Too Much Rain from His Hometown of Yamhill, Oregon,

has rotted the brain of NYT columnist and public school graduate Nicholas Kristof when it comes to writing about public education.

Either that or he feels he must kowtow to his bosses at the paper and continue with peddling neoliberal rot.

Apparently the "brilliant" women who used to flood public schools have decided to be surgeons, or shyster attorneys, or newspaper columnists and we now have morons graduating from teachers' colleges, or so people like him think.

I don't think Kristof would know what a "great teacher" was if one bit him in the ass. Of course no teacher, great or not-so-great, would bite him in the butt and risk his or her career and license. However, administrators like Michelle Rhee can duct tape students, publicly joke about it, and make tons of taxpayer money instead of having her license yanked and be banned from the field.

After all administrators, not teachers, are the real problem in public ed, but the "reforms" have nothing whatever to do with putting in "great teachers." It has to do with dismantling public institutions because they run counter to neoliberal "thinking." The public good does not exist; everything must be subject to something called "market forces."

In any case, talk is cheap regarding teachers. Nobody in his or her right mind would go into this field now given the shabby way they are treated.

More Peabrained Punditry

Oh, my fucking god. It's like these pundits get all of their talking points from the venture philanthropists, i.e., crooks.

Peace Corps and Teach for America represent the best ethic of public service. But at a time when those programs can’t meet the demand from young people seeking to give back, we need a new initiative: Teach for the World.

In my mind, Teach for the World would be a one-year program placing young Americans in schools in developing countries. The Americans might teach English or computer skills, or coach basketball or debate teams.

The program would be open to Americans 18 and over. It could be used for a gap year between high school and college, but more commonly would offer a detour between college and graduate school or the real world.

The host country would provide room and board through a host family. To hold down costs, the Americans would be unpaid and receive only airplane tickets, a local cellphone and a tiny stipend to cover bus fares and anti-malaria bed nets.

More idiocy from Kristof

The Peace Corps already exists for teaching in developing countries, dickhead. The LAST thing we need is for crooks to make money off of poor countries' kids. TFA is a private outfit, the Peace Corps is public.

And of course, me being the cynic can see any TFA crap overseas would undermine teachers in those countries.

The Education Wars II

Nicholas Kristof spouts off about things he knows nothing about, in this case about "good" teachers, and how they are key to saving the world or some stupid thing.

He needs to talk to some rubber room teachers in his neck of the woods. Or talk to Susan Ohanian, or contact the National Association for Prevention of Teacher Abuse to find out the TRUTH about education.

Teachers can't do anything if they are afraid of being fired and blackballed. Kristof should be writing about ethical, qualified administrators running schools, but of course, he doesn't have a clue about how much power these people have.

This commenter notes Kristof has it exactly backwards.

More Business Roundtable Bullshit

from none other than Nicholas Kristof.

It's amazing people think they are experts about education just because they have been students. They are no more experts on education than the law because they have gone to a lawyer or medicine because they have gone to a doctor.

I Agree

with Nicholas Kristof regarding prostitution. If we can crack down on the demand side of the equation, by prosecuting the pimps and the johns, the supply side (the prostitutes) will automatically decrease to the point to where it becomes unusual. I say the names of the johns and pimps should be made public in order for them to be shamed and humiliated as well.

The media did a horrible injustice by glamorizing this so-called profession by claiming it was a lifestyle choice. Well, it isn't; human rights violations never are.

Snip:

One response would be: Prostitution is inevitable, so we might as well legalize and regulate it. That's a pragmatic argument that I used to find persuasive. If brothels were legalized and inspected, I believed, then we could uproot child prostitution and reduce AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.
I changed my mind after looking at the experiences of other countries. The Netherlands formally adopted the legalization model in 2000, and there were modest public health benefits for the licensed prostitutes. But legalization nurtured a large sex industry and criminal gangs that trafficked underage girls, and so trafficking, violence and child prostitution flourished rather than dying out.
As a result, the Netherlands is now backtracking on its legalization model by closing some brothels, and other countries, like Bulgaria, are backing away from that approach.
In contrast, Sweden experimented in 1999 with a radically different approach that many now regard as much more successful: It decriminalized the sale of sex but made it a crime to buy sex. In effect, the policy was to arrest customers, but not the prostitutes.
Some Swedish prostitutes have complained that the policy reduced demand and thus lowered prices, while forcing sex work underground. But the evidence is strong that the new approach reduced trafficking in Sweden, and opinion polls show that Swedes regard the experiment as a considerable success. And the bottom line is that if you want to rape a 13-year-old girl imported from Eastern Europe, you'll have a much easier time in Amsterdam than in Stockholm.

This piece came out several months ago about Nevada's legal brothels, where the women live in almost slave-like conditions.

Farley's not making it up, either, for political ends. My landlord and I were talking about this article, and we knew somebody who rented a room from him years ago when he had a guest house who worked as a prostitute in one of the legal brothels. What she told my landlord backs up this article. She was also a drug user because she felt she had to take drugs in order for the "work" to be bearable.

And people glamorize this, make people like Joe Conforte folk heroes for exploiting and abusing women.

Disgusting.

Edit: This post by an ex-prostitute is good.