Re: “Get severe about making certain trainer high quality” [Feb. 25, Opinion]:
The Forties radio-show-turned-TV-sitcom “Our Miss Brooks,” starring Eve Arden as English trainer Connie Brooks, raked within the laughs with figuring out references to college poverty. Gruff-voiced Principal Conklin as soon as remarked that one in every of his “blessings” was to preside over “a faculty stuffed with overcrowded lecture rooms and a horde of unreasonable academics continuously screaming for a residing wage!”
As well-intentioned as most of the instructional reform initiatives have been because the days of “Our Miss Brooks,” the true drag on college students and their academics is our society’s lack of respect for the very individuals we profess to like and have nice expectations for: our college students and their academics. We act stunned when terrific academics with terrific backgrounds are usually not interested in and never retained by embarrassing salaries and sophistication sizes that drive them into superficial relationships with their college students, however are content material to see astronomically nice wealth accrue to the 1%.
Till we shake the tree overloaded on the prime with unimaginable wealth, to fund the type of academics, lecture rooms and colleges that can actually make a distinction to our children, we’ll simply maintain spinning our wheels. And Connie Brooks nonetheless gained’t be capable to afford to personal a automobile.
Mark Terry, Seattle
