{"id":4073,"date":"2023-05-03T16:55:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4073"},"modified":"2023-05-03T16:55:51","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:55:51","slug":"new-book-on-teachers-gives-only-one-important-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4073","title":{"rendered":"New book on “teachers” gives only one important lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished my latest read, Alexandra Robbins’\u00a0The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession<\/em>. With a subtitle like that you know it’s got to be good, right? And just\u00a0look<\/em> at those celebrity blurbs on the back!<\/p>\n

This is the problem with teachers. Er,\u00a0The Teachers<\/em>. I thought it was good… until I read it. Think every blurb writer read this piece of garbage?<\/p>\n

Let’s hope not.<\/p>\n

Teachers<\/em> begins with the premise that the titular profession is under attack, and so are the players themselves. Sometimes literally.<\/p>\n

Ms. Robbins intends to show this. And she does. No doubt with some hard-hitting research, like doing a Google search of “sensational news stories about teachers.”<\/p>\n

Brilliant.<\/p>\n

Actually, there’s a great lesson here. English class lesson. Vocab word: self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to prove a certain thing, so I will open one eye and find examples to fit my hypothesis. And after I’ve found enough news articles, I go out and make a few of my own, going “undercover” with my biases in mind. It’s the teacher equivalent of\u00a0Nickel and Dimed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Want to make teaching look hard and its brethren suffering? Take the most wild examples you can find from the news and cobble them together under a fancy book jacket. Use some tearjerker anecdotes to string the narrative along and you’ve got a bestseller.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that many of the tearjerker anecdotes involve teachers being “underpaid,” or some similar description. Potential remedies for such include things like, well, finding money on trees I guess. To those who’ve taken Econ 101, that’s just as laughable as “underpaid.” Nobody’s underpaid for a job with a voluntary contract. Are we drafting teachers these days like conscripts of ancient wars? Public school teacher is not a gig one accepts under duress. Like every government job, there’s a line out the door with people clamoring for it.<\/p>\n

So yeah, read Alexandra Robbins’\u00a0The Teachers<\/em> if you’re looking for a little escapism or to pat yourself on the back a bit more because you gave 50 bucks to some charitable cause at your kids’ school.<\/p>\n

Be nice to your kids’ teachers, sure. But it’s not anything to write a book about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished my latest read, Alexandra Robbins’\u00a0The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession. With a subtitle like that you know it’s got to be good, right? And just\u00a0look at those celebrity blurbs on the back! This … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4073"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4075,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073\/revisions\/4075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}