Lesson Learned
By Jan Larson (08/21/06)
The school year has barely gotten started, but the teachers in my local Texas school district have already taught students a valuable lesson. You can get your way if you scream, cry and hold your breath until you're blue in the face.
(Note: Any teacher who is truly dedicated teacher, capable of imparting knowledge and wisdom to students and isn’t an insecure, hand-wringing, “oh I’m so under appreciated” nitwit may stop reading now.)
Is there any group of “professionals” in this country today that are more coddled by politicians and yet self-pitying than teachers?
It seems we are constantly bombarded with stories of teachers wailing that they are so overworked, underpaid and oppressed despite the fact that they have been entrusted with the very future of our nation – our children. Oh the humanity!
In the case of the local district, administrators had determined that the various microwave ovens, refrigerators, hot plates and coffee makers that teachers had in their classrooms were costing the district (that is the taxpayers, of which I am one) approximately $100,000 per year in electricity as well as posing a potential fire and safety risk.
It was decided that these appliances should be removed from the classrooms, but that decision caused an immediate outcry from a large percentage of the district’s teachers. An outcry not unlike the one that resulted the time I took a lollypop away from my three-year-old niece an hour before dinnertime.
This controversy was played out in the local weekly newspaper via a series of articles and letters-to-the-editor. Teachers complained of the excessive hardships they would encounter in their daily mission to prepare young people to defend the free world if they had to have a cold sandwich instead of a Hot Pocket and lukewarm tap water instead of chilled Evian.
When I was in elementary and high school, there were no refrigerators and microwaves in the classrooms and I don’t recall any teachers dying of dehydration or starvation. In fact, some of them were actually fat. It seems that returning to those nostalgic days of yesteryear is not appealing to today’s educators.
It struck me that of all the comments offered by the teachers in this controversy, many complained but few offered a solution other than one teacher that was quoted as offering to pay for the electricity. Everyone else just cried as if someone had kicked their dog.
Eventually, the superintendent waved the white flag (actually a white handkerchief) in a room full of teachers as he announced the ban on appliances had been reversed. A district spokesman said that they decided that they needed to “quit spending so much time on this issue.”
In the end, this was probably much ado about nothing, although $100,000 isn’t exactly chump change where I come from.
The entire affair was, however, much more reflective of the way public education works today. Teachers, and especially teachers’ unions, aren’t on the lookout for the students or the taxpayers – only themselves. Recently passed education finance reform in Texas produced $2000 across-the-board raises for all teachers and the local district added an 11% raise on top of that, but just try to save the taxpayers some money and all hell breaks out.
This would be well and good if the results were commensurate, but the quality of public education has been in decline for decades. As ABC correspondent John Stossel reported, it is to the point now where American students score well below average on international standardized tests while per student spending in the United States is well above the average. [1]
While my local district generally does well on standardized tests, one thing is certain, if there is ever a question on one of those tests asking the best way to get what you want, students from this district will get that one right.
[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2006/01/11/cheating_the_children
Copyright ©2006 Jan A. Larson All rights reserved.
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