The “sacrifice” she endured for all our sakes shall never be forgotten. Standing before the International Olympic Committee Michelle Antoi-bama courageously repressed tears, reminiscing of her late father, and declaring: “Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad’s lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis and others . . . .”
Yes, Carl Lewis was and remains a track and field super-athlete as well as an eminent Black-American icon. Why, he practically set Los Angeles on fire at his first Olympics, swooping up four gold medals at the 1984 games. Forever tied to his great legacy, must now, forever, be the powerful image of young First Lady Michelle Obama, a starry-eyed babe at aged-twenty reclining in her “dad’s lap” for the 1984 Olympic games.
Before this speech, Michelle, fresh off a European shopping spree, humbly reassured a crowd working on Chicago’s bid that she, Oprah and Barack were up to the “sacrifice” of coming all the way to Copenhagen to tireless jet around on Airforce One, shop for some new Prada-wear, and savor ‘Roasted Maine Scallops with cauliflower and almonds & brown butter, oven roasted bone with paprika crust and country bread, sliced veal with white tuna sauce or roasted organic chicken with buttermilk and herbs.’
Wait, that’s what the London Daily Mail reports the First Couple ate the following week for their Anniversary. Prague is where they were lavished with the finest food in Eastern Europe during a quick prance through Czech Republic after the Olympic defeat. What was on the menu in Copenhagen, again? Oprah did leave a few morsels for Michelle, right? Never mind. Oh yes, the “sacrifice” . . . .
There, Michelle stressed the importance of a Chicago Olympics and warned that “athletics is becoming more of a fleeting opportunity . . . . [f]unds dry up so it becomes harder for kids to engage in sports, to learn how to swim, to even ride a bike.”
It’s true, American athletics is practically a long forgotten memory in 2009, given the high cost of bicycles and, um, the scarcity of, uh, bodies of water for swimming.
Sadly, this trend will continue now that Brazil is sure to get the Olympics. And while American athletic traditions are sure to fall into antiquity as skyrocketing costs prevent kids from riding bicycles, running on tracks and kicking soccer balls, we should take solace that somewhere out there the next generation of full grown adult Brazilian men and women in their twenties and thirties shall perch themselves on their daddys’ laps in 2016, to become inspired throughout midlife.
Nevertheless, Michelle had a little more of that signature-homegrown advice for the great nation she has been proud of for at least a year and half and counting now. This week, Obama wrote in US News that “Teachers are a key to a successful economy.”
A celebrated economist, First Lady Obama is well equipped to speak on this momentous issue. But her economic bona fides aside, Obama tackles this issue from the standpoint of a simple stay-at-home (aside from occasional European tour) Mom. First, she says, “I can’t help but think that some of the most influential people in my daughters’ lives won’t be the ones they . . . . read about in the pages of a book—they will be the people who stand up every day in front of their classrooms.”
Recalling my own upbringing inside the nuclear powerhouses of knowledge known as California public schools, I must differ from the First Lady’s assessment that the countless models of mediocrity I encountered in school rooms somehow rivaled the influence Washington, Ghandi and Martin Luther King had on my life. One reason for this difference could be that the Obama’s have declined the public option, opting instead to spend the rich fruits capitalism and high-paying elected office has showered upon them, on private schools for their daughters.
“[I]t’s not surprising,” Obama continues, “that studies show that the single most important factor affecting students’ achievement is the caliber of their teachers.”
Assuming these supposed “studies” are reliable I simply revert to my prior criticism of government schools. For, if this is true, it should be no surprise that government schools staffed by government teachers, choked by government control and powerful teacher’s unions have led, over the past fifty years, to high drop outs, abysmal performances in most of the subject areas once foundational to Western education, and increasing teen pregnancies; that they have stymied American competition abroad in science and engineering while concurrently fashioning a nation with the highest proportion of unthinking, pacified fools America has yet seen.
I’m glad Michelle seems to understand all this, for she goes on to say that, “in a 21st-century global economy where jobs can be shipped to any place with an Internet connection and children here in America will be competing with children around the world for the same jobs, a good education is no longer just one road to opportunity—it is the only road. And good teachers aren’t just critical for the success of our students. They are the key to the success of our economy.”
I completely agree. Here are some ways to reform American education which would allow us to regain the economic dominance we once enjoyed: close the Department of Education and let state and local governments take back their schools at the community level, give parents generous tax credits so they can pick which schools they want to send their kids to, eliminate government administrators at the local level to free up tax money being wasted on “education budgets,” and refocus on the foundational subjects that sparked a revolution in Western education: math, science, history, language, arts and American civics.
The last goal will be accomplished by divorcing education from a federal government which has spent the last several decades confusing and distracting American school children with liberalspeak and multicultural perspectives that lead one to believe that all approaches and all cultures are equal in every way, when they are, quite actually, not equal.
I wonder how the Safe School’s Czar feels about all of these ideas. Yes, instead of an hour a week devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender tolerance in Kindergarten, maybe we can – this is a crazy idea – just teach them about math or history during that hour. Heck, let’s just send them home an hour early and let their parents have that conversation instead. It’s pretty radical, I know.
“More than half of our nation’s teachers and principals are baby boomers. And in the next four years, as many as one third of America’s 3.2 million teachers could retire.” Good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe we can hire a new generation under our reforms (see above), eliminate tenure and start rewarding teachers who prove themselves worth their salaries.
“[B]y 2014 . . . . our nation’s schools will hire as many as 1 million new teachers.” What do you know! Problem solved. We’ll begin our reforms (see above) with these fresh faces.
Obama says, “we need to treat teachers like the professionals they are by providing good salaries and high-quality professional development opportunities.”
In California, more than 2/3 of our state budget goes to education. Our schools have remained in the bottom five out of fifty states based on performance. We have the highest unemployment rate we’ve seen in decades and one of the highest nationwide. We have a deficit problem that refuses to go away with every new band aid the democratic-controlled legislator (as it has been for most of the past forty years) place on the problem. In the midst of this, the California teacher’s union has staged hunger strikes in the face of budget cuts. California K-12 teachers are paid, pro-rata, higher than state attorneys who are required to spend an extra three years in law school in order to become attorneys. The tenure system is so overbearing that, as the LA Times reported a few months ago, there are literally thousands of teachers being paid to stay at home while they are being sued, many under investigation for molestation. In sum: it practically requires an act of Congress to fire them.
Teacher certification requires a bachelor’s degree with no particular academic distinction and a certification process which can often be financially supplemented. They can usually return to school later for a Master’s with state supplements provided. They enjoy every reasonable form of employee benefit as well as three months of vacation with the option of teaching summer school for additional compensation. Their union is easily the most powerful lobby in the state. At the same time, our education budget is spread over countless, superfluous administrators, bureaucrats, paper-pushers, projects and personnel. I wonder how did Plato’s Academy or the universities of Enlightenment Europe fair without Human Resource departments and guidance counselors?
Should teachers be treated like “professionals” and “provided good salaries and high-quality professional development opportunities?” Yes, of course – absolutely.
Should they be paid as much as professional lawyers and neurosurgeons? No, surely that would be rather strange given the disparity in educational levels and professional duties. Unless we’re going to start raising the hiring criterion so that one must have a PhD to teach Kindergarten, let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that teachers merit the same pay as doctors.
Should they be afforded their salaries and opportunities by the federal government rather than local communities by means of local taxes and federal tax credits? No, and the history of Western and American education proves that the form of schooling we currently misidentify as “education” is not effective; whereas locally controlled education focusing on basic and rudimentary subject areas is quite effective.
“We need parents to do their part as well to match that leadership in the classroom with leadership at home.” Agreed. Now can parents teach their own kids about sex, tolerance, God and social norms?
“And we need government to support significant efforts to recruit and retain teachers and to reward high-performing teachers. Along those lines, President Obama is already investing more than $3 billion to turn around struggling schools.” I hope no child will be left behind in the process.
As per usual, Michelle Obama has been carted out as the affable Jackie Kennedy/stay at home Mom disseminating family values and the personal wisdom she’s collected as a simple Momma Bear lookin’ over her little cubs.
What’s masked is the philosophy premised on the centralization of all individual wills into the hands of the federal will. What else is masked behind warm-colored images of children learning under the wings of wise, caring teachers is the greedy will of powerful unions seeing it as their cause to lobby without hesitation for more our tax money despite already defeated state economies, and to achieve as little serious accountability for failing schools and failed teachers as possible: tenure, tenure, tenure.
It’s insinuated that it is heartless to rip funding from education budgets and teacher’s salaries, despite the existence of countless reforms to the failed government system which continues to gobble up tax money after having provided disastrous results for forty years or more.
Unfortunately, the American left has set up teachers as a priestly class in their cosmological world view. Unquestionable in their integrity and virtuous beyond any of our mortal standards in their perseverance and willingness to take small incomes (frosted with lavish benefits, tenure and mandatory raises every few years) – teachers and their unions ought not to be challenged.
To add insult to injury, the administration props up the First Lady, appearing to levitate above partisan debate, in order to spearhead a shrewd political campaign by means of simple homegrown wisdom.
Its high time teacher’s unions, teachers’ performances, federalized education and education budgets are thrown in to the ring of serious political discourse where they belong. And if the affable Michelle is going to keep thrusting herself into political debates, then it’s high time we get past the charm, fashion, gardening techniques, recipes, motherliness and Women’s Home Journal nonsense and truly examine her philosophy. We should see her as the political animal she is.
