There Is No Point In Becoming A Teacher Anymore

[TheMastersNemesis]

There really is not point in becoming a teacher any more. You will be just working a temp job to be thrown out as soon as your students do not pass a test. You will be blamed and pilloried for being scum. You will most likely have to teach the children of stupid ass Republican parent or worse fundy nutzies who believe that dinosaurs were pets of Adam and Eve.

You will have to agree to strip search of your life and sign a morals contract that you will be celibate until you are married. You will have to suffer interviews of religious entities in the community to make sure that your beliefs are pure. And you will have to teach to a prescribed curriculum.

When I studied to get a teacher certificate it was amazing how many rules teacher had to follow at earlier times in our country. They were just as draconian as what I just mentioned. In the good old days teachers had to do their jobs with cultural iron shackles on them. The moral codes required of them were absolutely terrible. And the consequences were sadistic and cruel if you broke any rule.

The GOP is raping our school system so they can replace it with a white supremacist religious indoctrinating system. the don'g give a damn about freedom or the individual. All they want is complete and total domination like the Taliban had in Afghanistan.

[msongs]

1. race to the top is not a republican program. sorry bout that nt

[Karmadillo]

14. Please do not puncture our delusions. It's offensive.

[Dragonfli]

21. Well, it is a GOP program, it has simply been re-branded as Democratic, like most of the GOP laws

Our party has been passing as Democratic these days.

The problem is one of re-branding, the "new" Democrats all suckle at the teet of the Heritage Foundation and the US Chamber of Commerce, they promote GOP ideas, hence the confusion when they call these ideas and the legislation they spawn Democratic.

Their party have been proposing things that have moved so far right from the GOP of 10 years ago that I believe they would qualify as Fascist Ideas, hence the confusion when they call these fascist ideas and Legislation Republican.

If you wish to be aware of the options in any realistic way it helps to understand that our party is now what the GOP was around 1993, and the Republicans have gone insane, there is no option anymore for what people above the age of twenty would call Democratic.

Your only options are the center right "new" Democratic party AKA paleo-Republican party, or a blossoming new fascist party, that claim to be Republicans.

Many are still confused and think there is a left or even center left option, there is not, but they will use the old rhetoric to get elected before going all center right to right wing on us.

It is the new political reality, short of taking the party back from conservatives, the only answer is a new party to replace the Democratic party we lost, they actively make a third party as much as a non possibility as they can so that the Conservatives on both sides can get on with the business of helping only big business.

[DonCoquixote]

2. Another good piece

TMN, keep posting,please. You can speak from the heart, yet back up your point with facts.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. The Original Program Was Initiated By The GOP. And Obama Wrong About Not Ending It.

The GOP was on the attack long before Obama ever got elected. Race To The Top Was I Big Mistake. The GOP started all the testing during the Bush administration. For some reason Obama was convinced that continuing it was the right thing to do.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. "I Bog Mistake?"

Go get some rest.

[RZM]

4. Do you have evidence of any of this? Because it appears to be mostly nonsense that you made up

Do you have a copy of this morals contract that requires celibacy until marriage? How about evidence that religious entities vet candidates? I imagine some religious schools do have versions of what you describe. But how about public schools, where most US teachers work?

And who cares what a child's parents believe? All children are entitled to an education, no matter what religious, political, or social views their parents hold. You seem to come very close to arguing that teachers should view students differently depending on who their parents are.

[Daphne08]

19. My grandmother was a teacher between 1920 and 1925

She told me many things about the way it was... less than a century ago.

She also was required to leave the profession after she married and became pregnant.

[RZM]

28. I'm sure you're right about that

But the poster is making it sound like this still happens in 2012.

[woo me with science]

6. I get so sick of these posts that IGNORE Democratic complicity.

The assessments of the situation, whether it's the assault on education, the war policies, the police state, or the economic assault on the middle class and the poor, are always eloquent and accurate until you get to the fantastic, jaw-dropping, fly-in-the-face-of-all-history-and-evidence BULLSHIT claim that it is coming only from Republicans.

This is a BEAUTIFUL post. It is eloquent and emotional and cuts to the heart of what is wrong with the destructive policies in place for education now. But it purposely sanitizes what is really happening. Republicans are only a part of the problem here, and that's how the corporatists get away with what they are doing.

We will NEVER address what is happening to our country until we acknowledge that the assault is bipartisan and vow to fight back against it no matter who is pushing this crap.

Be honest. LOOK at whose policies these are. Look at Race to the Top. Listen to Obama's speeches. Be honest. This is NOT just the GOP.

People need to wake up and acknowledge that Democrats are doing this too. Corporate Democrats, right on board with this shit, over and over and over again.

This is important. Honesty is important. You cannot solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it.

[G_j]

8. ..

[inna]

9. ditto

[DCBob]

13. Imagine what our educational system would look like if religious conservatives had their way.

you might rethink your comment about Democrat's complicity.

[woo me with science]

15. Imagine what our country would look like

with a Republican President.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002430636

[DCBob]

16. Presidents usually stay out of state and local law enforcement issues.

for good reason.

It is amazing that after what we have seen and heard during the GOP primary fiasco there are still some on the left who think there is little difference between Republicans and Democrats.

[woo me with science]

20. Well, that was non-responsive.

Your cryptic non-sequitur notwithstanding, his record, budget requests, and public statements on education policy/Race to the Top...and so, so much more....are, well...

...on the record.

[DCBob]

27. If my response was non-responsive...

yours then is non-existent.

[ihavenobias]

22. Amen. n/t

[lutefisk]

23. Obama and Duncan have done more damage to public schools than any Republican could dream of doing

They have done to public schools what Bush did to the economy.

[Anser]

7. I'm in the process of becoming one now

Last edited Wed Apr 18, 2012, 11:56 PM - Edit history (1)

There's politics, then there's your day to day interactions with real life human beings.

The kids in our schools deserve dedicated and passionate professionals, regardless of the political climate.


The negativity of this post makes me sad.

Please don't listen to its sentiment. We need more open-minded and caring liberals in the profession, not less.

[SunSeeker]

12. Thank you for your service to our country!

Please don't get discouraged. My kid ( & our country) needs you. And if there is a heaven, it is populated by teachers, like you.

[freshwest]

18. +1,000

[hfojvt]

9. What exactly do you teach?

I find this piece to be poorly thought out and poorly written. Hyperbolic and instead of fact based, based on some dystopian fantasy. I guess that kind of fiction has a market, but I prefer more reality-based fare.

BTW, my grandmother was a teacher. She was born in September 1893, and against the wishes of her mother, she went to high school. She had to leave the farm and board with some 2nd cousins in town to do so. She graduated in 1912, took a test and began teaching grades 1-8. She taught for about ten years and then went to the big city to live with an uncle and goto the University of Wisconsin, where she graduated with a music major in 1926. Then she taught music at high school and met my grandfather while riding a bus to work. He was riding the same bus to visit his grandfather, and they married in the summer of 1928, when she was 34.

She seemed to do just fine with those "cultural iron shackles". Of course, she was a bit of an iron lady too. I found teaching to be quite common in my family research. Many a farmer's daughter would be a teacher in her late teens and early twenties until she got married. They too, seemed to survive their "cultural iron shackles".

[eppur_se_muova]

11. "until they got married" -- they probably weren't allowed to teach after marriage.

Stupid rule, but it was tradition. All schoolteachers had to be unmarried virgins in Lily-White Pure America.

No cultural shackles there.

[AnneD]

17. The other thing you didn't mention....

that could be a whole different thread....Testing has replaced teaching to such a degree that it has taken all the joy out of teaching and learning.

No wonder the kids and staff are wound so tight. The first thing they cut is arts, music, sports, and things that are not tested. It is some of those very things that give students a reason to come to class. Who really knows where their gifts lie.

Stupid educrats cut recess in elementary school so that the kids have more 'test teaching time' to boost the score. Kids learn many life long lessons on the playground (I learned to knit in the 4th grade from a friend that brought knitting needles to school and I still knit 40 yrs later )

I am close to retiring but honestly, if I had a kid today, I would home school. GOP has destroyed our school system and the DEM have been complacent.

A pox on both your houses!

Just sign me School Nurse that respects teachers...

[datasuspect]

24. If a student brought knitting needles to school nowadays

they'd probably arrest the student and put the school on lockdown.

[Dragonfli]

25. Well, they do handcuff children as young as six now, and you will have threads hidden

for trying to advocate protecting children from such abuse, so even here this sort of nasty over-reaction is applauded.

Our party is becoming more like theirs regarding it's attitude towards teaching and a general hatred of "other peoples" children.

A shame really, when a voice trying to protect children from abuse is the voice considered disruptive, too disruptive for a child hate fun fest that I once thought would only be found at Freepville.

[AnneD]

26. Exactly....

but this was something I learned and have used on and off throughout my life. She had the needles and I learned on pencils

We could also smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco along the breezeway in high school. You get arrested for that now days.

Learning is just not fun or interesting anymore for a vast majority of our kids.

[AsahinaKimi]

29. According to the Republicans ..

America doesn't need education. They have cut money to fund various programs. They would much rather all future children grow up and be like tea baggers, not thinking for themselves, and following a leader who is, most likely just as clueless.