Ray, I have a good friend in Waco, TX  whose wife teaches 8th grade and I forwarded your remarks. She tells me of times where she just wants the children to think and she will take a current event and foster discussion on all sides. 

Here in California, the 2 most powerful lobbies are the trial lawyers and the teacher's union. 

The CTA - California Teacher's Union, will spend 10s of millions for or against a candidate. And if "teaching the children" were truly a goal of the union, they would have the best teachers in the worst schools (primarily inner city). Of course they don't. Being a good union they lobby for more teacher benefits, and tenure is very strong. So the bad ones are almost impossible to fire. 

California used to have a public school system that was the envy of the country but no more. It started chaning for the worse in the 1970s I believe. 

Of course there are some good schools here but too many are mediocre or just rotten.

But John Lee's comments also resonated with me - about parents who are indifferent to their children's education. I'm not a big watcher of Ophra Winfrey but I found it interesting  when she took her own money and spent $40 million (or so) for a South African school for disadvantaged kids there (which would be most of them I think) - anyway she caught grief for saying in the US children in inner city schools are more interested in shoes and clothes than what they are learning. There's truth to that, too. 


The LA school district I'm told has over 150 different languages. With this kind of Tower of Babel (pun intended) how can one expect any excellence? Lotsa reasons, of which (at least here IMO) the union is but one problem. 

Bill
Sacramento, CA 

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