Teaching

How did that work for you?

I loved learning, and was always grateful for the kindness and stout-hearted courage of teachers committed to a task which can only be Sisyphean at best.

Half of all the new teachers recruited by Teach for America leave the profession within five years, usually emotionally drained.

As for school Administration, the Bush Administration has put into place a Testing regime which punishes the Principals of schools that do badly on the tests, with the predictable result that NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE PRINCIPAL in those schools, resulting in high turn-over and even worse school administration.

And although there is no law that requires the Tests be administered without making each Taking event itself a "learning" event, that remains how the Tests are administered -- diagnostic, punishing, each student in isolation, removed from any pretense that the "answers" are interesting, worthy of study, or can trigger the curiosity in any way. The student learns that Tests are bad. Sickening.