REPLY TO OBAMA'S LATEST CALL FOR SCHOOL REFORM

I just finished a piece posted on THE DAILY BEAST talking about Obama's recent call for longer school days and the firing of all bad teachers, the implication being that this would go a long way toward making schools better.

It reminds me of the Woody Allen joke at the beginning of Annie Hall. Two ladies at a Catskill resort are talking.

"The food here is just awful," the first one says.

"Yes, and the portions are so small."

I guess that is the newest received wisdom to cure all that is ailing public education. The teachers are bad and need to be fired, so let us expose our children to them for even longer periods of time.

I've written about this before, but how many bad teachers are we talking about? 80%? 60%? Less than 50? One or two? How many "good" teachers taking the place of "bad" teachers will we need to compensate for rotten and disinterested parents, aging schools with antiquated connectedness, unfunded mandates, and tests that only serve to impede instruction in inner cities while doing nothing for affluent suburbs, who don't need the help anyway?

I suspect that the percentage of bad teachers, whatever that means, in education is about the same as the percentage of bad doctors, lawyers, parents, plumbers, gas station attendants, 7-11 clerks, businessmen, and POLITICIANS. I say fire them all and let illegal immigrants do the job. Their image couldn't be much worse.

I obviously think Obama is way off the mark on this one, but I'm still not ANGRY. I don't think he is a fascist, or a Colonialist from Kenya. If I had the money and the time I would still love to attend John Stewart's Reasonable Man March, or whatever it is called. I just wish that teachers would stop serving as the scapegoat for the failings of the other institutions of society, like the Family, to name just one.