As IF Times

link Teacher who blogged about her lazy students gets her job back – On Deadline – USATODAY.com.

When someone decides on a career in teaching, presumably they are pursuing some idealistic dream of conveying knowledge and enlightening young minds.  It must be a jarring jolt of reality when the classroom experience is one of indifference, hostility and entitlement from students. 

Hamstrung by administrators and political rot, there is more and more anecdotal evidence that the effectiveness of teachers is being compromised by the stifling social malaise of entitlement, at least in the public schools.  One of the most insidious forms of entitlement is that of censorship.  If you can’t even call a spade a spade, then the whole notion of an enlightened education is moot.   Students have been unruly and petulant forever, according to such experts as Aristotle and Socrates.  It appears that it’s only been in recent history that such behaviour is supported by administrators, parents and society at large.  Ironically, while the whole world fights for access to education, in our culture, people fight for the right of not having to learn.

Consequently, we observe instances of kids who have notionally graduated, but for all intents and purposes are functional idiots.  Legend by now are stories of teenagers and college graduates who can’t properly read or write and are then offered up to the unforgiving working world.  Since their academic and social skills are malformed, these kids are eligible only for entry level service jobs or as cast members on reality TV shows.  Teachers like the one featured in the story are no doubt discouraged that they act merely as enablers for students to be passed along to next processing station without any positive impact.   If kids are in fact lazy and entitled, shouldn’t that behaviour be called out?  The comments at the bottom of the article are the most amusing, because many are chastising the teacher for her candor, instead of realizing that it is their very defense of the ‘kids’ that is responsible for the malaise that affects education today.  As if it was the teacher that was at fault for not tolerating petulant kids.

Rahm Emmanuel, the new mayor of Chicago was publicly prickly when asked about where he sent his kids for schooling.  Like many wealthy people, his kids were attending private schools.  While the quality of teaching may be arguably better at the private schools, it’s likely the main difference is the culture that contrasts with the public schools.  At private schools, there are thresholds of achievement that must be met and certainly standards of behaviour much stricter than is enforced in the public system.  Parents pay for this.  They know that certain standards of academic and behavioral accomplishment must be met in order to be properly educated.   At the root of this education is a value system that encourages study, excellence and integrity, things that used to be taught in the public school system.  It’s a mystery as to why the public would allow their tax money to support a system that was any less rigorous.

link Whos the woman who fought Murdochs foam foe? – CBS News.

Well it’s about time.  One of the trademark antics of the left has been to ‘pie’ people they don’t agree with, typically those on the ‘right’.  How a guy with a pie plate full of shaving cream could have passed through security at a high level gathering of British MP’s  is another issue.  Must have not been on the checklist of dangerous items.  Pie plate full of shaving cream, “not on the danger list, carry on, pip pip”.

Rupert Murdoch’s wife can be seen in the video executing an overhead smash on the assailant and then turning the pie back on him.  Good on her. For the longest time, idiots from the fringe left have staged all kinds of juvenile stunts on speakers they don’t agree with in the mistaken opinion that the ‘punked’ factor will curry favour with their peer group…other idiots.   As the old saying goes, it’s all fun until someone loses an eye and while this has thankfully not happened, the real reason this stuff still occurs at all is because there has been no consequence to this behaviour.   Being hauled away by security people and getting a stern scolding  is not exactly a consequence.  What are they, 12? Getting slapped around a bit for perpetrating an assault on another  is a much more tangible risk to dufus behavior.  

If the perpetrators of the left’s puerile antics were exposed to instant consequences of their actions, it could get very amusing before it all ends.  What if the perps were made to eat soap, or write lines of penance on a blackboard 200 times, or wear a dunce cap?  What if their mothers dragged them out by their ears in front of a live studio audience?  In the best circumstance, a black trapezoid labeled “5 tons” would drop on them instantly a la Wile E Coyote.

If one cares to go back and do some research, it is never the normal people that perpetrate juvenile publicity stunts to shut people up. You never see someone dumping a bucket of offal on Michael Moore during his blatherings.  Bill Maher is free to spew any and all manner of vulgar rhetoric without anyone giving him a deserved bitch slap.  Now that I think about it, with all the ad-hominem, misogynist barbs hurled by Maher at Sarah Palin over the years, it’s a wonder Todd Palin doesn’t invite Maher up to Alaska for a boys’ weekend….just to chew the fat.