Pen Heads

Scraping the bottom of the barrel:

Last week, Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers, sent a letter home to the parents of all sixth-graders announcing that she and Susan LaFlamme were instituting a new rule barring students from carrying any writing implements on their person, in a backpack, or on the school bus.

The memo cited behavior problems and said any student found in possession of a pen or mechanical pencil after Nov. 15 would be assumed to have the implement “to build weapons,” or to have stolen it from the classroom art supply basket.

This is what happens when you hire the lowest common denominator to be teachers. My wife is a teacher, as well as both of my parents. They are all very bright people, but they are increasingly the exception rather than the rule.

It used to be that teaching attracted the best and the brightest. It was considered the height of academic achievement to be a teacher. But in recent years, the quality of people receiving college degrees in education has taken a nose-dive. Increasingly, the profession is attracting people who wouldn't be qualified to clean the toilets in a business environment. And kids are paying the price for it.

There are still a lot of good teachers out there, but there are also a lot of the type epitomized by Wendy Scott; they are invariably liberal and incapable of critical thought. Our public education system has been systematically victimized by left-wing radicalism since the mid 1970s. If we don't take it back in the next couple of decades, the system will break down entirely and we'll have a sharp division of educational opportunity. Only children of rich parents will get an education; the rest will be fast-tracked into government wage slaves. The irony is of course utterly lost on the brain-dead leftists who are creating the problem: they are their own worst enemy, and they don't even know it.