Waiting for Superman

10-miler in Baltimore, a great weekend in sunny MD with my sweet mang, and I'm back in DC with a few pounds too many of pita chips in my belly (somebody please break into my apartment and hold me up at gunpoint to steal this damn bag!), and watching a documentary about 2 years late.

Waiting for Superman- a candid look at the shortfalls of our public school system, told through the eyes of hard-up folks who want their kids to have a better life, but don't have the choice of plugging them into a private school.

Allow me to corroborate a few of Geoffrey Canada's most salient points...

Tenure was originally designed as a protection for academia at the university level.  The intention was to protect speech in an academic setting: not to allow the administration du jour to affect post-secondary research and curriculum with a political or personal agenda. To translate the idea of tenure into a primary and secondary education-level protection is completely erroneous.  Please tell me what constitutional speech is threatened in second grade, when we're learning adverbs?  Or when high schoolers are learning calculus (those of them who still reach that level these days)?  As a matter of fact, I'm pretty comfortable with those teachers being told what to say and being granted only the discretion of how to say it.  There will always be provocative issues in the public school system - evolution, banned books, political history - but these things are not protected through tenure, they're issues that are legislated or set by regulation! 
I've been party to discussions among new teachers, sharing just how nervous they are that they may not be "asked back" next year.  Guess what folks- that's a great thing!  When I worked at my old law firm, I was conscious of every work product I handed my boss, because I knew that if I handed him anything less, he could have someone smarter than me sitting in my chair tomorrow morning.  Cue in Ayn Rand's personal challenge to live up to your potential please.  It's not a back-breaking exercise, and that goes for whether you're arguing cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, or whether you're pushing a broom in the bathroom.  It's not about being a superstar, it's about taking some ownership and doing a decent job.

We need national standards for our 50 states.  And we need less bureaucracy, which would naturally accompany thoughtful national standards were they implemented correctly.  The problem is there are so few self-starters in the federal and even state governments because they can be, in my opinion, lazy-bum factories.  And heaven forbid we expect our Congress to produce meaningful legislation between reelections!

Now I'm not trying to criticize all teachers.  I think they get paid too little and they deserve tons more appreciation and recognition than they get now - good teachers, that is.  The system is flawed, and as in any other federal government setting, people who attempt to turn it upside down realize quickly their hands are tied with federal employment protections, unions, tenure, and a litany of other superfluous, destructive forms of job guarantees.  That's not how this country became a superpower, but it just may be how this country cripples itself in its own red tape.