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Why Fire Teachers?
Ohanian Comment: Okay, here you'll find fewer than six degrees of separation between The Atlantic and that infamous spoof phonecall between Governor Scott Walker and billionaire conservative cause funder David H. Koch. . . with a passing nod to Ayn Rand and John Stossel along the way.
Megan McArdle has an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. That and the fact that she used to blog under the name of "Jane Galt," a play on "John Galt," the name of a central character in Ayn Rand's loopy objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged, should put you on some sort of alert when she starts writing about teachers. McArdle calls herself a "classical liberal," which looks increasingly to be synonymous with "ever-ready opportunist."
McArdle's husband, Peter Suderman, writes for Reason, a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. In 2006, John Stossel wrote How to fire an incompetent teacher for Reason.
Over at Reason Foundation you can read stuff like this: Government employees have turned themselves into a coddled class that lives better than its private-sector counterpart, and with more impunity. The public's servants have become our masters.
No surprise, really. After all, David H. Koch sits on the board of trustees. Billionaire oilman Koch is second-richest resident of New York City and noted contributor to conservative causes and former Libertarian Party candidate for vice-president. The New Yorker called him "the Tea Party's wallet." In the recent highly publicized phone hoax, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker thought he was talking to Koch.
But what about The Atlantic? This once venerable publication is now owned by David G. Bradley, who calls himself "a neocon guy." He has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
McArdle is currently the business and economics editor for The Atlantic. According to her bio, she has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and the Economist.
Yes, she's been featured on NPR's Marketplace.
All this entitles her to write abusively and stupidly about teachers in The Atlantic.
The Atlantic gets really snippy if one reposts their material, so I offer only this small outrage. Go to the url below for the rest.
Or skip it and go hug a cat. And say 'thank you' to a teacher.
by Megan McArdle
. . . Let me start by saying that I think there are some jobs that are too important to let any consideration intrude other than the best way to get the job done. Nuclear power plants, firefighters, poison control--I don't want to let other social goals, no matter how laudable, hamper their mission.
Teaching is one of those jobs. I just can't prioritize making teachers' work environments fair, interesting, or pleasant for them--not if there's any potential conflict with the goal of providing the best possible education for kids. Particularly disadvantaged kids, since I basically assume that educated and competent parents are going to ensure that their offspring are educated and competent. But where there are needy kids, my entire focus is on them. I want to make teachers' lives pleasant only insofar as this advances the goal of helping kids who need a lot of help. . . .
— Susan Ohanian
The Atlantic
2011-03-11
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/why-fire-teachers/72163
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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