(Mensaje se repite en Español)
(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)
Given a choice between having a first year intern operate on you or having a skilled surgeon with 20 years of experience perform the operation, which would you choose? So why is it different when it comes to teachers and the art of teaching? Because what goes unchallenged in this society in a supposed move to fix purposefully failed public education is the fallacious belief - constantly repeated in the media, until the public is brainwashed - that anybody can teach or that those who cannot do anything else teach and it is their incompetence that has put us in the fix we are in today. The only way one can continue to believe this group libel of the teaching profession is by ignoring all the evidence from around the world and here at home.
In Finland, only one in ten of the people who apply to teach actually get hired. But Finland, with the highest educated population in the world also has virtually no turnover in their teaching profession, because it is a well paid and highly respected profession that doesn't drive the best people out of it. In the United States and more specifically at the representative Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) 50% quit within 3-5 years.They quit because they are highly educated professionals on a par with doctors, lawyers, and engineers who get absolutely no support from school administration and even less respect from the society at large.
