Wildly enough, once you're in the classroom, the kids at high-school-level segregate themselves. The real twerps don't take Chemistry, History, Trig, Shakespeare, French, and so on.

True...once you're a junior in high school. I really did value my last 2-3 years of high school--I took fabulous classes with passionate teachers.

You shouldn't have to sacrifice 10 years to get that point, though.

And even then, so much of the school administration's energy goes to keeping the twerps either contained or entertained. I remember mandatory-attendance school assemblies where the frozen turkey bowling skills of the student council were showcased...lowerclassmen tricked into eating 10 bananas in 2 minutes, blindfolded, for the entertainment of their 1200 closest friends, faculty-led yelling contests among the 4 classes. The message was crystal clear: "This is the point kids--crowd control, conformity, humiliating or yelling down people smaller and weaker than you. Not learning. Not cultural literacy. Not competent adulthood."

So while yes, we need something for the kids that otherwise wouldn't choose any education at all...there's something deeply disturbing to me about acknowledging that school is indeed for crowd control, not learning.

You write:

And it's reason #548 why, if I have kids, they won't be in school.

Wildly enough, once you're in the classroom, the kids at high-school-level segregate themselves. The real twerps don't take Chemistry, History, Trig, Shakespeare, French, and so on.

Somehow, there are two schools in play, at the same moment at the same property: the school that the ones who "feel that they are hostages" attend, and the little hell that it brings; the school that the ones who "are trying to take the right classes and teachers, and get into the right activities, to prepare for college." (This sort of phenomenon is talked about, in the teacher-biz, in different ways.)

It is possible to make ice cream in hell, and to enjoy it.

Think of it as crowd control, as a minimum. If those 15-year-olds are in school, hassling the science teacher, they aren't stealing the hubcaps off your car and setting the fields, next to your house, on fire....Education is cheap, compared to the cost of not educating.

As much as you're completely right about all of this....the other edge of that sword is that this outlook is horribly punishing to kids who actually care about their education, to be locked up, inescapably, with the ones who don't, who then get to hijack all of the teachers' and school system's time and energy.

And it's reason #548 why, if I have kids, they won't be in school.

> Why are we bothering to demand education for a bunch of worthless losers?

Because in 10-12 years their votes will count as much as a Nobel Prize winners. Representative government with an ignorant electorate is one of the most dangerous political forces on the planet.

Speaking of outcome based education - ie: teaching for the test. There are two parties in the classroom, and a teacher can only do so much. I like the concept of outcome based education - you want to see measurable results, but the teacher isn't the only variable in the system, so don't blame them if they can't get students without parental support and with many dangerous competing influences to perform to the ideal. The most powerful military in the world can't seem to pacify Iraq - there are limits to what is achievable based on the circumstances, which the testing approach fails to recognize.

you should learn to love feces. feces can be your friend, if only you let it in.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Google 'rubber room', NY City's 'solution' to problem teachers. Literally teachers who have to report to rooms where they have sit and do nothing all day long (sometimes for more than a year) to get paid.

Also when my DW was teaching a college level 'Art for non art majors' 100% of her students couldn't use a ruler.

I have to wonder how widespread or under-reported teacher/student sex is. On the college level it's pretty commenplace. In high school I know plenty of anecdotes too. Oddly I've seen it reported to a principal and seen no action taken what so ever. Are teachers being protected? Or are prinicpal(s) trying to protect themselves?

I believe that there are 3,000,000 public school teachers in America.

That's more than North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, District of Columbia, Wyoming. Combined!

That's more than the population of 20 states.

That's a lot of people.

Anyway, I agree with you. It just royally roasts me when the reflexive finger goes right back. I would NOT want to be a teacher in this day and age, especially a male at a public school. But I guess my thought on it is, their charge is to educate the youth, a charge that has been basically removed from the parents and hanged to the state. Of course, engagement is expected. But when I hear of schools disciplining outside their walls, taking on sexual education, and the variety of things we expect from schools now, the lament of the parents involvement isn't as compelling to me. Teachers have it WAY hard. But they also make it much harder than it has to be when any criticism is deflected almost right off the bat, and new reforms are proposed and shot down all the time.

I mean we KNOW we are slipping behind in k-12 education, but then teacher's unions blame funding, overworking, parental involvement, curriculum etc. But come time to change the basic structure of the pay, hours, benefits, or accountability, and those are off the table. That always strikes me as odd. If we all agree it ain't working, it has to be "ain't working" from the teacher's slice of the pie as well. I mean we have the best university system on the planet, I'd like to keep it that way. But it won't be that way if the undergrad system goes in the toilet.

Back to the point in a way, It does rankle me a bit when reporters of male on girl teacher abuse is written about one way, and the inverse is generally different.