Dear Editor:
Well, as the race for President of the U.S. heats up, my high school daughters are bracing for the barrage of attacks they will be forced to endure by their teachers on President Bush. During the last Presidential election, they were furious when their teachers would make comments about G.W. Bush’s intelligence -“he has an IQ of 2”; “anyone who supports Bush is nuts (their parents?)” etc. When she mentioned he scored over 1200 on the SATs, one teacher’s remark was “did he take the test himself?” and “he only made a C average at Harvard.” And?Already this year one of their teachers announced, “You are looking at a terrorist. The Bush Administration has said that we teachers are terrorists.” Not so. The Secretary of Education said that the Teacher Union was attacking the No Child Left Behind Act like terrorists. He probably came to this conclusion because now they are going to be held accountable for their teaching credibility and results. He went on to state that just as our soldiers are protecting our freedoms, our hard-working teachers are creating that freedom though the education of our children and that he was in no way directing his statements at the teachers, just the Union.
On a personal level, I say that before we expect “teacher report cards,” first let’s have one on parents. That alone may revolutionize the educational system and outcomes. Some other comments made recently include, “fire him (G.W.) and let him run his own company;” “Arnold (Schwarzenager) doesn’t do anything, Maria does. All he does is smoke cigars;” “Bush is a coward because he hid during the 9/11 attacks;” and that he was a coward about Viet Nam. When my daughter mentioned that the teacher’s hero Clinton was not only a draft dodger but also went to a foreign county to protest the war while our young soldiers were dying, he said that Clinton was a bad person but a good president. Please don’t make me even go there!
When he said, “I have my political opinion, please have your own,” she politely reminded him that he is a teacher representing an authority figure to students who don’t know any better.
Does this bother anyone? Linda Haft