Public education and the NEA: It's all about the Benjamins, baby


Vort
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https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/student-enrollment-in-seattle-continues-to-drop-heres-what-it-means/

The NEA is surely one of the most powerful unions in the US. (This link says they're #1, which I'm inclined to believe.) They have spent decades trying to convince the gullible that they're in it for The Children. Looks like that strategy hasn't paid off sufficiently, so they're no longer trying to hide behind The Children. They need those public funds, darn it!

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2 hours ago, Vort said:

https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/student-enrollment-in-seattle-continues-to-drop-heres-what-it-means/

The NEA is surely one of the most powerful unions in the US. (This link says they're #1, which I'm inclined to believe.) They have spent decades trying to convince the gullible that they're in it for The Children. Looks like that strategy hasn't paid off sufficiently, so they're no longer trying to hide behind The Children. They need those public funds, darn it!

Yeah, I can't understand why wokeness is causing problems in the public school system.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/02/principal-accused-of-wanting-to-oust-white-teachers-created-school-of-insanity-petition/

It seems to be doing exactly what they want it to do.

Edited by Carborendum
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My brother lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and his ward recently merged with another one.  They have 900 members of record, maybe 1/3 of whom are active; only about 30 youth and another 30 primary kids.  My brother says that many of the families with kids have gotten so frustrated with the schools over the last couple of years (mostly over the home schooling/COVID farce) that they finally hauled up stakes and moved to places like Utah where schools were actually in session—this in spite of numerous stake conferences where visiting GAs have expressly and repeatedly asked the membership *not* to move to Utah but to stay in CA and build Zion where they are.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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13 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

My brother lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and his ward recently merged with another one.  They have 900 members of record, maybe 1/3 of whom are active; only about 30 youth and another 30 primary kids.  My brother says that many of the families with kids have gotten so frustrated with the schools over the last couple of years (mostly over the home schooling/COVID farce) that they finally hauled up stakes and moved to places like Utah where schools were actually in session—this in spite of numerous stake conferences where visiting GAs have expressly and repeatedly asked the membership *not* to move to Utah but to stay in CA and build Zion where they are.

I am so grateful for my wife's family who opened my eyes to the problems with public schooling.  I can only hope that the past couple of years have opened the eyes of many more.

The truth is that I had trouble accepting it, myself.  I had a great education growing up.  We had teachers who actually spoke about the 10 Commandments in school.  No one cried about it.  And the secular topics were taught really well in most of my classes (although there were some teachers...).   

My wife's family, OTOH, were in a very different school district.  And they saw the early trappings of public school very blatantly.  They started homeschooling when it wasn't really 100% legal.  They pulled many work-arounds just to stay out of jail and keep their son from getting beat up every day.

When we married, we hadn't quite settled the matter for our family.  The rubber hit the road when we had our first child.  And my wife put her foot down and said we were homeschooling.  Then when the realities of homeschooling were right before my face, I was SOOO glad we did it.  Even if all this woke nonsense was absent, homeschooling was absolutely the best for my kids. 

Finally, when the wokeness became obvious and the country finally started to awaken to our awful state, we took a look at our kids and realized, these children truly are the great and noble spirits saved for the last days. 

I was recently pondering what children today would be like Samuel.  A 10 year old?  A 12 year old?  Even a 16 year old Prophet?  Who would take them seriously?  I considered that two of my sons were those who would have been taken seriously at 12 years old by those who know them.  Two more would have been taken seriously at 16 years old by those who know them.

This may seem like I'm bragging about my sons.  I'm not.  I believe most of this generation had such great souls.  But not all families were up to the task of raising them in these times.  And with all the stuff in public schools today?  How would such noble spirits even know what to do when all they hear is the church of the devil?

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When I went to high school, the facility in question was physically dangerous.

The head principal was a textbook-perfect example of "The Peter Principle", a football coach who kept getting kicked upstairs because he was too incompetent to be of use in his previous roles but couldn't be forced out for some reason or another. His incompetence and self-centeredness filtered down, and when mingled with the incompetence and self-centeredness of some of the other adults there - particularly the police officers provided by the city, as many of them had no business wearing a badge - created a general atmosphere of nihilism and apathy among the students. This atmosphere was such that fights were pretty much a daily occurrence, and many kids (myself included) had to actually avoid eating in the cafeteria if we didn't want to get in the middle of things. 

Making matters worse is that, for reasons I mentioned elsewhere, I couldn't get my parents to listen to me and so a great many problems I was facing spiraled out of control; by the time I *could* finally get them to notice, it was often too late and the damage had been done. Suffice to say that my time in high school was life-altering in all the wrong ways. 

My mom is only just now coming to realize what I went through, but even then she still doesn't want to hear all of the details because she "understands" what I went through as it is. 

For obvious reasons, if I ever do have children (highly unlikely at this point) I will be quite hesitant to leave them at the mercy of the system.

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On 7/5/2022 at 12:14 PM, Vort said:

https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/student-enrollment-in-seattle-continues-to-drop-heres-what-it-means/

The NEA is surely one of the most powerful unions in the US. (This link says they're #1, which I'm inclined to believe.) They have spent decades trying to convince the gullible that they're in it for The Children. Looks like that strategy hasn't paid off sufficiently, so they're no longer trying to hide behind The Children. They need those public funds, darn it!

Of course they're not in it for the children. 

I'll be honest: I'm not in teaching for the children. I'm in it because I like kids and wanted a jack-of-all-trades sort of deal. I honestly think one big part of the problem with public education was the divide between needing it to be for the children and an onslaught of bizarre expectations and curriculums. 

People are still desperately demanding teachers "do it for the children" while teachers have zero power over what they get to teach because the powers that be are going crazy with what they expect to be taught. 

The public is wanting them to "do it for the children" because they don't want to bother with the children themselves.

I don't support or really like the NEA, but obviously they're not doing it for the kids but themselves as workers and the base of things that's a hard thing to fault.

Edited by Backroads
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9 hours ago, Backroads said:

and the base of things that's a hard thing to fault.

I agree with everything you have written, except for those last six words. When the NEA bills itself as an "education association" and claim the benefit of the children as its purpose, it is fair to hold it to that standard.

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11 minutes ago, Vort said:

I agree with everything you have written, except for those last six words. When the NEA bills itself as an "education association" and claim the benefit of the children as its purpose, it is fair to hold it to that standard.

Fair enough. Would you prefer teacher association to be more honest?

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5 hours ago, Backroads said:

Fair enough. Would you prefer teacher association to be more honest?

Perhaps I have oversimplified the argument until it distorts my meaning. It's not so much the name of the union. It's the whole sales job of "we're here for the children." I don't question the integrity of most teachers as far as their reasons for being a teacher go. Obviously, most who go into education do it for the children, in some sense. (Not everyone, though. I'm sure you know at least some teachers who make you think, "Why on earth did this person choose to be a teacher of children?")

But why do professional, publicly funded teachers even exist? They exist because we as a society and as individuals value our children's education. The children's education must be the top priority. Specifically, we do not value teachers and teaching merely because the teachers need to earn money. Yet that is precisely the reasoning that underlies the article linked above.

Homeschooling is a concern? But why? Well, because it threatens to destabilize public schools. But who cares? Why should destabilization of public schools be a concern if a superior method exists? Ay, there's the rub.

best-bbq-rubs.jpg

The argument is that homeschooling is an inferior way of educating one's children. Okay, they should lead with that. It doesn't have anything to do with teacher job security. (It's also a fairly easily refuted claim, which I suspect is why it's not explicitly made.)

Or perhaps the argument is really that public schooling is too valuable to let fail. Okay, well, that's an argument I can get behind, at least to some degree. But that raises the question: Why do we perceive that public schooling is in danger of failing? Certainly not because some people homeschool, and certainly not because some people spend tens of thousands of dollars sending their children to private schools. It comes down to money; public schools aren't getting enough of it.

But even if that observation is true, it doesn't address the central issue. If the public schools are in danger of failing, it's ultimately because the value of the product of public schooling is not perceived to be worth the cost. This is a basic economic argument, and should (at least initially) be approached in such terms. Granted that public schools serve a vital societal function, that doesn't suggest that we want an inferior product, or that we should support said inferior project because public schooling is just too important to allow to fail.

"Crappy public schools are better than no public schools" may be a true statement, but it is not a compelling argument.

More importantly, it misses the point. People are smart. I see no evidence that today's generations are particularly stupider than their parents' or grandparents' generations. Why should the product of our public schools be crappy? Why shouldn't the schools be expected—better yet, required—to produce consistently outstanding students?

That's a complicated argument that I may not be qualified even to address in anything deeper than a cursory manner. But I think a couple of things are clear:

  • Competing public interests and competing beliefs of various parents make the choice of public schooling curricula difficult and even hazardous.
  • There exists no mechanism in public schools to reward truly excellent teachers or, perhaps more importantly, to get rid of poor teachers.

In my opinion, the existence of the above two bullet points makes public education highly problematic. I'm not sure that effective public schools can exist with such constraints. Yet the teachers' unions, primarily the NEA, refuse to budge on the second of those two issues. As for the first, if there is no public consensus on societal matters, the public schools cannot adopt a consensus approach. Nor do they, nor have they in generations.

Public schools exist, not to reinforce parental teaching and attitude, but to counteract parental teaching and attitude. And in my humble opinion, THAT is what is wrong with public schools, and why I have some sympathy for those who say that having no public schooling is preferable to having the public schooling we currently find in place.

TL;DR The argument that public schools need more public funds is a non-starter. Address the underlying issues first, then worry about funding.

Edited by Vort
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2 hours ago, Vort said:
  • Competing public interests and competing beliefs of various parents make the choice of public schooling curricula difficult and even hazardous.
  • There exists no mechanism in public schools to reward truly excellent teachers or, perhaps more importantly, to get rid of poor teachers.

Certainly very fair points and I agree on both. The first particularly gives me a chuckle because I've seen what some parents request to be taught--parents will never agree on any one curriculum. 

The NEA and similar teacher associations exist because they already have a job they want to protect. You're right we can't have public teaching positions simply to provide a job, but for all sorts of reasons society as a whole has failed to create an alternative, leaving us in a scenario where nobody maybe likes public education but also doesn't want to pay for anything else. Whenever I hear someone say how teachers ought to just go to private schools, I laugh because as it stands a majority of private schools can't afford to pay teachers a competitive salary to prevent enough from going to other careers (and I don't see how cancelling public education would magically provide families enough extra income). So it's a mess. Teachers' unions and associations will exist as long as the job exists and I don't think anyone would be any happier if they simply moved to a private system. 

Believe me, I'm all for alternative education options. Families should do what they will. If we continue pressing in the direction we are going, that may be the key to truly and organically dismantling all our frustrations with public education. 

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