Article on WaPo about teachers feeling the pinch in the down economy. Needless to say, the comments were less than reasonable. Here's what I posted...
There is no more important industry than education. No business, infrastructure, health care system, or military is as important as education.
Period.
If you disagree, think more.
Educating is hard. In an age of self-help industrialists, pseudoscience, political impasse, religious zealotry, and the internet, our kids grow up believing reality is meant to be interpreted in a way that makes them happy. They don't understand the concepts of proof or rigor, and they lack the skills to understand a reasonable explanation.
Education is broken. Teachers are forced to assess first and teach second to classes of 30 plus. Textbook publishers market their content as being inoffensive rather than effective. Curricula are created by political parties.
To teach is the most thankless job in the world. Parents berate you for their child's shortcomings. Schools are run like prisons, and teachers are expected to be guards. Adages such as "those who can't do teach" proliferate among tittering businessmen, yes-men, and cubicle-denizens.
To teach is the most important job there is. How can the economy grow if our intellectual capital shrinks? How can we solve the new problems of overpopulation, diminishing resources, third world industrialization, or even just our broken political system if our kids can't even be taught 19th century biology without inciting outrage? What does the military protect if not our ideas, our capacity for creation? What is the point of living if we are not working to improve the world in which we live, the human condition to which we all belong?
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