that is required in most jobs like reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. Having these core skills will ultimately allow them, coming from either a rich or poor background to make a living comfortably and ultimately spend money on developing any number of those skills later in life.


1. I'm not Usasian, I don't know. What I do know is that teaching is immensely stressful. Having to worry about your position would only add to that.

2. Imagine having the responssibility of teaching 30 different, growing individuals per class times the amount of classes you have, correct and test 30 times x people on sth different every week/month. This is no job in which you have to do routine. Routine is easy.

3. Why would they want to work an insecure underpaid job? Isn't it more likely that the benefits outweigh the lingerers?

4. True. American education needs an overhaul. Which will cost money, which is why it doesn't happen.

5. Schools are not factories which educate to produce workforce robots. They impart the whole cultural knowledge of a society. Art helps your brain to think abstractly and understand what you are reading. Music gives you a sense of aesthetics. Would you play computergames which are badly written, have horrible graphics and have no music? No? Well, then you need a culture which teaches these things.

Why do I even have to tell this to someone? Have you painted your profile picture yourself?

If that is really the case in the US. You are screwed.
Overhere: Full-Time teacher is around 35-40 school-hours per week. That is the time he or she spends in school. You can add up the hours and hours of preparation, test creation and correction and cake eating (for the soul).

>> ^RedSky:

but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now>

I have no doubt this logic makes perfect sense to you. >> ^blankfist:

But it's really private funding for public schools too, isn't it? Yeah. It is. Sorry.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Public funding for public schools. Private funding for private schools.

1. So is every other job.

2. It's an acquired skill like anything else. Also, let's not equate private tutoring with teaching a class, they are different things entirely and while some teachers certainly fill that role it is entirely unreasonable to suggest that most students will either demand this kind of attention or that most teachers will provide it (outside of what their job entails). I should probably disclose that my mother is a teacher too.

3. I'm not sure what you mean here. What I'm saying is people who don't want stress in their job and potentially don't want to put in a great deal of effort work in more secure positions, typically government related. I am not saying that all government employees are lazy and unmotivated, I'm simply saying that the obvious and apparent perks they provide attract certain kinds of people disproportionately.

4. This is why I would argue there needs to be a way to evaluate performance and reward teachers that do well. Rewarding them will allow the wages of teachers who are good at what they do rise and encourage more talented individuals who want to teach into a field they would otherwise not consider. As I said in my previous comment as far as I'm concerned the primary skills that schools should be teaching are reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. These are also easily able to be evaluated with standardised tests. The same standardised tests that determine university enrollment. As far as I'm concerned I see no reason a test like this cannot evaluate a teacher's capability in improving year upon year results of students. Yes, it cannot be a primary measurement and it is certainly not perfect, but if your intention to increase the standards of teaching and you accept the impractically/implausibility of vastly increasing the teaching budget, you have to accept that improvements have to come from improved efficiency and effectiveness. You can't begin to address that unless you have some way of measuring it.

5. No skilled or academically minded industry is a factory. Yet everything from engineering to consulting to scientific research companies thrive in a competitive economy. Am I suggesting privatising and cutting funding? Not at all. I think poor neighborhoods need to be subsidised to encourage good teachers to teach there. I have no particular issue with public schools although I see no reason charter schools should not receive eligible to such government assistance and what currently exists where the funding is there to serve the common good of creating an educated and knowledgeable society. My problem is entrenched union interest groups who by virtue of the campaign contributions they endow to their elected representatives, block any capacity to reward good teachers and who in effect keep teacher wages depressed and a whole bunch of talented individuals who would have otherwise genuinely considered teaching out of schools.

My point is not that I don't think art/music/drama are valuable aspects of schooling. Rather that schools in poor neighbourhoods are failing to endow students with the basic skills they need to enter a skilled job or for that matter to enter university. I think when people make arguments like this (which if I recall one of the people in this video did), they fly in stark contrast to reality that many simply do not even grasp the basics of education.

Schooling at it's base is not rooted in wishy washy concepts of creativity, expressing individuality or character, they are part of growing up but not the function of school at its core. Math and reading skills are ultimately rooted in effective teacher instruction followed by repetition. No amount of related activities will dress up the fact that if you want to function in modern society you need to go through these trials and tribulations. Until all schools can do that, the last thing I want to listen to is some guy at a rally preaching about abstract skills.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

>> ^RedSky:
Pretty much all their answers are half truths or platitudes. They're impassioned rather than particularly fact backed.
1 - It is hard to get a teacher fired in a private school in the US, the job security is markedly better than in other private jobs.
2 - Not all teachers go into teaching because they are necessarily passionate about it. The work hours are only long if you put in the hours to prepare for classes. The mandated aren't very long, yes you have to cover supervise sports, participate in events which all adds up but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now.
3 - A portion of all professions are bad at what they do, and yes it is more likely that with increased job security that there are more lingering in teaching than other professions.
4 - Teaching is not free and the amount of taxpayer money it is apportioned at least partially depends on the reputation it has for delivering results. Particularly given the mood in most rich economies right now of debt reduction that's a terrible attitude if you want to improve the results of students with limited money.
As far as I'm concerned, schools should be focused primarily on teaching the skills that will enable them to achieve in a workplace. Yes arts/music are great, but only if the school is already achieving good standards on the core learning that is required in most jobs like reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. Having these core skills will ultimately allow them, coming from either a rich or poor background to make a living comfortably and ultimately spend money on developing any number of those skills later in life.

1. I'm not Usasian, I don't know. What I do know is that teaching is immensely stressful. Having to worry about your position would only add to that.
2. Imagine having the responssibility of teaching 30 different, growing individuals per class times the amount of classes you have, correct and test 30 times x people on sth different every week/month. This is no job in which you have to do routine. Routine is easy.
3. Why would they want to work an insecure underpaid job? Isn't it more likely that the benefits outweigh the lingerers?
4. True. American education needs an overhaul. Which will cost money, which is why it doesn't happen.
5. Schools are not factories which educate to produce workforce robots. They impart the whole cultural knowledge of a society. Art helps your brain to think abstractly and understand what you are reading. Music gives you a sense of aesthetics. Would you play computergames which are badly written, have horrible graphics and have no music? No? Well, then you need a culture which teaches these things.
Why do I even have to tell this to someone? Have you painted your profile picture yourself?

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 1:18am PDT - promote requested by kulpims.

Seems to me this is just another facet in an agenda to push needed public facilities into the private sector where they can be monetized more effectively.

Privatized prisons, there's incentive to imprison more people. Including bribes to judges to send more people that way.

So a privatized school.... they have kids as a captive audience unless they get out via home schooling (which I guess will be attacked next if it's seen to be growing when privatization takes over). It will be in their best interest to pack the most kids they can into facilities. And I'll venture to guess that testing to insure kids are being taught will be influenced through lobbying or bribes to be catered specifically to the material taught in schools. There may even be incentive to punish kids with detention and saturday sessions to increase revenue by showing discipline problems that need more funding to correct......whether they exist or not.


In my opinion, right now schools spend too much money, time, and long term investments on sport related costs. The maintenance costs on upkeeping, repairing, and maintaining a stadium that's only used a few times a month or a field which is only used by a handful of students is just dumb. They claim that football and other ticket entry events pay for a lot of it, but I have never seen numbers to support that in the majority of cases. Plus you add in equipment, coaching, and busing costs to take students to other schools or play offs.......there's just no way you are recouping those costs. Meanwhile you have kids using 10-15 year old textbooks that are falling apart, in classrooms with leaky windows and roofs.

So I don't think privatizing schools is the answer, but I think there are programs which could easily be cut.......but it would not be popular at all with the local communities who've had those programs for decades. Which is why they don't do it and continue to piss away money on sports facilities and programs which eat up a lot of funding and benefit a minority of students. Where as art/music programs, which also benefit a small number of students but could be grown to include more, where the school needs to provide a room and instructor and the kids bear the cost of instruments/materials and other odds and ends get cut.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Elect someone who will make all the schools Charter Schools...then we'll watch our country crumble. Come on people we can do it...we can be the generation that brings the USA down and build it back up again!

Was anyone else reminded of a Christmas Carol whenever that stupid interviewer opened her mouth?



"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their
useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."



Personally, having had some experience teaching part time while in uni, you could not pay me enough money to do it. So I have nothing but the utmost respect for those that are willing to put up with non-stop stress, abuse and crappy pay and still try to educate kids. Damon is absolutely right.

Schools are and should be about knowelge and not about capitalist ideas like producing peons able for work...

Or we would all be teabaggers..even non usasian,,,

How can I be failing Inglish? That's unpossible...

>> ^RedSky:

1. So is every other job.

I just want to address this one point. Every job is not equally stressful. Have you ever worked as a teacher? It's a difficult job with young kids and with teenagers it's damn near impossible.

Jobs in general should have better job security. Maybe if the employer treated the employee less easily replaceable then they would have better employees. How about taking care when hiring and taking care before firing? That might help some. Damon is right, there is a paternalistic view that somehow the company doesn't need the worker even though there would be no company without the worker. There should be in any business deal an agreement that is mutually beneficial for both parties. Even amongst older people now there is a feeling that companies treat them like they are disposable which leads people to treat jobs like they are disposable. Businesses should encourage unions and treating their employees like they are the lifeblood of their business and then watch the economy flourish along with their business.

-Karl

1. Do not equate jobs. I was a public education teacher for four years, and I've been an IT pro for seven years, now as a senior consultant for AD, Exchange, VMware, and storage, with too many certifications to list them all off the top of my head. I just want to make this clear. Even with all the learning I've done to get all those certifications, it wouldn't take me the five years it took me to get a master's degree in education. Even with "summers off", without a doubt, I worked more hours in a year as a teacher than I have as an IT pro with 2-3 weeks paid vacation. Even in the most demanding IT jobs I've had (one was Premier Support for Microsoft Support Services), I have never been more stressed out than I was as a teacher, and I got paid half as much to teach.

2. You get better with experience as a teacher, but the ability to teach is also a gift. You must have some innate ability for it to actually be a good teacher. Not only do you have to know your subject matter, but you must also be able to relate it to an audience with completely different backgrounds, styles of learning, while managing a classroom of immature people by their very nature. Dismissing it as an "acquired skill just like anything else" shows an dizzying amount of ignorance about what the job entails.

3. You're half right about this. Teachers in my experience fell into 3 categories - great teachers, slackers, and those who tried really hard but failed because of a lack of talent. Of the slackers, the overwhelming majority were people who got the idealistic burning desire to teach beaten out of them by the system. They didn't move on or weren't fired because they simply didn't want to start over, and the system was short of teachers anyway. I moved on because my wife had medical issues, so I needed to earn enough for both of us, and there was no way I could do that by teaching. It took me 2-3 years to fully transition into IT. By the second year, I realized I didn't want to be a teacher anyway because of how screwed up public education was. I still believe in public education, but it's the external factors that prevent you from doing your job, whether it be woeful funding, bad salary, unsupportive parents, ludicrous insistence that standardized multiple choice tests accurately measured knowledge and understanding of a subject, etc.

Here's the problem with "getting rid of those bad teachers" - we don't have enough teachers as is, so you want less teachers? Can't wait to see those classes of 37 go to 45 or 50. Until you address the problem of attracting and keeping teachers, all that stuff is moot.

As for merit pay, I'm fine with that as long as something can be devised that accurately measures the teacher's performance. Standardized test scores won't do that because, nor absolute values on grades, etc.

5. See above. Most teachers' unions are against merit pay because no one has come up with a fair evaluation of a teacher's performance.

As for the arts, exposure to arts help students beyond the specifics of the art, assisting with learning and comprehension of every other subject. Ridding art from schools is a big mistake. Major advancements in science for example is derived by creative thinking, which art helps to develop. And this isn't just some psychological BS.

>> ^RedSky:

1. So is every other job.
2. It's an acquired skill like anything else. Also, let's not equate private tutoring with teaching a class, they are different things entirely and while some teachers certainly fill that role it is entirely unreasonable to suggest that most students will either demand this kind of attention or that most teachers will provide it (outside of what their job entails). I should probably disclose that my mother is a teacher too.
3. I'm not sure what you mean here. What I'm saying is people who don't want stress in their job and potentially don't want to put in a great deal of effort work in more secure positions, typically government related. I am not saying that all government employees are lazy and unmotivated, I'm simply saying that the obvious and apparent perks they provide attract certain kinds of people disproportionately.
4. This is why I would argue there needs to be a way to evaluate performance and reward teachers that do well. Rewarding them will allow the wages of teachers who are good at what they do rise and encourage more talented individuals who want to teach into a field they would otherwise not consider. As I said in my previous comment as far as I'm concerned the primary skills that schools should be teaching are reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. These are also easily able to be evaluated with standardised tests. The same standardised tests that determine university enrollment. As far as I'm concerned I see no reason a test like this cannot evaluate a teacher's capability in improving year upon year results of students. Yes, it cannot be a primary measurement and it is certainly not perfect, but if your intention to increase the standards of teaching and you accept the impractically/implausibility of vastly increasing the teaching budget, you have to accept that improvements have to come from improved efficiency and effectiveness. You can't begin to address that unless you have some way of measuring it.
5. No skilled or academically minded industry is a factory. Yet everything from engineering to consulting to scientific research companies thrive in a competitive economy. Am I suggesting privatising and cutting funding? Not at all. I think poor neighborhoods need to be subsidised to encourage good teachers to teach there. I have no particular issue with public schools although I see no reason charter schools should not receive eligible to such government assistance and what currently exists where the funding is there to serve the common good of creating an educated and knowledgeable society. My problem is entrenched union interest groups who by virtue of the campaign contributions they endow to their elected representatives, block any capacity to reward good teachers and who in effect keep teacher wages depressed and a whole bunch of talented individuals who would have otherwise genuinely considered teaching out of schools.
My point is not that I don't think art/music/drama are valuable aspects of schooling. Rather that schools in poor neighbourhoods are failing to endow students with the basic skills they need to enter a skilled job or for that matter to enter university. I think when people make arguments like this (which if I recall one of the people in this video did), they fly in stark contrast to reality that many simply do not even grasp the basics of education.
Schooling at it's base is not rooted in wishy washy concepts of creativity, expressing individuality or character, they are part of growing up but not the function of school at its core. Math and reading skills are ultimately rooted in effective teacher instruction followed by repetition. No amount of related activities will dress up the fact that if you want to function in modern society you need to go through these trials and tribulations. Until all schools can do that, the last thing I want to listen to is some guy at a rally preaching about abstract skills.

@heropsycho

1. My original point was more aimed at questioning whether teaching is so exceptional. It is certainly harder than many other jobs, but does it deserve exclusive status with it's restrictive labour laws? If so, do you believe jobs equal to or more stressful than teaching should receive the same benefits? More specifically, if we knew that greater job security in stressful jobs created better outcomes (ie, in teaching the students are better taught), then why is it that the private sector has not willingly adopted this? What I'm saying is, there's double standards at play.

2. This is getting off topic, but I don't think anything is innate. We may have a predisposition to better at certain things but anything that we wish to excel at will ultimately require countless hours of practice. Again, I think you're being selective in exemplifying only a very good teacher which directly engages with everyone in the class. Most of what I recall (from 4 schools) involved teachers teaching in their own style 'at' a class, not directly to individuals.

3. My point would be that merit pay would raise the wages of 'good' teachers and thereby attract more teachers into the workplace. It won't ever be perfect as a system, enterprise bargaining in the private sector is subject to the whims of cronyism/favoritism of your superiors and isn't a perfect reflection of performance, but as a system it functions. By the way, I'm not in any way implying multiple choice tests are sufficient, open ended questions can be standardized just fine.

5. I would put down the opposition of unions to merit pay to several reasons:

a) Unwillingness to change - this reflects all changes not just merit pay. There are potential ups and downs but there is no incentive for them to take a risk. You would think flagging students scores relative to other countries (particularly Scandinavian and rich SE Asian countries) would be an incentive, but ultimately they are delinked from these outcomes.

b) Potential fall in membership - A move to individual wage setting over a seniority based wage (at least that is what it's here in OZ) would diminish their power and their members base. Standardized wages are generally seen in low skilled jobs where there is high turnover, a large supply of willing workers to replace them and therefore constant pressure to push down wages - a place where unions have great value in preventing this from happening. We both agree teaching requires considerable expertise. Were the labor system to move to individual wage setting on performance their role would diminish and their members base would dwindle.

As far as I'm concerned merit pay is but a scapegoat to justify their opposition from a more selfish point of view.

Last point - As I made sure to mention, I'm not opposed to the arts. What I'm appalled by is teacher's union activists talking about the benefits of these ultimately extracurricular areas when there are countless schools in impoverished regions unable to imbue many of their students with the ability to hold down an rudimentary job. Talking about these luxury activities and painting a rosy picture detached from reality, while glossing over the overt failings of basis education in derelict communities is disgusting to me frankly.

1. I have no problem with teachers being held more accountable in a fair manner, and that they could be let go for poor performance more easily than they are now. The fundamental problem with getting rid of subpar teachers is we don't have enough teachers as is. You can be selective when there actually is a surplus of people wanting to teach. You can't pay teachers a crappy salary, then fire them more readily for poor performance when you have class sizes of 30-40 students. That's my entire point. Right now, the problem is not that you can't get rid of bad teachers. The problem is you can't attract enough good ones, and when you do get them, they leave because the job sucks, and they're not paid enough.

2. We are born with predispositions for certain kinds of intelligence. The ability to teach well is an exceptional skillset. You have to have the right blend of intelligence to learn the subject matter you want to teach, plus the emotional and social intelligence to relate that information to other people, most of whom do not think like you do. The natural ability alone isn't enough, you are correct. But there are people who just will never be good at teaching no matter how hard they work at it. If you haven't the social and emotional intelligence to relate well to others, you won't be a good teacher.

3. The devil is in the details. If a teacher has a class of 37 8th grade students, most with special needs with learning disabilities, and the teacher gets no special education help, should the teacher's performance evaluation be negative if the kids' performances are subpar? (I faced that my last year of teaching, went to guidance dept, raised a stink about it, and their response was that's the best they could do. Thankfully, I left the first week of the school year when I got my first permanent IT job, but I raised a stink anyway because that wasn't fair to the person who would replace me. Our pay wasn't influenced by student performance, thankfully, because that's fundamentally unfair. What about the fact that the #1 factor in a student's achievement is the socio-economic class of the parent(s)? Does that mean teachers in inner-city schools should get more negative performance evaluations than teachers in suburbia? It's easier said than done. And this is the problem with comparing how the business sector works with public education. In the business sector, if these factors caused the business to not perform well, the business would get shut down, and there would be far less negative societal problems because of it. Sure, a few people would lose their jobs, but it's not as likely to cause very long lasting repercussions. If public schools' mission is to provide everyone with a basic education, you can't shut the inner-city school down. Even if you don't shut them down, if teachers realize they'll get paid less because their performance hinges on factors that are not under their control, such as the socio-economic class of the student, they'll flee inner-city schools to teach in suburbia, which means the inner-city schools who desperately need the best teachers will get worse ones.

It's really simple to say there should be merit based pay for teachers. On principle, I agree. But I haven't yet seen a merit based pay system for teachers that addresses all of these kinds of problems, which are significant fundamental problems you can't simply ignore just because such a system works in the private sector.

5.

a) There is incentive to take the risk if it also meant if teachers perform better, overall pay would on average could go up for teachers. But that's not on the table, let's be honest. The real reason teachers aren't getting paid more on average is there's not enough public support for the higher taxes that would have to be paid. And once again, it's a crappy job as is, so why would someone be in favor of making a crappy job even less secure? You don't have enough teachers, period, and even if you did, you're not attracting enough talented individuals to become and remain teachers. How does it make sense to make the job less secure then until you correct that problem.

b) I disagree with you about teacher unions. First off, I lump in any organization that collectively advocates for employees as a "union" when I hear people say "teacher's unions". Here in Virginia, there is the Virginia Education Association, which is an affiliate of the National Education Association. However, it is not a union; it can't initiate strikes. It's a professional association, just like the NEA at the national level. Some states do in fact have teacher unions, some don't. Would you call the following technically unions:

American Medical Association
American Bar Association
American Dental Association

So to lump teachers all together and say they are all unionized is not true.

The VEA and the NEA would not be worried in the slightest about a reduction of members because they still advocate for things other than pay, and teachers are fools if they don't join because, as an example, the VEA/NEA is the absolute cheapest way to acquire liability insurance (if you get sued for anything you do at your job, and there's a lot you can get sued for that makes no sense).

I'm not particularly gung ho about unions in general, nor for teacher unions and associations, but their existence is needed, and they're not nearly as rigid as you're suggesting.

The arts thing, once again, the arts can be a driver to motivation to higher achievement in other things. I won't say they are per se correct in what they advocate, but that would be towards the bottom of the list of things that should elicit that kind of reaction by society in general. There is far more pressing issues in education where you have people who fundamentally don't understand the issue and advocate horrifying policies.

Btw, thank you for actually being open to a discussion about this. I hope you're at least learning something out of it, and are open to changing your mind at least some.

@heropsycho

Same to you, glad to have a discussion and agree to disagree, not much else to be said on my part.

What a TERRIBLE opening LOL

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