education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

There you have it from 100 years ago: The elite want to remain elite and the rest of us are suppressed into being proles and peons. Capital has the upper hand now; it's our job to gain the upper hand.

It has changed so much in the last 15 years. The straw that broke the camel's back was my district started to push us to teach the exact same lesson plan and even provided a script that I was to read each day. I told them no. Teaching is an art not a rote delivery system. A big part of my job, I felt was to inspire a love and an awe of what science is. It is a study of what is is, not a mere memorization of random factoids. I regret not being able to change lives like I did for decades. I finally was worn down by the never ending demands about THE TEST and
not the individual needs of 130
unique 11 and 12 year old sponges waiting to be filled with the wonder of science. The system won and future 6 th grades will lose an opportunity to learn that they could do and be anything. I just got tired.

My mother taught for 41 years. All our neighbors and friends are teachers (we live in a town with a collection of colleges) and every single one of them says they would not want to be a teacher today. Every. Single. One. That tells you something.

growing up, was to witness the JOY a teacher personally has in teaching. That joy was contagious and inspirational.

That has been killed off completely in the world of standardized testing. Name your favorite teacher and why and you'll see it was lessons that were so fun and wondrous, you remember them to this day. Or perhaps it was dealing with you kindly, dealing with your personal issues or being a good role model. You won't get that from reading a script. You won't get that in a room of 50+ students. This country will never admit it, but not only does it hate teachers, it must really hate kids.

I remember those teachers, and thank the universe for them!

I caught the last part of the movie 'Gangs of New York' where one fat cat intones, "We can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half."

Even with that attitude still so prevalent today, in most elitist circles and among their hangers-on wannabes, you will still be excorciated for saying openly that class warfare does exist, that it's always been the practice of the upper tier to squash those beneath them and that the bottom half has the right, indeed the duty to fight for their cause. Too radical for the uppa crust to tolerate and far too dangerous to their parasite existence. They try to shame us for resenting their suppression, and the conservative poor kiss their feet for a crust of bread.

Their day's coming, though. I see a bad moon rising...

teachers all had a flair for acting, joke telling or sharing personal asides.

to cope with difficulties with humor,
these things are also essential, or knowing how to tell a story and keep people engaged. Enthusiasm is the fuel for learning.

Not that I'm going to know, though!

All my boys turned out fine,since my wife more than anybody educated them and I helped when I could.

This is tragic on so many levels. You've lost your raison d'être, unique 11- and 12-year-old sponges will have to take their chances with the teachers who (I'm assuming) won't be as dedicated as you, and society will suffer because our kids aren't getting the education they need to be productive, happy members of society.

Please know that you've already changed the lives of countless students and others for the better! Thank you so much for all you've already done and will continue to do!

Sadly, standardized testing can't test for brightly burning minds, but only for those stuffed chock full of "useful" factoids.

A pity those in authority aren't a little more familiar with the concept.

...I retired from teaching at a community college about 7 years ago because of this very thing. The administration became soooo conservative right wing that they were really putting pressure on the few liberal professors, particularly those of us that were members of AAUP with ranking above Assistant Professor.I just didn't want to put up with the crap so I retired a few years earlier than I originally intended.

She quit because she was transferred. My guess is it's probably a retirement and she's drawing a pension.

After 19 years of teaching social studies at West Springfield High School in Fairfax County, Ron Maggiano is resigning, claiming that he's had enough of the public education system's infatuation with high-stakes testing. "I have made this decision, because I can no longer cooperate with a testing regime that I believe is suffocating creativity and innovation in the classroom," he said, a sentiment many educators across the country agree wholeheartedly with. Known for the numerous awards he has received over the course of his time as a teacher, Maggiano is using his status as a well-respected and clearly successful teacher to stand up for what he believes in: An education system void of suffocating standards that detract from learning.

"I don't think I'm leaving the education system. I think the education system left me," Maggiano said to The Oracle, the school's student newspaper. Since the SOLs (Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools) were instituted to assess student success, schools "have had less and less focus on creativity and innovation," he explained. "Instead, teachers teach to the test, trying to achieve the highest scores possible."

as well as teacher.

No society is perfect but America has become very hostile to families.

And I also think there's a strain of narcissism here that has many parents focused primarily on their own fulfillment and material wealth as more important than spending time with their kids and teaching them. And to compensate for the narcissism they over-indulge the kids and refuse to enforce discipline. I am absolutely not referring to parents who must work to keep the roof over their heads and food on the table.

When I was in school, if a teacher were to ever call home saying I misbehaved etc there would have been a lot of grief for me.

Now it seems it's always the teacher's fault.

It usually isn't.

It's the parents.

Reaiding these posts shows me how much dedication teachers have brought to the public school classrooms.
The Chicago Teachers Union strike was one of the first ones in a long time to involve the whole community and the teachers made it plain that they were striking for the parents and students to upgrade the schools even though, by law, the teachers union was prohibited from bargaining over many of these community/school issues.

who decide to bail on their teaching careers in public education, but I would remind the rest of them that public education is and has always been a subversive activity geared toward social justice through liberal arts and vocational instruction required of the majority in a democratic society. Sometimes, it's better to remain on the inside pissing out than to be on the outside pissing in.

FACTS = KNOWLEDGE BASE.

teaching compelling myths is the whole goal of the corporate takeover of education, as anyone who lives in The Greatest Country The World Has Ever Known^® should well know!

"Just smart enough to run the machines, but not smart enough to know how much they're getting screwed by the system."

from George's great "corporations own you" you tube bit that true DU'ers should have memorized word for word by now.

-90% Jimmy

The system says the poor are poor because they have poor ways, and anyone in America has an equal chance at higher education and professional success if they apply themselves. You can be anything you want to be!

Do you really suppose Mr. Carlin was (gulp) right?

I arrived at exactly those convictions 10 years ago when my kids graduated out of a garbage dump and I had to pic up where our system let of and failed.

I hear a lot of negative feedback about it, but when I read the info from the website, it looks good.

My son has gone through hell because of these new standards.

Are the schools misinterpreting it?
My 11th grade daughter told me that her social studies teacher was great, the first two months, then they started common core. Suddenly, he's a horrible teacher. Now the kids read on their own and take notes from what they've read. There's no lecture or engaging conversation. How is that common core?

Public education is dead, and being turned over to right wing to do with as they please....which will be to end critical thinking for the masses.

But take a Soma and feel better about it....Deltas are happy to be Deltas

I can't.

And to have it happen under a Democratic administration is appalling.

the young go as far as they are able. There are fewer roadblocks to education and students don't graduate indentured to the crapitalist system.

populace as an asset to the general health of society and the economy. Because, that is the truth.
The new path seems to be based on the one per cent's desire to keep jobs overseas and wealth in the Cayman islands. Expectations have been lowered for American children.

historically tried to better the lot of children from supported child labor laws to supporting the public schools and public health initiatives; Democrats created the Dept of Education over the objections of most Republicans...0bama thinks abusing his strongest supporters and volunteers is somehow positive for him personally.
I guess it was an easy choice for him and for Duncan.

Just like it destroyed the air traffic controllers union, the media, and everything else it touches. All so the über greedy can continue to make bank.

I grew up in a relatively small town in Texas and from K-12 I was fortunate enough to be taught by some of the kindest and most inspiring men and women I have ever known. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Snyder, inspired me to become a lawyer. Back then, though, the teachers weren't expected to do the job of teaching the young alone. Both parents and teachers were expected to contribute to the child's education and each respected the contributions of the other. Teachers were allowed to do what they do best: teach. Parents and teachers worked together. I don't see that happening today.

To the extent they can, conservatives have made every public service job as demeaning as possible.

In regard to "public education":

We "the people" created a system of public education to be created and run by government to provide a uniform high quality and free basic education. We "the people" created a government run by "freely elected" politicians in part to provide this service.

When education "fails" (the American public has never been more educated) politicians blame:

"The teachers"
"The teachers union"
"The students"
"The parents"
"video games"
"TV"
"The administrators"
"the programs"
"lack of accountability"

In short, everything except their own leadership. Yet, they are the ones we have hired to make it happen.

They love the pabulum "you just can't throw money at a problem". But the one thing decades of study makes incredibly clear is that the only thing that provides consistently better results is more money. Yes the politicians will have pet outliers, schools that through random chance are small and were lucky enough to land a van load of genius level students, so they don't spend much money and have great stats.

When running an analysis of variance any variable that explains 50% or more of the variance is considered powerful. Usually there is a large pile of other variables that explain 2 or 3 percent slices of what remains. They have been chasing the 2 or 3 percent slices, because they are cheap, not because they truly promise to be effective.

another way to make a living at this late date in my life, I would.

I love teaching. I love students. I hate the system that damages both.

that you have positively enriched and improved the lives of many.

thank you !!