Actor Matt Damon is a walking talking public service reminder to immunize your children early and often against La-La-Land disease.
In Damons world all public school teachers are selfless angels. Government workers and Hollywood entertainers are impervious to economic incentives. And anyone who disagrees is a know-nothing corporate reformer ingrate who hates education.
Last week the liberal box-office star addressed a Save Our Schools march in Washington at the behest of his mother a professor of early childhood education. He attacked standardized tests. He praised all the public school teachers who empowered him and unlocked his creative potential by rejecting silly drill and kill nonsense. Speaking on behalf of an army of regular people Damon decried the demoralization of teachers by ruthless results-oriented free marketeers whom he mocked as simple-minded.
What Damons superficial tirade lacked however was any real-world understanding of the deterioration of core curricular learning in America. Students cant master simple division or fractions because todays teachers -- churned out through lowest common denominator grad schools and shielded from competition -- have barely mastered those skills themselves. Un-educators have abandoned drill and kill computation for multicultural claptrap and fuzzy math traded in grammar fundamentals for creative spelling and dropped standard civics for save-the-earth propaganda.
Consequence: bottom-basement U.S. student scores on global assessments over the past two decades. Blaming the tests is blaming the messenger. The liberal education establishments response to its abject academic failures? Run away. This is why the Save Our Schools agenda championed by Damon calls for less curricular emphasis on math and reading -- and more focus on social justice funding and equity issues.
Out: Reading is fundamental.
In: Feeling is fundamental.
After his drippy pep talk absolving teachers of any responsibility for Americas educational morass Damon then lashed out at a young libertarian reporter who had the audacity to ask him about the negative impact of lifetime teacher tenure. In acting there isnt job security right? Reason.tvs Michelle Fields asked Damon. There is an incentive to work hard and be a better actor because you want to have a job. So why isnt it like that for teachers?
Its elementary that people will work longer and harder if they know they will be rewarded. Theres nothing anti-teacher about the question. (And before teachers-unions goons go on the attack I am the child of a public school teacher and the mother of two children in an excellent public charter school by choice.) But Damons hinges came undone when confronted with the mild question.
You think job insecurity makes me work hard? he retorted. Thats like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when she has tenure. Gathering all the creative potential he could muster Damon unleashed crude profanities on Fields. A teacher wants to teach Damon fumed with his mother next to him. Why else would you take a sh**ty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really loved to do it?
Never mind that most out-of-work Americans would find nothing sh**ty about earning an average $53000 annual salary plus health and retirement benefits for a 180-day work year.
Damon went on to deride standard mainstream behavioral economic principles as intrinsically paternalistic and MBA-style thinking. And when the young reporters cameraman pointed out that there are bad apples in the teaching profession as in any profession Damon called him sh**ty too.
Tinseltown stars can afford to put emotion over logic progressive fantasy over practical reality. The rest of us are stuck with the bill. And those whom bleeding-heart celebrities purport to care most about -- the children -- suffer the consequences of bad ideas.
Interminable teacher tenure in Americas largest school districts from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles has produced a rotten corps of incompetent (at best) and dangerous (at worst) educators coddled by Big Labor. As the D.C.-based Center for Union Facts reports In many major cities only one out of 1000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. ... In 10 years only about 47 out of 100000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jerseys schools.
By contrast as the educational documentary Waiting for Superman (produced by avowed liberal turned reformer Davis Guggenheim) pointed out one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine and one out of every 97 lawyers loses their license to practice law.
In Los Angeles its not just meanie tea party terrorists making the case for abolishing teacher tenure. When the Los Angeles Times exposed how the citys tenure evaluation system rubber-stamped approvals and ignored actual performance the district superintendent admitted: Too many ineffective teachers are falling into tenured positions -- the equivalent of jobs for life. USC education professor Julie Slayton acknowledged: Its ridiculous and should be changed.
Pop quiz: Would multimillionaire Matt Damon apply the same warped employment practices and dumbed-down curricular standards to his own accountants that he champions for Americas public school teachers? Film at 11.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
Actor Matt Damon is a walking talking public service reminder to immunize your children early and often against La-La-Land disease.
In Damons world all public school teachers are selfless angels. Government workers and Hollywood entertainers are impervious to economic incentives. And anyone who disagrees is a know-nothing corporate reformer ingrate who hates education.
Last week the liberal box-office star addressed a Save Our Schools march in Washington at the behest of his mother a professor of early childhood education. He attacked standardized tests. He praised all the public school teachers who empowered him and unlocked his creative potential by rejecting silly drill and kill nonsense. Speaking on behalf of an army of regular people Damon decried the demoralization of teachers by ruthless results-oriented free marketeers whom he mocked as simple-minded.
What Damons superficial tirade lacked however was any real-world understanding of the deterioration of core curricular learning in America. Students cant master simple division or fractions because todays teachers -- churned out through lowest common denominator grad schools and shielded from competition -- have barely mastered those skills themselves. Un-educators have abandoned drill and kill computation for multicultural claptrap and fuzzy math traded in grammar fundamentals for creative spelling and dropped standard civics for save-the-earth propaganda.
Consequence: bottom-basement U.S. student scores on global assessments over the past two decades. Blaming the tests is blaming the messenger. The liberal education establishments response to its abject academic failures? Run away. This is why the Save Our Schools agenda championed by Damon calls for less curricular emphasis on math and reading -- and more focus on social justice funding and equity issues.
Out: Reading is fundamental.
In: Feeling is fundamental.
After his drippy pep talk absolving teachers of any responsibility for Americas educational morass Damon then lashed out at a young libertarian reporter who had the audacity to ask him about the negative impact of lifetime teacher tenure. In acting there isnt job security right? Reason.tvs Michelle Fields asked Damon. There is an incentive to work hard and be a better actor because you want to have a job. So why isnt it like that for teachers?
Its elementary that people will work longer and harder if they know they will be rewarded. Theres nothing anti-teacher about the question. (And before teachers-unions goons go on the attack I am the child of a public school teacher and the mother of two children in an excellent public charter school by choice.) But Damons hinges came undone when confronted with the mild question.
You think job insecurity makes me work hard? he retorted. Thats like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when she has tenure. Gathering all the creative potential he could muster Damon unleashed crude profanities on Fields. A teacher wants to teach Damon fumed with his mother next to him. Why else would you take a sh**ty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really loved to do it?
Never mind that most out-of-work Americans would find nothing sh**ty about earning an average $53000 annual salary plus health and retirement benefits for a 180-day work year.
Damon went on to deride standard mainstream behavioral economic principles as intrinsically paternalistic and MBA-style thinking. And when the young reporters cameraman pointed out that there are bad apples in the teaching profession as in any profession Damon called him sh**ty too.
Tinseltown stars can afford to put emotion over logic progressive fantasy over practical reality. The rest of us are stuck with the bill. And those whom bleeding-heart celebrities purport to care most about -- the children -- suffer the consequences of bad ideas.
Interminable teacher tenure in Americas largest school districts from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles has produced a rotten corps of incompetent (at best) and dangerous (at worst) educators coddled by Big Labor. As the D.C.-based Center for Union Facts reports In many major cities only one out of 1000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. ... In 10 years only about 47 out of 100000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jerseys schools.
By contrast as the educational documentary Waiting for Superman (produced by avowed liberal turned reformer Davis Guggenheim) pointed out one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine and one out of every 97 lawyers loses their license to practice law.
In Los Angeles its not just meanie tea party terrorists making the case for abolishing teacher tenure. When the Los Angeles Times exposed how the citys tenure evaluation system rubber-stamped approvals and ignored actual performance the district superintendent admitted: Too many ineffective teachers are falling into tenured positions -- the equivalent of jobs for life. USC education professor Julie Slayton acknowledged: Its ridiculous and should be changed.
Pop quiz: Would multimillionaire Matt Damon apply the same warped employment practices and dumbed-down curricular standards to his own accountants that he champions for Americas public school teachers? Film at 11.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
