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[Bart J.]

OK, genius .. here's your point-by-point head-enema ..

You called it "Kurt's song."

> WRONG

 But it is not his song.

> Never said it was, within your context.

 It doesn't matter who moved more units (which, I think, is a Cobainian position to take--whose song is "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"? "The Man Who Sold the World"? "Lake of Fire"?).

> My previous point not in factual dispute.

 The Vaselines performed it first and Kelly & McKee wrote it. It's their (sic), and it goes by the title they gave it (sic) --which is also the title given on the back cover of the _Unplugged_ album.

> Fails to respond to my point.

I lived in the Pacific Northwest for three years and visited the towns that Kurt Cobain grew up in. My slacker friends would say of you: "dude .. wow .. mellow. No small children are dying. Really. Take the day off. It's raining."

[Burnsie]

I have been teaching English for 15 years.  I have taught every level of class from remedial 6th grade through college freshman 101, including AP Lit & Lang now for 5 years.  I do believe I am correct in observing in this board that many of you have deviated far from the course.  ARGUING about Cobain and Love... WOW.  

The original thread was about whether or not education departments should filter students via a political filter.  I am 30 credits away from my PhD, and I must argue a case about anecdotal evidence.  Logically, a single example can prove an argument false. " All birds fly" can be simply turned aside with even one counter point.  I've noticed that Liberals, even in this forum, attempt to use the anecdote argument to turn aside general observations and examples.  General observations are not solid laws of physics, but they do enable those with clear minds to note trends.  Judging others via stereotyping is unfair, but stereotypes do find their roots in truth.  That's how they become stereotypes.

Last semester I studied with a professor I really like.  She is kind, she is intelligent, and she is as left as the summer day is long.  In a class about administrative accountability, she passed remarks that upper-middle class white men are  the cause of all social injustice.  She believes Slavery means only Black slavery because it is a relatively new term.  When I pressed her for an answer, she told me the entymology of the word originates from some British construction meaning to use of Slavic peoples as forced labor in the 16th century.  I didn't have the heart to fight with her about what happened in Egypt and Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, about what has happened in virtually every culture since the dawn of time, but here is the point:  I am conservative.  She is liberal, yet she thinks I am a great teacher and will be a great administrator. She has passed comments to my friends that she thinks I am very intelligent.  She is the one pushing me toward a PhD.  A liberal pushing a conservative to enter academia and train tomorrow's teachers... it must be the End of Days.  Let's watch for the Horsemen...

The essence of the problem explored in this thread is that discrimination based upon philosophy is hard to measure quantitatively.  Each person could rightly claim, or at least right in perception, that somewhere someone was baised against him.  For me, for example, in the same university I had another professor who told me to "sit there and be quite because I might think I am a nice-looking Irish boy, but I did not have the brains to think progressively."  Well, I had to rewrite my 25 page thesis for that you know what 3 times before 'earning' a B-.  

Another piece of reality is that both of these experiences happened to me when I was well into adulthood, with many years of teaching under my belt. I've often wondered how either of these experiences of mine would affect a first year teacher, one right out of college, in the first year of grad school. I would hope for the former because the latter could be crushing to someone not yet established and confident.

As a teacher, I don't care what kind of politics my students bring to class.  I love to debate all of them on all matters, and never has a student's score been affected by his position or his opinion of me personally.  I don't defy the liberal vilification of conservatives by hunting with my students, fixing their cars, teaching them after school about auto mechanics, cooking for them, listening to their tales of woe -- I wasn't trying to break the stereotype.  I do these things because I care about my kids.  They seek me out, they come to my house (I live in district), because kids know who cares and who doesn’t.  They know it immediately. Countless kids had free tutoring at my kitchen table. My kids are younger and love talking with the older ones.  I don't know how many kids have come to my dinner table to learn SAT testing strategy simply because I wanted to help them beat that unjust system, or maybe they just want to be fed.

Over the years, I have hosted student teachers.  Some have been capable, while others have not.  Universities should not be concerned with political strategy. Truth be told, public school children are not really of their own political mind.  Mostly, they parrot the views of their families, as it should be.  As a teacher, we need to help them to question and learn.  Universities should be more concerned about how well the young teacher can teach, not how well the young teacher will coddle the ideals of progressivism or any other ism.

[Henry]

Yesterday, 30,000 of America's highest-paid workers lost their jobs.  IMHO, they are not interested in how a bunch of bureaucrates from the Public School Monopoly, drunk with power, want to critique everything about the U.S, but managed to forget about the basics.

They want their children to learn in environments that are orderly, drug-free, and imbued with common sense. Otherwise --  like my sister, who just transferred her children to Catholic schools because there was no discipline or order -- they will leave.

For those who criticize private schools -- you had a chance. You failed. Get over it, get better, or get out of education, please.

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[Chris Keegan, Ph.D., MVCC]

Having once taught secondary school English, I can attest to two very valuable points: one, most teachers are indeed politically liberal; two, teacher-education programs are woefully inadequate.

I once worked in a high school English department under a chair who virtually threatened to fire me in the middle of the year because I (1) taught the text Into The Wild, which she claimed was a blatant example of male dominance, and (2) spent "too much time" teaching through lecture, which she claimed was worthless, even though I had a long track record of successfully placing students at good colleges.

I was one of 6 male teachers in a deparment of 27, and it was very clear that there was an overt feminist agenda to the curriculum (we often joked about it, when we could).  Now, even though I was vastly more qualified than virtually all of my colleagues (with a doctorate in a very solid content area), I worked for two straight years under the threat of being fired.

Secondary and primary schools come straight out of a Kafka novel: the best teachers are often blocked out by the worst so that these lesser teachers can continue their strangle-hold on our education system.

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[B.J.S.]

I have several friends, working for monopoly public school system, where if you are not a Democrat and for more taxes, you are dead professionally. You get no support, you get endless criticism.

The public knows it is being handed a load of crap by education colleges and NEA union thugs. And they are voting their positions. Get used to it.

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