Teachers and Students... Who Serves Who?
What's wrong with this picture?
In this morning's edition of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (also known as The Enemy Paper or the Star-and-Sickle), the front page has the picture above the fold. The headline: Finding Teachers For Tomorrow. The first thing I noticed... nice to see a teacher wearing a Che shirt.
Forget the fact that he dresses like a student (big shock, he's a college student), he's wearing the fashion icon of a murdering commie thug.
As if that weren't enough, I start reading the article and a nationwide program (Breakthrough Collaborative) apparently considers the lack of teachers "of color" a big problem. Not worried about quality at all, are you folks? Later, the article says (according to Breakthrough Collaborative) 57 percent of its potential teachers are of color while the national average is 17 percent.
Call me ignorant and color me closed-minded, but my main concern with teachers center on their qualifications, success rate, ability to speak English, the judgement to know that Che was a murdering commie thug, and the taste to keep them from wearing a shirt with the image of Che on it. Obviously, I don't want them to be anti-American, but finding a teacher who doesn't blame America first is getting harder and harder. If they actually dress like a grown-up that's more into the bargain for me. If they happen to be black, Irish, Chinese, Scottish, Indian, Nigerian, Russian, or Mexican I'm not really going to have a problem... because it is largely irrelevant.
The teachers are there for the students... meaning the purpose of schools is to have teachers serve the students' education. It isn't the other way around... the students are not in school to provide jobs for teachers, much less provide teachers "of color" a job via Affirmative Action.
Could someone get a sense of priorities, please?
(Also, it is apparently going to cost and additional $800 million for 2006 and 2007. We don't have a money problem, folks... this is vast prosperity.)
UPDATE: July 26th, 2005 at 2:10 PM
See Rambix for a similar story.
In this morning's edition of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (also known as The Enemy Paper or the Star-and-Sickle), the front page has the picture above the fold. The headline: Finding Teachers For Tomorrow. The first thing I noticed... nice to see a teacher wearing a Che shirt.
Forget the fact that he dresses like a student (big shock, he's a college student), he's wearing the fashion icon of a murdering commie thug.
As if that weren't enough, I start reading the article and a nationwide program (Breakthrough Collaborative) apparently considers the lack of teachers "of color" a big problem. Not worried about quality at all, are you folks? Later, the article says (according to Breakthrough Collaborative) 57 percent of its potential teachers are of color while the national average is 17 percent.
Call me ignorant and color me closed-minded, but my main concern with teachers center on their qualifications, success rate, ability to speak English, the judgement to know that Che was a murdering commie thug, and the taste to keep them from wearing a shirt with the image of Che on it. Obviously, I don't want them to be anti-American, but finding a teacher who doesn't blame America first is getting harder and harder. If they actually dress like a grown-up that's more into the bargain for me. If they happen to be black, Irish, Chinese, Scottish, Indian, Nigerian, Russian, or Mexican I'm not really going to have a problem... because it is largely irrelevant.
The teachers are there for the students... meaning the purpose of schools is to have teachers serve the students' education. It isn't the other way around... the students are not in school to provide jobs for teachers, much less provide teachers "of color" a job via Affirmative Action.
Could someone get a sense of priorities, please?
(Also, it is apparently going to cost and additional $800 million for 2006 and 2007. We don't have a money problem, folks... this is vast prosperity.)
UPDATE: July 26th, 2005 at 2:10 PM
See Rambix for a similar story.
posted by Badda at
8:09:00 AM
