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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Harder Vs. Smarter

Doug Noon, Borderland, Dec 01, 2008

"The biggest problem with U.S. public schools is ineffective teaching, according to decades of research." So writes Amanda Ripley in Time Magazine. The 'decades of research' appear to be a fabrication. My take: the greatest barrier to education is poverty and hardship. But instead of actually addressing poverty and hardship, a certain segment of society prefers to deflect the issue by blaming schools. And especially teachers. So we hear, over and over, that the unions prevent administrators from firing incompetent teachers. But this is not plausible. As I wrote yesterday, teachers are fired all the time, and on the flimsiest of excuses. So incompetent teachers can be fired. So it's not the teachers. It's the poverty. Still.

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