Vergara v. California has run its course, with the California Supreme Court today deciding not to examine an appeals court decision. It seems that the right of a government worker (schoolteacher) to continue collecting a paycheck is superior to the right of a child to an education. Not exactly news, but certainly heartening for anyone considering a career as a government worker.
Related:
The child has a right to an education, but not all children are going to have the same quality teachers.
ScarletNumber: Children don’t have a right to an education, I don’t think, because a teacher who does absolutely nothing won’t be removed for years in a typical school system (see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/03/01/teacher-jobs-in-massachusetts-new-jobs-for-healthcare-gov-programmers/ ).
Phil,
just make sure you don’t end up with (surreptitiously, in the middle of a future night replaced, 3D-stone-milled Artsy Grassroots project) a headstone with an epigraph that reads:
A true friend to all dogs
but a dog to working class
http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/images/g/wNwAAOSwAvJW-tdY/s-l225.jpg
PS. Apologies for taunting fodder for SDM/ BDSM(?) & The Sis. Can’t be helped.
REDEEMING FACTOR: CNC milling in stone, so it’s not a pipe dream, and that technology will become commodity within reach of any urban guerrilla movement. Case in point:
[5m43s] video of the making and installation of the 6m high marble replica of destroyed Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph unveiled in Trafalgar Square, London, soon to grow anatomically correct wings and fly over to be shown in New York, NY as well.
More in Guardian: http://gu.com/p/4tepc
This is sad, indeed. Phil, have you looked at what other countries are doing regarding ineffective teachers? You did post on some of the effective secondary education systems in the world (e.g, Finland), but I am not sure there was information there on how teacher effectiveness is assessed and enforced. On another note, what would one recommend a parent to do given the status quo in the US public schools? Many parents I know who have kids in public schools keep boasting the ratings their schools have (e.g., 9 out of 10, or 10 out of 10), but I am not sure that rating guarantees the kid is not taught by an inept mathematics or science teacher..
I can’t comment on teaching mores in the USA, but that old European curse-proverb “may you [not] be a teacher of others’ kids!” says something about the profession (I lasted 3 weeks, and that was adult education). Besides, until, say, mid 1930s, even the function of a governess in well-to-do/ aristocratic families was that of a servant (analogous to now exchangeable nannies).
ObNewYorkerContent: The Rubber Room (2009), a holding cell for made-superfluous teachers.
ObMovieContent: too many to list, but take e.g. any “Jane Eyre” by Jane Austen; Firelight (1997); Angels and Insects (1996); or, my favourite, The Governess (1998), in which the Jew-masquerading-as-Protestant in a Scottish manor accidentally discovers the fixative for early paper photography by touching the substrate with fingers dipped in salted water that symbolizes the tears of Jews driven out from Egypt I think etc etc etc. (narratively right up there with Jean M. Auel ascribing invention of femme sanitary napkin to a Cro-Magnon orphan growing up among Neanderthals in “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by stuffing dry forest moss in her undies)