Extreme Makeover: School System Edition

For the umpteenth year in a row, we are supposedly facing a severe shortage of school teachers. I have yet to determine whether the intended outcome of these announcements is to scare intelligent people into teaching careers or to advertise to the intellectually challenged that there are abundant job opportunities.

I usually ignore these messages, but an article in The Onion made me laugh and set those gears into motion to identify a solution. After careful consideration, I think that I might actually be on to something.

Forget the idea about having a teacher shortage. It's not a problem. We have plenty of teachers. Instead of hiring more, just spread that money among the teachers we already have and use a little to have independent review boards give each teacher a real review, not the crap observations we currently have. Make the pay a little more competitive and only take new hires to replace the crummy current teachers.

The problem really isn't a teacher shortage. The real problem is student overages. We just have too many unproductive students occupying space and using valuable resources. Maybe it's just me, but I find it incomprehensible for a school to "graduate" an 18 year old that can't read, much less keep his pants up. (hint: that's why they invented belts and different sizes)

School is overcrowded and understaffed, forget about it. Fire a couple of students. Not just any students, the ones at the bottom of the class. Forget about ethnicity, forget about gender, forget about color, odor, mass, size, shape, sexual preference, beverage preference, shoe size. Forget about it all. Which team goes home from the sports tournament? That's right, the losers.

What you have under this system is full-blown, unadulterated competition, something that is completely missing under the current system. No competition among students, none among teachers, among administrators. The fundamental principle that helped our country became one of the world's greatest economic superpowers isn't even being utilized in our school system. What's the deal with that!? We have to get over this idea of an education being a right. It's a privilege, a privilege that the people of this country decided to invest a lot of time, money and resources into that came complete with a rapidly diminishing rate of return.

Some people might cry "indoctrination." I say cry all you want, this is real life, Bucko. Hell, the people that get kicked out just make up the television audience for the reality show they could make from this idea. Some might cry, "but Johnny has a disability!" I say keep on crying, because Johnny's potential boss is going to want to know that Johnny can't cope with it and keep him off the payrolls. Besides, there should be special schools for Johnny in the first place and there's always the home school option, and everyone talks about how great home schooling is.

It's time for some real reform around here. Stop wasting people's hard-earned tax dollars on some schmuck that doesn't want to take the time away from their pick-up basketball game or their X-Box to do a few math problems, read a few chapters in their textbook, write a few paragraphs, or for that matter, learn to write. Stop wasting the valuable time of the students that want to learn and the teachers that want to teach them.

I know this seems severe, maybe a bit extreme, but that's only because you haven't seen it in action yet. If we're going to remain competitive, especially at a time when the job applicant pool is growing wider due to overseas competition, perhaps something severe and extreme is exactly what we need.