Tioga Herald

Read Frank Cerabino’s article in The Palm Beach Post (2.6.11):  http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cerabino-flag-waving-florida-congressman-blocks-troops-bomb-1300256.html?showComments=true&postingId=1301378#commentsList .  Discover how well U.S. contractors are protected by Republicans, but not our young men and women fighting for our freedoms!  About the same attitude Rick Scott and Jeb Bush – and yes, even Barack Obama have about the PEOPLE of this nation – from their ivory-draped, mint-julip, tea-sipping, ivy league towers.  Read on.

Jebbie appeared in Miami the other day with the lawyer from Harvard who sits in the White House. Together the two lawyers expounded on education – like a couple of experts who have been teaching many years and with many years of experience.

Lawyers telling us how we should do our jobs. How about if I were to tell lawyers how to do THEIR jobs? Hmmm!? Like … how about being ethical as a lawyer and revealing to a client that each minute of email read by the lawyer is charged off to the client (who makes a pittance of teacher’s salary) at $200 + per hour! The client suddenly realizes it when receiving bills in excess of $25K!  WOW! Surprise. Lawyers and bankers (who are still reaping the interest rates in paying off this heinous lawyer’s charge from 2003).

How about if I were to charge some unsuspecting student such a rate each time I work one-on-one with a student? And the student knows nothing about it!

Teachers want “accountability.”  Let me repeat this in case stupido supporters of the Obama/Jebbie duo begin to attack teachers. TEACHERS WANT ACCOUNTABILITY! Shall I increase the size of the font?  Oh, yeah, I can’t!  This is a blog editor and is lacking the Microsoft Word capabilities. (Oh!  Should I hold all blog/wiki/software creators and sellers (like Neil Bush accountable?  Why not?) 

Again, I repeat:  TEACHERS WANT ACCOUNTABILITY.  We just don’t want the imposed FCAT accountability of Jeb Bush and (apparently now) Barack Obama. (Background for New Yorkers: FCAT is like the New York State Regents, but is being applied in an unreasonable manner from what I remember the Regents Exam being used in NY).

Does experience count for anything? The experience of someone other than the fat cats with silver spoons and money (Jebbie) and ivy league backgrounds? Does our experience not count at all?  Then go to hell.

At the time Jebbie was graduating U. of Texas at Austin, I was beginning my first year of college. It was a great school, but with all great academic institutions, not everything is perfect. My freshman General Psychology class sucked. There was nearly 200 of us in a lecture hall once a week listening to the professor garble off the parts of the brain, then we would spend the next week reading about some part of the brain and return to class in order to do a FCAT-type test. My grade school and high school with several wonderful teachers who should be mentioned (Mr. Nelson, Ms. Laubauch, Ms. Steinkamp) actually taught us to write college research papers – alongside the Regents Exams of New York. But when I got to my freshman Psych classes each Monday night, I was never asked to put those research and writing skills to work. Instead, I was subjected each week to the FCAT style “listen, read and regurgitate” type exam. In Florida, no one does the reading and research in public schools. Just FCAT.

The first few weeks of the course were terrible because I was flunking these “listen, read, regurgitate” FCAT type exams.  Me!  An “A” student!  Flunking Physiology about the Brain exams in a Psych class! 

Maybe for students with photographic memories, such exams are great. Perhaps that is the narrow view from which Jebbie and Barack (and the ABA, FBA, and other groups) are working from? But for many of us, we learn in various ways. I learned how to take Psych. exams given by Dr. Rust! That’s what I learned from Psych 101 in college! After several weeks of his exams, I learned how to pass those exams, without cheating, too. In fact, I began “ACE” the tests! I was so proud and thought – “look at all this stuff I am learning about PSYCHOLOGY! So, Dr. Rust passes his accountability test and all are happy, right?

Wrong! How much of the brain am I able to remember today? Little to nothing.  I remember the NAMES of the parts of the brain, but I believe I learned those in high school biology in upstate NY. But there is very little from the “listen, read, regurgitate” method of Dr. Rust that I have retained since 1973.  BTW. I learned many of Freud’s and other psychology theories in Developmental Psychology, which was a much different class. We actually WROTE in Dev. Psych. And there were some of the “listen, read, regurgitate” exams, but not every week.

Yet, here is Obama, the “agent of change” standing on a stage in Miami endorsing what Jebbie says. No change. Same old s***. Wimpy damned Harvard-trained lawyer who is unable to stand on his own two feet. Fearful of being attacked by the gop party.

Barrack and Jebbie (as one of my teacher’s spouses calls the Bush Baby Boomer brat with a JD), my colleagues have some far better approaches to teaching General Psychology than what I received in 1973. The problem? Measurement. With FCAT-style exams, it’s easier for a lazy baby boomer coward’s fool to implement such tests. It’s more difficult to measure the learning outcomes from stuff made of – writing about, researching, and speaking about – the elements of Psychology.  It’s easier to create multiple choice, true-false, and even fill-in-the-blanks tests than it is to create rubrics and assessments which measure the “other stuff.” Yet, if we don’t EXCLUSIVELY use the FCAT-style (in NY, they are Regents exams) ONLY, then we are not doing our jobs as teachers and our “merit” should be measured on this!  That is what teachers find objectionable, not the process of being held accountable.  Barack and Jebbie don’t get it. I can understand Jebbie because he never HAS gotten it – even during 8 years as governor! But Barack? What is his excuse? If it is bad advisors, then perhaps he should fire them all and begin again!

To Jebbie and Barack in Miami:  your comments were nothing but HORSE S***! (If Lee Iacocca can use these words in his book about leadership – without the words being censored, then why can’t I?  – as I self-censor). 

And here is more about those with the big fat JD who are (apparently) the only experts in our world today (alongside bankers who reap huge profits from foreclosures and don’t give a s*** about human beings – even when told the father of capitalism, Adam Smith, objected to the same type of banking and finance speculation of 18th-century Scottish bankers did – same things bankers over the past few years have been doing). 

Conservative columnist (yes, I DID say CONSERVATIVE), George Will, identified the problem with education as NOT being whether teachers be held accountable.  Rather, Mr. Will, said parents, administrators, and lawyers  also be held accountable.  That the lawyers should remove their f***ing noses from the business of education and everything else where they drum up problems and ultimately higher costs for our society.  These are costs which eat into corporate profits MORE THAN PENSIONS AND GOVERNMENT TAXES (sorry, but Mr. Iacocca did not use this word I use, even in a self-censoring mode). 

You dolts in both political parties. You dumb fools and cowardly leaders from the snotty bratty greedy selfish Ayn Rand Baby Boomer lot –  for not attempting to solve the problems, but continue to put band-aids on the symptoms of the problems in Florida and America. 

You ignorant leaders suck.  Read Lee Iacocca’s book to find out.  For he says there is one group of people in America who should be held accountable:  the politicians, particularly those in Congress.  And who are most of the politicians today?  Do you really think they are teachers?  Think again.