I Have Returned!

Did I just originate that phrase? Maybe someone before used it, maybe? Ha Ha....

Just a quick note:

I've spent quite a bit of time the past two or three weeks with teachers, college, high school, and elementary all. I am struck by two things: one, how universal the dislike and lack of respect shown toward administrators and, two, how many teachers seem to turn their backs on stopping the idiocy.

It's no secret of my disdain for administrators--I don't hide it. And, I suppose, it's no surprise that teachers feel toward them as teachers do; after all, administrators deserve it due to their lack of honesty, integrity, courage, and, in case, intelligence. So, I'm not stunned. But how many choose, "to just close my classroom door and teach" or some other such comment has irritated me. How can these people then follow that with "we're there for the kids" or "we're doing what's best for the kids," etc.? Again, I make no secret that I think that's a bunch of hooey. Teachers are not there "for the kids." But that's an issue for another day (and the one or two people who might actually read this are welcome to reply, positively or negatively--even telling me I'm full of dog doo-doo).

How can they just sit there and let all this crap happen in the schools, just close their eyes to it, while either "just closing the door" or "accepting the crap" while complaining away from school and administrators and then say "We're here for the kids?" More hooey! I told one teacher the other night, in a discussion about another's competence (I said "lousy teacher," the other said "very good teacher"), "Stupid people can't be good teachers." I mean it and I also think teachers who lack courage and integrity can't be very good either. At the very least, what about standards, rigor, etc.? But, again, fodder for another post.

What I am reminded of here, yet again, is Pastor Niemoller: "First they came for the Jews and I wasn't a Jew, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Communists and I wasn't a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the...and I wasn't a..., so I said nothing. Then they came after me and there was nobody left to say anything." Certainly not to trivialize the history behind this, not at all, but apply this to education--curriculum, hiring, standards, and much, much more.

Out....