LEARNING: Critic writes an obituary

Imitating Post Falls, our Coeur d’Alene School District is teasing the idea of reducing the school week from five days to four. The excuse is a spurious claim that money will be saved, but the reason is much simpler. Administrators and teachers union bosses are trying to curry favor with those whom they have disappointed.

Our perennially over-budget public school district has willfully made our schools into places where no one wants to be. At every turn, the fashionable educational philosophies of school managers, education professors, grant writers and government bureaucrats have blighted the transmission of values, knowledge and skills to coming generations.

A bloated district superintendent’s office mandates that instructional time each week be sacrificed for truly useless professional development. Endless micromanagement by administrators and committees interfere with the relationship between teachers and learners. Creativity and autonomy have been stolen from the classroom to feed the insatiable appetites of parasitical managers for control.

Common sense is trumped by pedagogical theories that promise to save schools from the students, teachers, parents and citizens. Discipline is contorted into Social & Emotional Learning, testing and curricula are twisted into a mediocre conformity, and ideological value trumps classical knowledge.

As top-down planning replaces teacher autonomy, there is no joy. As indoctrination replaces education, there is no authenticity. As ideology replaces objectivity, there is no truth.  

The very managers whose vainglorious hubris have smothered inspirational teaching and killed traditional learning now offer less time in their failed schools. Free our schools from their control!

RALPH K. GINORIO

Coeur d’Alene