The phrase "nitpicking school inspectors had supreme power" caused a horrifying image of Dolores Umbridge to invade my brain.... Power corrupts....

and the teachers wonder why people are pulling their kids out of the public school system....

private, parochial and homeschooling is on a rise every year and teachers still can't figure it out.

Wow, just because the guy has different "electronic monitoring systems" grading his performance he thinks that children should suffer the same fate!

And worse, he thinks that being monitored is just a normal and acceptable fact of life. The kind of person who doesn't care being called "human resource".

It's all about money!

Oh James, please don't have robot^H^H kids, it will be better for them.

James wrote: "75% of my area's municipal property taxes pay for local schools - no matter that I have no children and may never have them."

Same here. Not only do poor Americans get public education, so do Jose's children, and he's an illegal immigrant (though, most of his children are American citizens.) And guess what? We both benefit greatly from the fact that they all get an education at public (our) expense.

I'd like to ask the Bushies and the yellow journalists at Faux News just *who* they think is fighting the war in Iraq? And who do they think is going to be paying into Social Security as the baby boomers retire? 


People with self styled utopias tend to be left grasping at straws when it comes time to tie their performance to revenue. "It's unfair!" the teacher's union shouts on behalf of the school districts, clutching their billions of dollars in investments they siphon interest off of for double digit annual increases in administrator pay. "It's no good for the kids!" they scream as local families face ever increasing city property tax bills at a time of record high food, energy and housing costs.

75% of my area's municipal property taxes pay for local schools - no matter that I have no children and may never have them.

Teacher's should understand issues have more than one side and people working in the real world tend to have CCTV cameras and other electronic monitoring systems grading their performance....

Uh, you need to go and tell the nice people in white coats that it is time for your medication again.

Well I'm not sure why, but I guess that's one vote for Orwellian Dystopia. You're also missing the point: the teachers are not in favor of rampaging money allotted to administrators (i.e. inspectors and the like), they are trying to advocate an environment where children and teachers are comfortable and given what they need to succeed, not what some hysterical parents and admins are pushing for. As a soon-to-be teacher in America, I plan to fight the good fight as well.

What are you talking about??