Well the Doc opened the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
This New York Times ad is so unfair!
It’s the American Federation of Teachers’ fault that Latvia, Estonia, and Vietnam have really good school systems?
Really?
A little help here, eh, Doc?
– Randi W
Dear Randi W,
This whole campaign is the brainchild of Rick Berman, a Washington lobbyist who describes himself as ”President of Berman and Company, a Washington, DC-based public affairs firm specializing in research, communications, and creative advertising.”
More . . .
Read the rest at Ask Dr. Ads.
Campaign Outsider 
Can the teacher’s union be proud of the education that the NYC students are receiving?
Sorry, I think the teachers in this nation have been part of the 40-year decline in the education levels of students in this country.
A side question, if I might, John. How’s the level of writing of your journalism students? Is their grammar good? Can they get to the point quickly? Can they actually make their points? Do they know the difference between tact and tack? How’s their spelling?
Your objective assessment would be of interest to a lot of us who read your “stuff”.
Yes, the teachers are part of the problem, Mudge, but so is the curriculum. Too much valuable material has been sacrificed to contemporary trendiness and political correctness.
When I started teaching I was thoroughly dismayed to learn that students hadn’t read much – if any – of the Great Books of Western Civilization. Or know who Cary Grant was. Or have read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
You’re killing me, I said on more than one occasion to my classes. Then I thought, hey – you want them to read Profrock? Give it to them. Show them His Girl Friday. Stop whining.
As for writing skills, they vary (I’m actually in the Mass Communication department, not journalism). Some of them can’t put two sentences together with a stapler. Some are nice stylists. My job is to help the former and encourage the latter. That’s the best I can do.
I was extremely lucky in my education – eight years Sisters of Charity, eight years Jesuits. I feel that a lot of young people have been robbed of a real education, and that’s truly a shame.
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You had me at “His Girl Friday.”
Sisters of Charity? Jesuits? And you still have your knuckles intact…of is that in tack? :)))
The bottom line was…you learned!…
I didn’t go to a parochial school, but I went to one where I’d be willing to bet that that was where my teachers were taught.
We were taught to learn the subject, and the test would be an easy lift. I generally was.
As Ned Martin used to say, Mudge – long gone and hard to find.
The war on education, frankly, isn’t going fast enough. My kid goes to private school, and I’m sick of financing his competition through my taxes.
Sabotaging curriculums, siphoning funding to “charter schools,” constant insipid testing by bozo RW firms, pillorying the teacher’s unions — it’s simply not getting the job done fast enough.
The last thing I want my kid to deal with is uppity, educated, employees. Berman had better kick it into high gear or my donations will go elsewhere.
That’ll put the fear of God into the whole lot of them.
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You get who you vote for.
Try pulling the lever on the other party for a change.