Teaching and Teachers Gone Wild, a Series in Progress

Teaching and Teachers Gone Wild, a Series in Progress

I can’t exactly say I had teachers as much as I had commandants in my formative years; I was taught by Sisters of Charity nuns who, too often, were less concerned with charity and teaching than with disciplining rambunctious male students.




Still, thanks to the good nuns’ rigidity and penchant for incessant drilling and memorization, I feel I received a better education than kids who attended South Bronx public schools–an education devoid of left-wing teachers and liberal propaganda.



Back then, the early and mid-1950s, the NYC public school system was noted for excellence–and also for a marked liberality with regard to student behavior and instruction, a liberality my Irish parents abhorred and, so, I was consigned to the local Catholic school.



Things have radically and negatively changed in both parochial and public schools over the last 50 years. Although those changes have infected Catholic education, they are most pronounced in the public sphere.



Aside from the National Education Association and teacher unions, few would contest that America’s public educational system is in a sorry pickle.



We manage to produce a number of excellent students who outshine kids in other areas of the world, but they’re relative rarities.



The United States spends more on education than the rest of the planet combined yet a recent analysis showed we rank 29th in problem solving, 28th in math, and 22nd in science among 41 industrialized nations and some areas where the abacus was in use not very long ago out-performed American students.



For the most part, American schools are turning out semi-literate graduates who excel in unfounded self esteem but who can barely read or count.



(See “You’re Not Special,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=25302, for details on one high school commencement speaker who told students where to go with their hyperinflated self-esteem.)



Our students may not be special but they have learned a great deal in certain fields which won’t help them much as adults or in their worklives, except perhaps in their bedrooms or should they work for lecherous employers.



Many have learned a great deal in their sex education classes and from predatory male and female teachers who practice a hands-on approach–pun intended–to instruction, but little else.



Some public schools throughout the country have become hotbeds–another intended pun–for seductions by gay and straight pedophiles posing as professional educators. Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s New York City is the clear leader of the perv pack but by no means owns exclusive claim to that dubious title.



In at least one instance, black male students vied for the opportunity to bed–in black jargon, “get with”–a 26 year old white, female, now-former Global Studies teacher.



Preface to the latter occurred outside Manhattan Theater Lab High School in NYC and, although there is no substantive proof that student Eric Arty scored with teacher Julie Warning, Arty did win a $500 bet with his buddies that he could “get with” Ms. Warning first. . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=24960.)