In fact, that’s what history and science *should* address: reading comprehension.”

Interestingly enough, I spend just about as much time in my 7th grade class teaching reading comprehension (especially when it comes to content area reading) as I do actually teaching science content. It astounds me how little instruction my students actually have in reading a science text, a newspaper, or even a report. If it doesn’t have a main character and a story, many of them are lost.

“…which I plan to bandy about with vigor”

Vigor, yes, but please, no rigour. Rigour kills the essential “critical thinking skills” that fuzzy math tries so hard to teach our kids.

Rigour would sneer at the claim that 1 + 1 = 3, but that would be wrong. How do we know that it isn’t so on Mongo, under Ming the Merciless?

what am I saying!?

you have no point!

stop it!

you have a point

“These are not her children.”

And so? She is a trained educator, better able than thee and me to navigate the shoals of reason on which we might founder. Not for nothing did Cornelius Fudge appoint her High Inquisitor!

I’m happy to pay my taxes so that she can ensure that my children will have little or no competition when they graduate.

This is the kind of statement that, after you’ve read it for the thousandth or ten thousandth time, radicalizes parents.

Apart from the simple fact that Ms. Zunin has presumably not been certified, or hired, to teach empathy, the arrogance of the woman is intolerable.

These are not her children.

It is not Ms. Zunin’s place to decide what abilities her students should or should not acquire in school. Her wages are paid by taxpayers; taxpayers have made it as clear as anything can possibly be that they want high school graduates to be able to write a cohesive paragraph and express themselves grammatically.

If Ms. Zunin wants to teach empathy and concern for other people, if that is what interests her, she should seek another line of work, or find satisfying volunteer work.

They aren’t enrolled in ELD classes.

“Everyone else might as well rot in hell.”

Probably not, but let’s not let facts get in the way of good hyperbole. What the article demonstrated is those “rot[ting] in hell” students were doing just swell. They were, in fact, distinguished. What the article demonstrated is schools do a fine job educating well-off kids from Napa. It’s the children of the grape-pickers they don’t know what to do with, and furthermore, want nothing to do with, choosing retirement over adjustment and change.

“If you can’t afford private schools and you have a native English-speaking student, that student IS being short-changed.”

Most available data suggest otherwise.

If that were the choice you could hardly choose else but the former. The latter lays the foundation for a de facto class system and that’s not good for the health of a democracy.

But that wasn’t the choice because the public education system wasn’t doing a terrific job for smart kids while ignoring the dumb kids.

Which means that our public schools are becoming institutions for teaching English As A Second Language.

What about those students for whom English is NOT a second language?

They are languishing in public schools, because they are NOT being taught! Standard curriculum is being thrown overboard in order to teach ESOL students. Everyone else might as well rot in hell.

If you can’t afford private schools and you have a native English-speaking student, that student IS being short-changed.

About two hours a week has been carved out of standard curriculum in our school district for *all* elementary students to learn Spanish (ain’t that a twist?). Well, what are the native Spanish-speaking students doing during that time? Do you think this school district is already ringing the brass-bell on the three R’s, or do you think maybe that two hours a week could be going to teaching non-Spanish-speaking fundamentals? When you consider all the hours wasted in a school week for non-academic matters, it is truly surprising that anyone with any commonsense expects American students coming from a public education to have a competitive intellectual capacity.