Educational Neanderthals

Liz Garrigan's opinion piece in today's City Paper takes on Metro Nashville Education Association President Erick Huth. Having observed this man for many years now I found her piece spot on. I especially liked her comments on his comment that charters cherry pick students. The truth is charters are gleaning the ground for the students that have fallen off the MNPS educational tree. Further they are finding that these children are not too bruised to still be successful. Educational Neanderthals just let these children fall to the ground to rot and yet still demand that no one else pick them up and salvage them. MNEA should be encouraging charters as part of the team effort of educating all the children because professional educators are all about ensuring the children get what they need.

Garrigan does the piece interview style. Here's one of several questions:

Can you share with us where your passion for counterrevolution began?

(Pauses to answer his early-model Nokia cell phone.) I remember being very young and hearing about this thing called Xerox. It was coming in to replace the Ditto machine, whose smell of wet ink made me simply intoxicated as a little boy. There was just nothing like paper with blue smudged type. I led the protest movement in our kindergarten to keep out the new technology, something the administrators claimed would make things more efficient.

Read the rest. It's funny, true and frustrating.