(NO) TEACHING FOR DUMMIES
August 29, 2003 -- The Department of Education has fired 3,000 teachers who flunked the state competency examination required for classroom certification.
But worse than those teachers failing competency exams is that a crowd of the flunkees dared to show up on the steps of City Hall to proclaim the essential unfairness of it all.
The tests are "culturally biased" against minority teachers, they claim.
Consider that a sad sign of the times.
As to the dismissals — well, they are sad, too, but wholly necessary.
As the grand experiment in mayoral control of the schools gets underway next week, jettisoning the instructional dead weight is good for all concerned.
What matters is that the best possible teachers are in the classrooms on Sept. 8.
Some of the "teachers" protesting Wednesday had failed the tests 12 and 13 times!
Once, such individuals would simply have hidden their faces in shame.
Certainly, you'd think that after a half-dozen tries most of them would have realized that teaching probably wasn't the right profession for them.
But not in today's victim culture.
Instead, these "teachers" stand up and proclaim their "oppression."
Indeed, given their results, they are essentially publicly proclaiming their, ahem, lack of intelligence.
One wonders how the thousands of competent black and Hispanic teachers — who have managed to do the necessary work to become certified — feel about their dismissed colleagues crying racism.
And exactly what lessons does the behavior of these wannabe teachers impart to their potential students?
Get a dozen chances at passing a test?
Cry and protest if you still can't pass?
Blame "the system"?
Thanks, but the public schools — and their students — can only improve with these dim bulbs out of the way.
It truly is about the children, after all.
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