May 16, 2006

TRUST-BUSTING (via Tom Morin):

Homework Help, From a World Away: Web Joins Students, Cheap Overseas Tutors (Amit R. Paley, 5/15/06, Washington Post)

In an hour-long session that cost just $18, the Indian tutor, who said his name was Mike, spent an hour walking Del Monte through such esoteric concepts as confidence intervals and alpha divisions, Del Monte recalled. He got an A on the final exam. "Mike helped me unscramble everything in my mind," the 20-year-old said.

Thousands of U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. [...]

But educational outsourcing has sparked a fierce response from teachers and other critics who argue that some companies are using unqualified overseas tutors to increase their profit margins.

"We don't believe that education should become a business of outsourcing," said Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues at the American Federation of Teachers. "When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me."


So bring them over here and use them to break the teachers' unions.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 16, 2006 2:12 PM
Comments

The whole concept of unions is practically superfluous in modern American. And almost without exception, present-day unions are Evil.

Posted by: b at May 16, 2006 2:57 PM

So, how would the AFT react towards a video course given by Hugo Chavez?

Or, more to the point, by Oswaldo Paya?

Posted by: ratbert at May 16, 2006 3:06 PM

This is so stupid: "When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me." Why? Billions of Indians, and billions of Chinese children are taught by "overseas people".

"some companies are using unqualified overseas tutors to increase their profit margins" and "to boost [the students'] grades and SAT scores". Yeah, there is definitely a problem here.

Another Glenn Reynolds' Army of Davids invading entrenched American establishment. Thank Al Gore for creating the internet.

Posted by: ic at May 16, 2006 3:11 PM

Teachers unions are, I believe, unique in that they are not held responsible for the defective products they send out in the world. They have no problem denouncing any attempt to remedy their failures and demand that they and only they are qualified to continue to "educate" our kids. New-speak and PC utterly gone mad. Lewis Carroll would have had a hard time satirizing our public schools.

Posted by: erp at May 16, 2006 3:51 PM

Bureaucracies, government employees in general, left-wing politicos and,to a lesser extent, Wall Street analysts as well as members of the 'fourth estate', seem to be groups uniquely positioned to avoid the conseqiences of their bad work. To be consistently wrong about almost everything and keep your job is what makes being employed by the administrative state such an attractive job for incompetents.You can't immunize yourself from market forces forces and expect things to function properly for very long.

Posted by: Tom C.,Stamford,Ct. at May 17, 2006 6:42 AM
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