Take The Politics Out Of Education

To the Editor

The basic concepts to a better education for our young are not more money, but to root out the causes of a mediocre educational system and replace it with a superior one. It is to this end that I have repeatedly addressed the need to eliminate politics from education. This is the first step and without it no amount of money will help. You cannot buy good education, no more than you can buy talent.

The second step to a better education is the elimination of unqualified teachers and those who simply don’t give a damn. We must eliminate tenure to cleanse the system. It is then and only then that we can turn our attention to the needs of our children and their progeny to produce a superior education system which serves their needs in this fast-moving world we have created. We must abandon the proposition that every child of need must have a college education to succeed. Who will be the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker? The college professor?

The system must be modified to produce better prospects for those who are endowed with the talent for higher education while offering better training for those whose talents and interest lies in the trades. For them I would like to see technical high schools whose graduates are ready to qualify for a state license in their field. Nor do we need a college graduate in liberal arts who ends up as a typist, a situation which I have witnessed personally.

High school should start at a young age, perhaps as early as 10 years. It is in the latter part of high school that a pupil must begin the process of preparing himself for his life’s professional ambitions coupled with the necessary ability.

For this purpose we should have a class which provides insight to the students what a particular field is all about, its requirements, and his prospect of a job in this field and, most important, exactly what sort of work he really would be doing rather than Hollywood stereotypes of CSI or Grey’s Anatomy. It would be fruitful to invite actual practicing professionals to talk to a class about their own ambitions and how they were fulfilled in the field of their choice.

Finally, we must lower the cost of education to an acceptable level. This means an independent study of salaries and fringe benefits in the private industries vs teaching on a point basis with a scale from 1 to 100 on all conditions related to the basis for salaries, e.g., the benefits to society, danger on the job, hours worked, required training and talent, permanence of the job, pensions, and health benefits. Without it we cannot arrive at a fair compensation. It will be only in the glare of publicity and an absence of politics that we can expect the teachers’ unions to accept a fair compensation for a job well done.

Oscar Berendsohn

34 Apple Blossom Lane, Newtown                          January 25, 2012