Read the Sunday paper while having my tea. Never thought you'd hear me say that, huh? The coffee drinker has gone to Twinings English Breakfast...less acid, less caffeine. Ah the tribulations of aging.
It appears that Syria is going to be the flashpoint for a new threat to world peace. Mr. Al-Assad, emphasis on ass, seems to feel compelled to kill off the majority Sunni population of his country, and the rest of the world seems to be going to stand by and act as horrified witnesses. Oh, except for Vladimir the Russian, who is already putting a few rocket launchers and boots on the ground in case any of the other nations of the world decide this genocide has to be stopped.
The end of this month the Supremes will be handing down their ruling on the constitutionality of the congressional plan to fund affordable health care, which I daresay could have an impact on the outcome of the presidential election in November. Obama did a really crappy job of letting the Republicans make an acceptable piece of legislation sound like socialized medicine. I've been listening to presidents since Nixon say that we have to reform health care delivery in this country and when Congress finally enacts legislation that is originally the idea of conservative strategists, Roger Ailes is able to convince the Faux News nation that it is government controlled health care and not regulation of the insurance industry. Why do you suppose Americans, who pay more for health care than any other people on earth and get less for their medical dollar than any industrialized society, won't accept the idea that health care managed by insurance claims adjusters isn't good for anyone except the insurance companies? Do you really want United Health Care to decide whether you should get your chemotherapy? Did you really like learning that the baby you're carrying is a pre-existing condition when your husband has to change insurance plans with his new job?
Everybody is up in arms because the cut scores for the STAAR test are so low. Every teacher in this state could have told you they would be. Your exemplary TAKS trained house apes can't read and they certainly can't think. We have turned the public schools into testing factories where the curriculum has been set aside in favor of teaching test taking strategies. Kids don't read a paragraph and understand the ideas being communicated in a context. They are looking for the bold black words, which they will retain long enough to find on the assessment and they will choose that answer and bubble it in. I know this because when you ask high school students to familiarize themselves with new vocabulary in a content area, they look only at the bold black words and the few words before and after the bold black words. School districts are planning curriculum based on English courses where students don't actually have to read the novels. Kids always have done well on the social studies TAKS test, but they didn't have to know any history really. It has been a skills test. Can you pick information out of this paragraph about explorers? Can you read this map and pick out the countries who sided together in this war? Crimeny! I have kids who come to my class from calculus and ask me how many points each question on my test is worth. No, I am not kidding.
Finland is the leader of the world's nations in education. If anyone cares to look at the reasons why, it begins with teaching being a very competitive profession. They attract excellent, highly motivated educators by making it a respected profession and by paying those professionals competitively. Students who graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt for their education are not going to be interested in $42,000 dollar starting salaries that essentially peak out in about ten years at a whopping $57,000.
America, teaching is not a job for married women whose husbands make good salaries, so the little woman will make her pin money and be off when the kids are out of school anymore. Lots of the girls I work with are unmarried and sometimes go without groceries to make the rent and car payment. The ones who are divorced and have kids to raise on their own are even worse off. Their health insurance premiums are so high to cover their children, they are essentially working just for that purpose.
I could rant on, but I won't. I need to tidy up around the cottage and pretend that all's right with the world or my blood pressure won't be in bounds. Besides it's only six minutes til Bob Schieffer takes on Mitt Romney and I don't want to miss that.
Happy Father's Day and good luck to Jim Furyk in the U.S.Open.
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