Stop Praising All Our “Wonderful” Teachers

As a teacher for over two decades, I’m allowed to criticize people who regularly extol all the wonderful teachers in our country.  In any cohort numbering over five million, there are obviously many excellent teachers, but as a whole, educators are one of the nation’s least admirable professional cohorts and contain numerous individuals who shouldn’t be near children at all. 

Thomas Sowell has long noted that education majors represent the dregs of college and post-graduate applicants.  One study found only 7% of high school seniors with SAT scores in the top quintile chose education as a major, whereas more than half of those in the lowest quintile went into education.  What’s true of students is also true about their instructors and the quality of classes taught by these “doctors” who rank at the bottom of the academic totem pole in terms of collegial respect.  Little wonder that Jill Biden’s so-called dissertation  was in education and was accurately described in a 2020 Wall Street Journal column as emitting “so much noxious methane the EPA should regulate it.”

Given the paucity of significant content compared to disciplines like history or science, there is always the temptation, as Sowell again notes, to promote educational fads.  Some years ago, for example, the look-say method of reading replaced a long proven technique, phonics, doubtless to create some new-and-improved product.   As if depriving generations of children the ability to read effectively weren’t bad enough, schools of education (along with their 10 to 1 leftist scholastic mentors) also employ curricula designed to indoctrinate kids in perverse ideologies that have proliferated for decades at universities where former terrorists like Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers and Northwestern Law’s Bernadine Dohrn found cushy employment.  

 I offer as one example of egregious educational malpractice this video of a Las Vegas "English" teacher who actively imposes his “everybody should be a little gay” philosophy on middle school students while hiding preferred pronoun interactions from parents.  This “educator” even involves his students in choosing the color of his makeup and eye shadow.  Unsurprisingly, critical race theory also finds its way into this “English” class as well as lessons about police brutality and racism via a book called Hush.  In this literary classic two white cops kill a black teenager leading to the inevitable anti-cop, white racism conclusion.  Needless to say, this shaper of young minds isn’t at all shy about confronting black students with MAGA sympathies or helping other students “come out” as gay.    

The very fact that someone like that was hired to teach at Gunderson Middle School says something unflattering about school administrators.  As of this writing the school principal only confirms that a “massive investigation” is under way, not that the teacher pushing a totally unethical sexual and political agenda on captive kids has been fired.   At least in the Vegas case what the teacher did was a violation of the school’s policy vis-à-vis parents.  In California the benighted legislature actually passed a law in 2024 (AB 1955) forbidding school districts from requiring parental notification about gender identification.  That law was tossed 6-3 by the Supreme Court earlier this year, but in the words of Grok, “As of June 2026, California public schools operate in a state of legal tension and partial limbo on parental notification for students’ gender identity or pronoun usage.”  That statement means teachers can’t be required to withhold information but are likely free to do so if not directly asked by parents.

 The overwhelming alignment of educators with the Democrat Party and its now-bizarre policies was made clear as long ago as 1980 when at least fifteen percent of DNC Presidential delegates were affiliated with education, most of them members of unions like the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers.  The latter organization’s current president, Randi Weingarten, provides a visible symbol of education’s decline, a shrieking harridan for whom reasoned discourse is as foreign as particle physics to a preschooler.  This incestuous collaboration of teacher unions and Democrat politicians has created a scenario in which favors benefitting the union (not students) are traded in exchange for contributions and votes.

Finally, consider teachers leading a flock of elementary school students on a “No Kings” march with prepared signs that confront motorists on a busy street just a few yards away.  This outrageous manipulation of kids barely able to read, much less grasp the intricacies of political issues, happened in my still marginally conservative Southern California city.  I don’t doubt that other teachers took liberties with their students thanks to this “No Kings” communications toolkit distributed to NEA members. 

Several years ago I reviewed a CBEST math test for California public school teachers that was so risibly simple I could hardly believe any qualified applicant would fail to pass it.  Here was one question:  “Seven more than two times a number is 35.  What is the number?”  Slightly challenging perhaps, but not if it’s a multiple choice question:  A.42   B.28  C.21  D.14  E. 5.  Yet lawsuits were filed about how such tests unfairly excluded otherwise “qualified” minority teachers, and even now the education establishment pushes to eliminate these minimal competency tests.  So please spare me encomiums about great teachers unless you’re speaking about the distinct minority who didn’t major in education, know their subject matter, aren’t active union members, and don’t dehumanize students through indoctrination, grooming, or using them as political props.   

    
 Richard Kirk is a freelance writer and retired teacher living in Southern California.  His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.