In all seriousness, the Democrats should try to get Bruce Springsteen to run for Governor of New Jersey next year.

Pat

They were, however, provided with two advantages public-school teachers are not: first, confidence that they have the authority to do things like insist on the student staying late for tutoring, not to mention washing behind their ears and doing their spelling homework; and second the certainty that they will be measured on the effectiveness they show at actually teaching the curriculum.

My hypothetical Manhattan one-room schoolteacher might be making $120K and benefits; I would imagine that the people who that would attract would be comfortable with the notion that they have to deliver.

I don’t want rote learning (even though I was reading Hardy Boys mysteries in first grade after rote phonics in kindergarten) but I would really like to see some sense of formality reintroduced into the teaching environment.

Students are there to learn EVERYTHING they don’t learn at home. Teachers are there to teach, and collectively they will ulitmately spend about three times as many structured hours in contact with the students as their parents will during the school year. That’s a finite asset that is being pissed away at a greater rate every passing school year.

Teachers impart far more than mere information; their bearing and leadership have a direct impact on how students percieve limits and acceptable behaviour. Whether or not a kid is a class clown is not important to me as long as he/she is learning and is NOT KEEPING HIS/HER PEERS from learning. Every teacher is a role model, and every one should be reminded of that on a recurring basis.

Every student needs to know that their job is to learn. Recognition of achievemers is the single most threatened tool inside our public schools. Non-outcome playground games, high schools abandoning honor rolls, Valedictory/Salutorian awards made to accomadate race or not at all – it’s bullsh*t. It’s essential that we instill self discipline in our kids, and the earlier the better. I want a teacher not to hesitate when he tells a fifth grader he has to sign up for tutoring over lunch to get up his reading scores. Better that than to pay for his three hots and a cot ten years later when he’s an unemployable illiterate lacking the social skills to function in society.

Families aren’t very strong, not with fifty percent divorce rates. Churches, feh. Some strong, some weak, some just waiting to turn into 527’s. We still have schools, and kids will spend a huge chunk of time inside them.

Back in the eighties I was certain that the Asian Rim and Europe were going to outperform us because they had better schools. Since then, the lethal mechanical faults inherent in the Euro nannystate have put them on the road to serfdom and the Japanese seem to be content with making their part of the world work while keeping us as a dependable trade partner. What the conditions will be in ten years are a myster to me. The future holds nothing good for us if we don’t produce enough skilled professionals to maintain the highly techinical society we have achieved.

1. For most Democrats, they see no enemies on the Left. The Sister Souljah moment given to us by Bill Clinton is the exception rather than the rule. May I also remind you that “Rev.” Al Sharpton, racial demagogue, inciter of riots, and anti-semite is a welcome member in the Democrat party.

2. As others have noted, the Democrat party leadership is more radicalized than most realize. They don’t think of themselves as radicals, but they see the world through a Marxist prism.

What is this prism? Race, gender, class. Rich (bad) vs. poor (good). Powerful (bad) vs. powerless (good). You get the picture.

Most readers here are aware of the Leftist mantra that poverty causes crime. Many on the Left think poverty causes terrorism. If one believes that, it is easy to understand why there were no condemnations from the Democrats.

Besides, Michael Moore was doing the Lord’s work, demonizing President Bush!

I visited a local history museum (Adams County, I think) in which they had preserved the one-room school of the 1920s. I got to thinking: the last I heard, public schools in NYC ran about $9500/student. This one-room school was about 20×30 feet, 600 square feet, and had seats for 25 students, so, nominally, that would be $237,500 per year. Manhattan office rents are (actually) surprisingly cheap — I just looked at rents in Murray Hill, since that’s where I lived when I lived in Manhattan, and the rents with electric are about $45/sq ft. So, to be generous, say it’s $60/ft^2 to allow for additional costs of janitorial etc. That’s $36,000. Allow $1000 per student for books and supplies.

That leaves $176,500 a year for the teacher.

I’m seriously tempted to think that underground schools could make big money. For that kind of money, you could hire some pretty smart folks.

So here’s the question: when every 25-student classroom is bringing in $237,500, why can’t those students learn to read?

My daughter went to Catholic schools for 1-12 and the disruptive students would be kicked out. The school, the best prep school in the state, had lots of non-Catholics – Jews, a Muslim or two, and others.

It’s also a lot cheaper per pupil than public, but unfortunately you have to use money on top of whatever taxes paid for public scchools.

Although it’s my impression that the private schools around here are more likely to preserve some semblance of order. (On the other hand, what you’re describing sounds more or less like my high school. You’d have thought cleaning the mastodons out of the hills would have concentrated our minds more.)

I had a long debate with an acquaintance in the education establishment some years ago, talking about the notion of using standardized testing as a measure of school success. She felt that it would limit the ability of schools to encourage creativity and critical thinking; my answer was that I’d settle for highh school students who graduated able to read USA Today and write a sentence in which subject and verb agreed in number.

I would have responded sooner but have browser/typekey problems. I have a feeling that 4 years hence, such rantings will have been long forgotten or else the lack of a fascist state will be seen as the result of some Herculean effort by the left to prevent such. It will be attributed to the 130,000 turnout for Earth Day 2006 when George Soros does a drive through appearance or some such nonsense. I’m thinking of suggesting that Bush have Teddy Kennedy over for a post election chat to discuss the virtues of Ted attending some AA meetings.

I think private education is just as bad as, or worse than, public education.

Catherine,

This is apropos of something you said a while ago: that the Economist (and one other Euro journal) had come out in favor of Kerry but were taking Bush’s reelection in stride. Actually, in the Economist’s article endorsing Kerry, there were more positive things said about Bush than about Kerry. Talk about damning someone with faint praise.

But it recalled to my mind something I read in the Economist ages ago when the campaign was first warming up. The Economist seemed to be trying to explain to its European readers that America is not homogeneous; that some of us are religious and some are not; that America might be, in fact, divided in the coming campaign as well as divided culturally.

I thought: If Europeans don’t understand THAT about us, then what the hell DO they know?

I think you nailed it. Looking at the income levels of the blue states, the thing that jumped out at me was that they were the rich states. The Democrats have become the party of the elite: academia, the literary set, Hollywood, and the rich. This is not enough of a base to win elections, for that they depend on an almost complete lock on the Black, Hispanic, and Jewish vote. If these demographics begin to break, the party will die a terrible death. What can the Dems offer besides the current bread and circuses? Beats me. They seem empty of ideas and possessed of a subtle racism that will slowly become clearer. This will be quite interesting to watch.