Lunch Scholars Video: Something to Remember When Teachers’ Unions Claim They Deserve More Pay
As I watched the video above, two thoughts immediately popped into my head:
1. Why do teachers’ unions claim they deserve more pay and endless benefits when this is the result of their “hard work” in the classroom?
2. I honestly can’t remember anyone this dumb in my Catholic high school back in Ohio when I was going to school in the mid-90s.
I do admit there’s a caveat to #2 in that there was a girl in my grade school — when I was in third or fourth grade — who could have starred in this video. Cleveland sits on America’s “North Coast” (according to the Ohio tourism board at least), on the shores of Lake Erie. You know, one of the Great Lakes (whose mnemonic device was HOMES). This girl must have been at home, sick in bed, on the day in first grade when we learned this because she ultimately revealed she thought that body of water just north of the city was the ocean. When pressed by the teacher to specify which ocean, the girl was surprised there was more than one, “since they were all connected”. Finally, she mumbled “Indian Ocean”, in an Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank sort of way. I’m sure that’s because she was remotely aware that “Indiana” or “India-something” was nearby and she ran with that. The nun at the chalk board got so red in the face hearing this I thought she was going to start screaming and slapping rulers across the tables — but instead she serenely floated out into the hallway, closing the oak and etched-glass door behind her, and LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED.
But, I don’t think even the Indian-Ocean-Borders-Ohio-Girl would have flubbed as many basic questions as these public high school students did.
I can just hear the teachers’ union reps consoling the kids who thought there were 51 stars on the American flag (you know, for all 51 states): “It’s okay Brendan, you can try again. We are all winners here. There are no right or wrong answers. You said there were 51 stars, but if you can think up an extra 6 stars you too can be president some day”.
At least this wasn’t filmed in the Chicago Public School system — where instead of just not answering the questions correctly the film crew would have been beaten senseless and their camera and microphone would have been stolen…while, of course, all the teachers were on some sort of union-mandated “break”.
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Keep in mind that at least 1/3 of hiigh school students admit to using drugs &/or alcohol.
And the other 2/3 just don’t admit it, I bet.
I reacted to this knee-jerk response of Kevin's with an "aha." I was wondering about the mindset of the author of the piece. Kevin, you lose your bet. The real world of American high schools is way more complex, including many examples of tremendous achievement and honor. Your simplistic eagerness to blame, as in "And the other 2/3 just don't admit it, I bet," tells us a lot about following your intellectual lead. It would tip the scales a bit in your direction if you were open enough to allow this reply to be published on your site.
I know that you must be right because answered that with great conviction. Please give all the readers here a clear example of the complex improvements.
I don't know whether to thank you for confirming that homeschool was the right choice for my daughters or cry that my tax dollars are wasted as our country goes to ruin. SIgh
I loved "Utopia" as one of the Countries starting with the letter U. At least they didn't think we had 57 States. I thought the interviewer was great…and the kids, while ignorant, seemed nice and good natured…just the sort to keep us as happily mediocre as the Teachers and their Unions want .
Are you seriously going to blame teachers for this lack of knowledge? Remember the old saying: "You can lead a horse to water…" These teens obviously didn't learn while sitting in class. I highly doubt that even the poorest teacher didn't mention the Revolutionary War or basic geography. I sit in my class every day and discuss literary terms, etc. I know I've discussed symbols and metaphors and provided and discussed copious examples. Yet, when it comes to test time, you still have people who ask, What's a symbol? Do you know how many times English teachers discuss subject/verb agreement? Yet over and over you see students have errors. I don't think this one can be pinned on teachers. Many youth of today just don't care about Mitt Romney or Joe Biden.
Yes, I seriously blame the teachers, these kids and their parents. This was disgraceful and indefensible.
Are you seriously going to argue the teachers & unions are correct and more pay & perks are deserved?
Yes, but these teachers arnt even leading them to the water. At best they are bringing them to a wet sewer and telling them that they can drink the water whichever way they want to and it will be fine.
Students need to pick up some slack, but teachers defiantly need to.
Utopia and Urope. Never has so much money been spent to generate so much unlearning. Remember the commercial for 7UP as the "uncola?" This is "unlearning."
ok, honestly, for the "country that starts with a u" question- i thought uganda right off the bat, then remembered the united states. for some reason, i don't think of the "united states of america" as that- i just think of it as "america". yes i know there is a north and south and central, but i guess it's just my american arrogance that makes me think of home as the only "america" that matters. ;D
I actually thought of Uganda and Uzbekistan before I thought of United States of America. (*blush*)
MathMom —
I thought of Uruguay first.
Then Uganda.
Then United States.
I stopped when I had three.
Other options: Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, etc.
What’s funny is if you sang the Wacko’s World song from Animaniacs you’d get the US first…”United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama….”
teachers unions are the source of everything that's wrong with public schools….I graduated high school in 2000 and went to Catholic school my entire life (where they aren't beholden to teacher's unions and it costs less per student to educate) and I tell anyone that will listen to send your children to private school or homeschool them. lately, here in va where the school system is ranked better than most, the concern for the 4th and 5th graders was their reading levels. when i was in 4th grade, i read "the hobbit" and charles dickens novels and in 5th grade began to learn algebra. it's truly sad to see how quickly education has gone downhill and the main solution seems to be to throw more money at the problem
If you want to cry, you should pick up a McGuffy's Fourth Eclectic Reader – you will be astonished at the level of reading for a 10 or 11-year-old in 1920 (4th revision – first edition was in 1879).
A quick search at Amazon with the "surprise me" selection for looking into a book, gives this paragraph about elephants:
Elephants are found in both Asia and Africa, but they are of different species, the Asiatic elephant having five toes, and the African, three. These animals are caught by stratagem, and, when tamed, they are the most gentle, obedient, and patient, as well as the most docile and sagacious of quadrupeds. They are used to carry burdens, and for traveling. Their attachment to their masters is remarkable; and they seem to live but to serve and obey them. They always kneel to receive their riders or the loads they have to carry.
Compare this with "Who's Afraid of Fourth Grade?", with "surprise me" selected:
Katie knew that fourth grade would be full of changes. In fourth grade, you got real textbooks to keep for the whole year — not just worksheets that the teachers handed out. The fourth, fifth and sixth-graders all got to play in the big yard — the one without the swings and seesaws. Plus, the Upper School's yard had a real baseball diamond and a soccer field.
Frightening.
I am SO GLAD you brought up the McGuffy’s reader.
My friend Abbey homeschools her son and she bought this same book for him. He’s ten or eleven now, and she purchased this a few years ago. He loves it. When he doesn’t know a word, Abbey shows him how to look it up and quite often the two of them learn together.
Abbey uses reading books from the 20s and 30s and 40s. She says that the books got dumbed-down after WWII and just collapsed in worth beginning in the early 70s.
oh my….we truly have been declining in educational standards and it's only getting worse!!
The assumption that obviously the kids' poor performance is due to poor teaching perfectly demonstrates a widespread blindness in our land about how to raise children. If you think that most kids can be served a relentless daily media menu of pablum, scandal, titillation, celebrity worship, jackass stunts, and worse, and, at their tender age, still be captivated by history, you're missing something. Newton Minnow, JFK's director of the FCC, warned 50 years ago that by casting the young with little guidance into the vast wasteland of much of commercial media, we're abandoning the responsibility all cultures inherit to be careful about how we raise children. This deep cultural malaise is illuminated from time to time, as it is here. If many children reach adolescence with frightening gaps in their awareness about the world, how helpful is it, Mr. DuJan, to blame it on teachers? Most teachers I know are doing their utmost to counteract the fatuous dumbing down of our culture. Newton Minnow was right, and we're harvesting the fruit.
51 states is as stupid as Barry Obama, he thinks there are 57 of them.
Maybe the girl at your high school thought Lake Erie was the Indian Ocean because the Cleveland Indians played baseball nearby.
You got a mention on Glenn Beck's The Blaze. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/this-video-of-tee…
If we would have a basic pay for teachers with a clear pay plan of bonuses for quality teaching that would thin out the teachers and increase the level of teaching and learning.. Our children are still our responsibility and as Parents we should insist that we do our part before we demand as much from the teachers. Home schooling is still a viable offering as is Private or Parochial schooling.
This is Olympia High School in Olympia WA.
I have one graduate of this school, another one attending now, and the reason I live in this city is so all of my children can attend this school. It is an excellent school.
I have no idea what the school is like outside of college prep classes, since my kids have attended only those, but I have been uniformly impressed with the level of education in those classes.
My daughter informs me that the creators of this video were attempting to get dumb answers, and it took them a long time to get them enough that they could run them together and make this video.
I have no doubt that the answers are authentic, but I would be happy to compare the best OHS students against any other students in the US (or the world).
Word is this is Olympia High. My property taxes go to North Thurston.
Brucemo, I appreciate your information on Olympia High School, and possibly the best OHS students would compete well against the best students somewhere else, but it is disturbing to see obviously well cared for young people in a beautiful looking school (what I could see as backdrop) giving such dumb answers. The kids did not sound or look mentally deficient, they were giving ignorant answers. I think the video maker made his point. It may not be all the teachers fault, but they aren't helping much. The dumbest teachers my kids suffered from in Bellevue Washington (a good school district) were the morons teaching Social Studies or whatever they call History and Civics.
I had to break my comments up into sections:
This seems like a blame game to me who happens to be an evil Union endorsing public high school teacher. Of course parents want to blame teachers and teachers want to blame parents. There is a common ground that should be reached between the two parties. Teachers are lumped together- the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm sure that many parents would be upset if I lumped them together with other upstanding examples of parenting like Susan Smith or Casey Anthony. Just as many parents would take offense to me doing the a fore mentioned, I take offense to being lumped together with the teachers that are not the quality examples of educators that we use to defend the poor innocent students who are being under educated in the public school system.
Yes, I do feel that I deserve to be paid more than the other public servants (like the Senators and Congressmen who push for more testing and less pay for teachers) especially if I'm expected to put on the Superwoman cape and save this nation from an invasion of teenagers who are unwilling to discuss the US Debt Ceiling in great detail over a cup of organic, free trade coffee.
So I encourage many of you to get your griping over with and then look for an answer. Pay me less (not tooting my own horn but I am a damn good educator with many more hours put in beyond my contract time and NO I don't just take my summers off, I attend workshops and take college classes beyond my Masters degree) and you find that I can't afford to pay my mortgage and will be forced to leave the educational field and find another means of employment. I usually get the response "Well at least you have a job!" when discussing this issue with my surrounding community members. I am grateful to have a job and encourage anyone who is willing to step up to the challenge of being an educator to complete the process and join me. That comment usually garners the response "Oh God no! I could never do your job- babysitting all those kids….". Damned if I do (ask for a reasonable salary not based on the study habits of a 14 year old taking another test that they don't want to take), damned if I don't (give up my salary, life, blood, sweat, and tears to a career that requires elephant skin to deal with the public backlash).
I sit through maybe 5 parent teacher conferences for my US History and Economics classes- I have 90+ students combined. And the parents that I do see, are the parents that I don't need to see! Conference dialogue usually consists of the following phrases- "You're child is an awesome student." "If I could clone them, I would." "I see that they have made A's in all of their other classes too!". Get my point? These are the parents that haven't given up on the public school system and they take responsibility for their child's education. Not the shove them to school and hope with fingers crossed that they come back a Rhodes Scholar mentality that many parents have adopted. Parents seem willing to be a part of their child's education until the high school years when they try to give that responsibility completely to a 14 year old teen. When they fail, it's automatically something that I've done. I'm sure that texting, sports, social media, and, oh yeah, being a teenager has no effect upon the academic achievement of high school students. I spend a majority of my time trying to contact parents of failing students who seem to have the same broken record response- "I don't know what to do. They don't listen to me.". And society expects them to listen to a stranger who is requiring them to do the most impossible of tasks. Like reading the first chapter of "Grapes of Wrath". When your super busy student doesn't complete the assignment, I'm not allowed to make them feel different or call them out for not completing the assignment because they forgot or were too busy. God forbid I make your student feel "bad" about themselves for not doing homework because when they are gainfully employed in the future this will NEVER happen. I'm sure their boss will be understanding and give them an extension to complete their work. When you give up on your child, your child sees that as the norm. I teach at the same high school that I attend 12 years prior. There is a sense of entitlement that is evident and mostly parent driven.
The entities that seem to avoid this firestorm include administrators (those people who make the decisions that teachers are then required to follow or else risk being fired), the school board (the parents who come in like vigilantes ready to dole out justice in the name of their child and then fall prey to the political BS- don't be that parent if you get involved in the school board), and state officials who deem tests are the answer to the "dumbing down" of America. Many of these entities have little (it only takes 3 years of actually teaching before you can obtain an administrative certificate in my state) to NO experience as an educator, yet create and pass legislation without the consultation of the actual educators. As a teacher, I have very little say in what actually happens with the public school walls but those listed above make the decisions that feed public school hatred. All in my name.
You want to see a change in public schools? Let the teachers make decisions or allow them to have some input into legislation BEFORE it's passed. Get involved as a parent and understand that we have our hands tied on many decisions. Don't defend your child and attack teachers without asking (politely please) for the entire story (I'm sure none of the precious angels that I teach would ever tell a little white lie to avoid getting into trouble…). Run for school board and make the decisions that will help to improve public education. Write to legislators about school issues and keep them accountable for public school funding.
One last note- I am NOT defending horrible, poorly motivated teachers who want money and summers off and do the bare minimum. I do NOT agree that I should be paid based on the study habits of a 14 year old boy (merit pay) and I do NOT agree that MORE state testing will "fix" the problems (students are not held accountable for the results therefore they don't care!).
Don't blame teachers. I am a first grade teacher and we discuss the countries bordering the U.S., discuss the flag and the stars and stripes and what they stand for, and we study Africa. If they don't care to pay attention is it not my fault. Most would rather play with a piece of dust from the carpet.
Parents are the ones who develop a child's love of learning and motivation. Teachers have kids a small part of the day, we can't undo what parents have done or continue to do. We try our best, but if they have no attention span, I can't change that.
I can bet… If you asked the same set of questions to the school principals or administrators, the results won't be much different.
Amen Avannr…I find this funny, but I think every teacher has students like this. What really saddens me as a moderate Republican is the extremism that has begun to plague our party. The sheer hatrid of public employees (and the attacks on them) have really made me question my loyalty to a party I've supported my entire life. Public employees did not bring us into this giant mess – Wall Street did.
What hatred? I am a public employee whose job was never in danger throughout this crisis. Our unions refused to give up a thing when our administration got hit with budget cuts just months after signing our new contract. Public employees are different than the private sector because taxpayers are paying our salaries and market forces don't play in to the scene the same way. It's not about hate. It just hurts when so many are struggling, and all the public employees go on with defined benefit retirements, sick days, holidays, and an excellent salary. Wall Street isn't to blame either.
Our culture, which rewards beauty and makes fun of smart people leads us here. Teachers claim to only see the student for a short time, but a student sees teachers all day long. Who developed such an idiotic learning environment, where every 37 minutes the kids all jump up and race to their lockers, switch out have a little social interaction, and zip to the next subject? What kind of learning is able to take place that way?