I don't know enough about economics or finance to know if robert reich's solution is likely to work, but I do know enough about education to know the current system is not working. education is, or ought to be, a holy thing and too often communities treat it as an afterthought. the locally-financed system, which is good on paper and in theory, often leaves public education as the only government function on which people are able to vent their frustrations when times are bad. it leaves the holy office of teacher vulnerable to the anger people may justifiably focus toward other, further-away, unrelated problems.
the usual complaint against public education, that there are too many people making too much money for doing too little work, has been proved false over and over. of course there are individual mediocre teachers and professors--and I've no doubt most of us would end up on other people's lists--but certainly there are statistically fewer than there are, say, mediocre ballplayers or professional poker players or politicians. but mediocre teachers are an aspect of a broken system we think we can do something about, except it almost never happens that way. bad educators have been the bugaboo of taxpayers for a long, long time; by now, if they were the problem, this system would be nearer to ideal. no one thinks it is.
teaching is an honor and most teachers look on it that way. it's time for american communities to catch up with that conviction.
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