When Gates speaks to the teachers' unions and their strangle hold on our public school system, I'll pay attention to what he says and lobby Ms Rice to take him on as her running mate.

We're paying trillions of dollars so our kids can be exposed to the relentless indoctrination of leftwing nutcase propaganda and virtually nothing else. No reading, writing, or 'rithmetic. No history, no geography, no mathematics, no science, no civics, no American history, no world history, no classical music or instruction on art history , nor basic living skills like hygiene and taking care of their finances.

Those who have no contact with the schools would be in shock should they audit some classes. Text books may not be brought home, not because they might be lost or misplaced, but so parents don't actually see what's in them, not that it would matter much since by now most of parents of the current crop of school age kids were themselves "educated" in the same manner and don't know any better.

The failure of our public schools lies directly on the head of the unions and the politicians in their thrall. Follow the money and there's a lot of money in the ed biz. Class size, classroom aides, computers and up-to-date equipment while nice extras, are not factors in student learning. It's no mystery how students learn. We know how to teach kids so they learn to take their rightful place as contributing citizens of the U.S. of A. However, during our late and unlamented cultural revolution, control of public schools was taken away from locally elected school boards ostensibly because the schools weren't equal.

Those communities where the residents cared about their kids, paid high taxes and supported better schools. People who wanted the best for their kids, went to those communities to live. Simple supply and demand. Now in the interest of fairness, all public schools are bastions of political correctness gone mad and have fallen, as most things that are artificially corrected for "fairness" do, to the lowest common denominator.

The unions will be stopped eventually, but too many kids will have failed to become adults capable of participating in our democracy in the interim.

ERP!

If you can, contact me off list. I'm hoping you are in IL.

Your take above is dead on. I'm working on a political project that attacks the issue head on here in IL.

If the right people act in concert, and aggressively attack the "government/education complex" with a sophisticated & well designed campaign, I think we may be able to break the back of these people.

I'm with you on Gates - pubulum, not for the specific content, but for the failure to say what REALLY needs to be said.

The notion that 'the teachers' are to blame is just loopy.

The blame lies with administrators, politicians and parents. There is some residue blame in perpetuating a bad system on the part of some teachers, but most want to do a good job but ar hamstrung by a structure that makes it impossible.

Given a choice between a new scoreboard for the football field, and upgrading the computers, every schoolboard not in an affluent, heavily Jewish and/or Asian suburb will vote for the scoreboard. The politicians demand the nonsense in the schools, not the teachers. Every single cheesy problem society has, whether it is integration or sex issues or drugs, gets dumped on the school system, an institution manifestly unfit to deal with them.

ERP complains about standards. The reason there are no standards in the public schools is that parents will not accept it when their uncivilized, stupid, lazy, violent, over-sexed, filthy little snotnoses fail to meet even the laughably low standards we have now. For every parent that does care about education, there are at least ten for whom school is a place to dump the little bastard off so the parents don't have to see or smell him or it is a place for him to get a credential, get his passport stamped rather than actually earn it.

It was politicians who demanded that corporal punishment end in schools, who lowered the test standards, who keep the disruptive in the class where they can destroy the learning process for everyone else, who allow the violent felons to prey on the other children while rendering the school powerless to deal with it, who 'mainstream' the mentally defective into normal classes, who order teachers to instruct elementary school children in contraceptive use, and a million other horribles.

The reason the politicians do this is quite simple. The parents want it that way. If you remove a kid who beats other kids with a baseball bat, that kid's parents hire a mouthpiece and sue the school. If you fail a kid who doesn't do his homework, the parents run to the administrators and complain. If they are politically-connected in small-town America, school board members will harass you as a teacher for doing your job.

Let me sum it up. THE KIDS ARE SCUM BECAUSE THEIR PARENTS ARE SCUM, AND THOSE PARENTS WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO GROW UP AND BECOME SCUM JUST LIKE THEM. AND THE POLITICIANS DO WHAT PLACATES THE PARENTS NOT WHAT EDUCATES THE KIDS. You see it again and again and again.

When that changes the schools will change, but the hoi polloi being what it is, I am not going to hold my breath.

Bart,

You couldn't be more wrong and the reason you're wrong is that you have no historical perspective. Our public schools worked extremely well until the mid-60's when the Soviet led anti-Viet Nam war movement escalated into the destruction of our infrastructure including the public schools and replaced it all with leftwing nutcases.

Listen and learn.

Parents have absolutely no say in how the schools are run, who gets hired, the curriculum or anything else and neither do the actual teachers who are as much in thrall to the unions as are legislators.

Do you hear me?

The teachers are not in charge of anything.

They have no control of how they teach, what they teach, or the leftwing politics of school sponsored functions. In fact, if they object, they'll be out. A good example: the letters from a NYC 6th grade to a soldier in Korea berating him for killing people, bombing mosques and other ludicrous things. You can bet no letters from school children thanking and praising soldiers would never have gotten out of the building and the teacher and children would have been disciplined to boot.

Electronic scoreboards and the like are usually gifts from booster clubs, the PTA, etc. paid for by student sponsored car washes and other fund drives, donations from members, students and parents. Projects like buying extra A/V equipment, computers etc. merely take your eye off the ball and are not necessary teaching tools. They have nothing to do with students learning.

Constant whining about low teacher pay, crowded classrooms, etc. are also diversions. Do the arithmetic yourself. Divide the hours in the classroom into the annual salary and surprise yourself. Teachers no longer have lunch duty, bus line duty, etc. There are aides for every conceivable area of the teacher's day and please spare us the old canard of staying up all night grading papers. That one went away with the dodo bird.

If you're a teacher, as I suspect, stop listening to and buying into the propaganda aimed at you. To your union leaders, you are very much in the same category as students, parents and school administrators. Simply stated, you all need to be managed and managed you are.

Teachers' unions are deliberately following the party line of dumbing down our citizenry so we'll be amenable to drinking the koolaid and becoming good little followers of those who want to redistribute our income and then make us feel good about ourselves because we're helping those less fortunate.

It would be far better for the less fortunate if they could benefit as we ourselves did, by being prepared in school to fend for ourselves and keep a sharp eye out for our public servants including those running the public school unions.

I believe you have the ability to think this through for yourself or you wouldn't be reading posts like one. Keep us in the loop. erp617@yahoo.com

Bart:

Who do you think the administrators are?

The administrators are people who teach for a few years, find they hate it but want to remain in the system so they take a few courses and get a credential. Usually, their first job in administration is due to being somebody's cousin or nephew. Then, it's all gravy.

ERP,

My teaching is university-level but my parents each taught in NYC for over 30 years. And my father was a chapter chairman for the UFT at Tottenville HS for a fair number of years, was a friend and neighbor of Al Shanker for a time and was on the negotiating committee during the Lindsay Administration, so that is my perspective.

My company gets flooded with math teachers applying to join our firm, as is the case for actuary jobs all over America, so I have my doubts as to whether your allegation about high pay and great conditions has any merit. There isn't a week that goes by when I don't see a few.

The AFT, I will not opine about the NEA, has always been in the forefront of the fight for freedom. It was in the AFT building in DC where Solidarity maintained its offices during the Cold War, and those offices were free. The AFT was also supportive of Reagan's efforts in Latin America. So that canard goes nowhere with me.

I know teachers who have been arrested in class because they broke up a fight between two kids. I know teachers who have been sued for giving kids homework. I know teachers who have been assaulted and the principal covered it up to keep his record clean.

You are however right about the schools being better back in the 50s and 60s, as my dad will constantly assert. The lack of discipline and all the other horribles came from the politicians not the teachers. People like my parents or Shanker believed in standards.

Yes, teachers.

Bart:

You're confusing administrators with policy makers. Policy is made at union headquarters, not at the local level. Ordinary administrators are in the same column as teachers, parents and students. They are most definitely not in charge. Savvy administrators who are ambitious to rise into the corridors of power do their slave masters dirty work gladly, other administrators do it with a heavy heart, but stay in the system for the same reasons most people stay in jobs they don't like. It's what they know how to do, they can't afford to give up the benefits, have family obligations, etc.

There are a lot of issues here. I also have experience in higher education and am familiar with teacher's ed. programs around the country. As you know, they attract the very bottom of the barrel of college applicants. Most of them see teaching as an easy undemanding job, and I didn't say teaching was the road to riches, I said the constant whining about teachers being underpaid is a distraction and diversion so people don't figure out what's really going on.

Occasionally you get highly intelligent, bright, outgoing and capable person who want to teach and be a force for good. So they teach a few years, find out they can't make a difference and rather than stay in a dreary dead end job, they move on. There are plenty of jobs for talented people. It's hardly surprising that former math teachers come to your company for actuary jobs. Those are jobs looking for people with backgrounds in mathematics.

I'm a New Yorker and am very familiar with Albert Shanker's work and if you knew him at all, you'd know that before he died he denounced the direction the unions were taking the schools. I'm not a Shanker fan nor the fan of any union, but I admired Shanker's courage. I'm sure he suffered a lot for those brave and truthful words.

I attended New York City public schools during the 40's and 50's. The education I got stands right up there with any private school or Ivy League college and I've never felt that my credentials were inferior in any way. Alas no more.

You are aware I am sure that City College has more Nobel Prize winners among its alumni than any other institution in the world! Many of those brilliant people, like me, didn't even speak English when they entered first grade, but their teachers didn't think we needed to be shunted off to bi-lingual classes and we all caught on pretty quick. That's what the public schools once were and what they've become isn't even a cruel parody.

Without an enlightened citizenry, this county can be destroyed. That's why it's vital our schools be returned to local control. It's the only way to ensure that our country will remain strong for our grandchildren.

The best of luck to you, and lighten up. You're too young to be so angry. Go to Central Park and have look at the "Flags" -- I understand they are quite mirth producing.