Different title on the same old subject. I know you are wondering what school teachers and professional football players have in common. Not much really, but it help to make my point which is the fact that we all want our kids better educated and I think we can learn a lesson from professional football.
First, a little about professional football. I have known a few famous professional football players in my time and like you have watched a lot of football games in person and on TV. If you have your eyes open to more than just the game, there is a lot to learn. We have to all agree that the guys who play professional football are some of the best of the best. Of all the kids who play high school football, less than 10% ever play college football. College players are the best of the high school players. Did you ever think about what ever happened to the kids from high school who used to play football but now have to find some other way to make a living? Now the college players who go on to play professional football is less than 1 in 25 or less than 4%. That means 96% of kids who played college football will have to find some other job to make a living. As you are starting to see, most college graduates who played college football end up working at some other profession. The net results of this process of selecting only the best mean that we have the very best players on our professional football teams. Isn't that the objective? Professional football works like any free enterprise business or system governed by Darwin's Laws and it works!!!
Now school teachers. If a kid goes to college to "learn" to be a good school teacher, is that any different from a kid "learning" to be a good football player, first in high school and then in college? If this is the case, then why do we expect all kids who go to college to "learn" to be good school teachers expect to get a job as a good school teacher? In professional football only about 4% ever go on to play and the others go and get the best jobs that they can. What if we had a system like this for school teachers? Do you think the ones who get "drafted" would be better than those under our current system? I do.
Here is my projection. Our schools will start to improve when 75% of the kids who graduate from our "teachers colleges" can't find a job and have to get a job at something that they can do. I think we could start by firing 25% of our teachers, selecting out the worst ones. They don't have to be "bad" they only need to be the "worst". This would get the attention of the remaining 75% and would make openings to "draft" the best out of those teachers who would be looking for a job. Notice the turnover rate in professional football? The is one of the main tools that allows teams to improve and stay in top form. Bottom line we need a lot more "forced" turnover in school teachers just like we have in professional football. If we could do just that one thing, it would have more impact on the quality of our schools than almost any other thing we could do and it would not cost a dime.
PS------------Try this. Did you ever notice how sleepy eyed the people are who work for the Post Office are? Do they look like there are any light on. I do not thinks so. If the Post Office starts off with people who are mail carriers, do really think they are ever going to become silk purses? It is the same with our teachers. They start out at the lowest rung on the mental ladder and no amount of training or extra courses work is ever going to bring them up. The only thing that they need to rise in the school system is to live long enough. I don't care how old they become, in my book they are still the same people from high school who could not get into or graduate from more demanding majors. It really is just that simple. Every time you take a high IQ person out of the pot, the average IQ of who is left in the pot goes down. That is a fact.
