More stupid coming from school administrators

One of the things I have seen over the past several years is the exponential growth of stupid and a lot of it is in the place where stupid does NOT belong.

I see a lot of it in schools.

There was a story of an major over reaction of a school administrator over a toy gun.

It would be one thing if the toy in question had any serious resemblence to a real firearm but it didn't. Back a couple of years ago I needed a decorator piece and took an airsoft .45 and resprayed it. To an inexperienced person it could have passed as a real pistol.

Had the toy in question been something like this I would have simply rised my eyebrows and shaken my head, but the toy in question was not one of these.

It was a little thing about the size of a quarter. A damned quarter!! Yes, I mean a United States piece of currency sometimes called the twenty-five cent piece.

What kind danger does this pose unless maybe the kid swallowed it.

I didn't bother reading the article in depth because I saw all I needed to see. We have an administrator that should be fired and branded so that no other school system will ever rehire him.

He ought to be sterilized so his DNA can not continue to infect the planet. If he has children, then THEY should be sterilized to insure the genes of their parents stupidity can not continue to infect the planet.

What ever happened to someone looking at a toy the size of a quarter and just simply paying no attention?

What ever happened to common sense?

I am at a loss at how we wind up with educators today or was until I thought about a few of my classmates that went into teaching.

They graduated from the same high school I did, went to a college nearby and then pulled a 'Welcome Back, Kotter', meaning they returned to the very high school they graduated from a few years earlier.

Duh! I wonder what these people brought into the classroom with them other than a bunch of liberal crap they learned in college. I would be surprised if any of them did anything besides go straight into the classroom after they graduated.

They could have done anything. Anything. For Pete's sake, if they had done anything of practical value between college graduation and starting their careers as teachers they would have been a lot better off.

They could have done a hitch in the service, planted trees in Oregon, hitchhiked across the country, or hung out in Mexico for a couple of years. 

Even if they had done a couple of years in the French Foriegn Legion and deserted! It would have at least been something.

Years ago, I had a long dead friend that I was discussing the subject with. (Most of my friends from my 20s and 30s are dead now. By the time I was 35 I had been to over 50 memorial services and only about 4 or 5 weddings)

Anyway, my friend had no father and a mother that wasn't very well off financially and he started a small tree business while he was a high school freshman. He took business courses in high school and spent his high school career arguing with his business teachers.

The teachers were teaching theory and here was a kid that was in the middle of actually running a small business. The teacher was standing in a classroom teaching it while the kid was in the field doing it.

My friend wasn't running much of a business, really, but it was legitimate. He paid his taxes and did what he had to do.

There was a class discussion over insurance and the teacher was telling the class that they had to have insurance for everyone even though they were the sole employee.

Blaine pointed out that he had health coverage through his mother's workplace and pointed at a scar on his forehead. "Who do you think paid to stich this up?" he asked.

A case of a 16 year old kid with practical experience knowing a lot more than his teacher who had no practical experience.

I had a few pretty good teachers. They were mostly men with WW2 service under their belts. 

Just as a sidebar here, WW2 produced a whole slew of teachers and many of them took their GI bills, got an education and went into the classroom.

You have to remember that we put 12 MILLION people into uniform and someone had to train the GIs. They simply took people with an aptitude and slapped a couple stripes on them and told them to teach.

Former civvie ham radio operators taught radio classes, people that already knew how to fly and had enough flight hours were run through a program and instead of being shipped out they were held over to teach flying.

A cousin of mine killed at Iwo was run through a couple of cycles at Parris Island and held back, given corporal stripes and was a drill instructor. A D.I. is a teacher. They are given a very short period of time to teach an awful lot. (He later put in for overseas service and was killed)

Anyway, these man brought a lot of practicality into the classroom and I think I tended to learn more from them, not only about the subject they taught but about life itself.

Looking back on things an awful lot of women that taught me brought little with them but a teaching degree from a liberal arts college and no life experience.

These days we hire teachers with no common sense because we look more at paperwork than we do what the individual truly has to offer in the classroom.

Incidentally, I mentioned the French Foreign Legion earlier in this post. If a qualified prospective teacher applied and had a hitch in the Legion on their resume they would go pretty far  up on the list as far as I'm concerned. It is unusual enough to add something to a student's education.

So would a hitch in the  peace Corps for that matter. Or a couple years living overseas. For that matter I would give credit for taking a couple years off to surf in Puerto Rico and be a beach bum. At least it isn't someone fresh out of school with no life experience.

The more I age the more I begin to believe that a lot of what passes for education these days is little more than a waste of time.

I am beginning to think that there ought to be more to a teaching certificate than college classes and that people ought not be permitted to teach until at least five years after they graduate.

I suppose it wouldn't cure everything but I think it would sure help.

At least educators wouldn't be flipping out over a toy the size of a quarter.



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