Posted by Yuletide Kid on September 04, 2007 at 09:01:04 from 68.221.77.212:
In Reply to: Annual JFAS meeting posted by Michael New on September 03, 2007 at 17:33:25:
Dear Michael:
Your wife sounds like a saintly woman, a noble creature straight out of a Farnol novel. Or, as Jack London would say, a veritable dewdrop in a cesspool. For the latter is what modern American public schools have become. It all boils down to scapegoating. Somewhere along the line the education departments in our academic institutions latched onto the moronic idea that it was the teachers job not only to educate but to solve the ills of society. Of course, the lawyers in their infinite wisdom and insatiable greed thought this was a jollly idea and lined up right behind them. It has been a heck of a rollercoaster ride ever since. Still, we teachers are culpable too. As enablers of children we tend to be overly compromising and obedient. What is needed now is a stiff shot of pugnaciousness in the form of a national teachers strike. Yes, I am talking about possible blood on the barricades. But so be it. America, ever in need of a good strut, does not resolve its social and economic ills in a civilised fashion. That role, as you know, is left exclusively to our fair neighbor to the north.
As ever,
The Yuletide Kid
PS At least your wife got to teach literature here in the United States. I never was allowed. The Thais let me; the Japanese let me; the Chinese let me. But not here in my adopted land. Not bright enough, I suppose.