Let’s Get Rid of All the Teachers

Recently, there’s been a serious budget problem in the state where we live — a situation by no means unique.  Specifically, the problem is a major budget shortfall, also known as “that thing which happens when you elect a moron,” but who’s counting?

This means many things for education in this state, and for teachers specifically, it means that they might not get a very necessary cost-of-living raise.  Sure, they promise, but I’ll believe it when I see it in my actual teacherly hand.  In the meantime, various and sundry people in our state have been hitting the blogs on the local paper (or simply venting their spleen on the editorial page)  about those useless leeches on the public tit: school teachers. 

Teachers, they argue, have it easy.  They work for only nine months a year from approximately 7:00 until two-ish,  and even so, the educational performance of their students is so poor that a whopping majority of students in our district failed a standardized math test.  By “whopping majority,” I mean over 88% failed the geometry test and 90% failed the Algebra 1 test. 

Now, we’ll disregard for a moment the fact that math teachers have a fairly strict state-designed timeline of what-to-teach-when, and let’s disregard also that the test (given in first semester) addressed concepts that weren’t supposed to be taught until second semester.   Naaah, it’s all the teachers’ fault.  Teachers are lousy and we should get rid of them.  Fire them all.

I say we should take the naysayers at their word. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the first thing we do, let’s get rid of all the teachers.  Right now, our state spends over three billion dollars on education, of which teachers’ salaries are surely a decent chunk, all of which (obviously) could be saved if we fire all the teachers. 

One of the first effects of this decision would be that parents would finally get to take full charge of their students’ education, something that not all, but too many of them, complain about bitterly.  For instance, I recently received a letter from a student’s parent that stated something to the effect that I had taught Parent’s Child far more than any other English teacher had, and that Parent’s Child had learned more from me than s/he ever had before.  That utterly irrelevant consideration aside, though, the parent felt I was “unfair.”  Mind you, it’s tough to bring this accusation against someone who insists that students submit all essays and major work under pseudonyms, so I have no idea who my students are when I grade their papers.  For all I know, the person who signs themselves, “Pimp My Essay” (actual student pseudonym) could be that softspoken girl in the back row.  Still, I’m unfair.

Firing teachers would solve so many problems.  No more problems with kids being given too much homework, no more problems with kids being taught evolution, no more problems with “unfairness” in general.  Too many parents seem to believe that teachers’ only function is to pass their students along with A’s and B’s, so firing all the teachers would ensure that parents could be able to do exactly that.  Of course, they’d now have to be in charge of teaching everything from phonics to physics, but that’s okay.  Physics isn’t rocket science, after all  — oh, whoops, I guess it is — but I say without irony that homeschooling parents everywhere do exactly this all the time and know exactly how easy it is.

Or how hard.

Of course, this basically means that parents would have to find some way to take care of their children during the five days per week they were formerly in school, but since teachers are basically the paid babysitters of the state, according to some critics, then their essential function should be easily dealt with by actually getting a babysitter.  Why rely on the “nanny state” when you can have a real nanny?  Okay, it can get a little pricey — Kindercare, according to this document, costs $154.00/week for a child to attend from 7:45-3:30, which adds up quickly to about $5,544 for a 36-week school year, but who’s counting?

For those students — sorry, underage citizens — who are basically too old for babysitting, why not reinstitute a policy that many of these critics miss from the good ol’ days of their youth: bound apprenticeships?  You know, where at about age 12 or so, they’re farmed out to a master tradesman for a period of time (usually six years) to learn a trade?  The tradesman gets free labor; the kid gets free job training.  It’s a win-win situation, far as I can see.  It worked for our founding fathers, right?  (Well, okay, it didn’t work for Ben Franklin, who thought his apprenticeship under his brother basically sucked, so he ran away to Philly, but who’s counting?) 

Seriously, when people find your job irrelevant, disregard the time or effort you put into it, don’t believe it’s particularly necessary to pay you in accordance with your education, your ability, or your results (or all three), then the answer is clearly to give them what they say they want.

Happy summer vacation!

 

~ by adsoofmelk on June 29, 2008.