RB wields the red pen:
As a former high school Industrial Education teacher who tried to make a difference, I fully agree with your sentence above from your WND column! I once had the audacity to flunk the star quarterback who only strutted around in the class like a peacock, and incurred the wrath of the administration. The superintendent, principal, coach and the counselor descended on me after I turned in my grade and declared that the school would lose its chance at the State championship if the guy did not play that coming Friday. They asked me to change his grade, which I refused to do because that would be unfair to the other students who diligently worked to earn a grade. Then asked what he had to do to get a good grade, they declared he would not be able to do all that when I showed him the list of assignments he failed to complete.
Having come out of the machining and manufacturing industry to get my degree and teach, teaching the concepts of industry as a prevocational exploration and preparation program and knowing that the future would be computer-operated machine tools called CNC, I dispesnsed with the “busywork” shop concept to placate the malconents and dummies in a high school daycare setting. I requested equipment to update the facilities, but was turned down due to $900 being too expensive. But a week later, I read in the local paper that the schoolboard had approved spending $2,500 for new football uniforms to keep their reputation as the best dressed team in the league.
Well, we can’t have the boys go out there not looking pretty, can we? And it costs a lot of money to redo all those uniforms with new, sufficiently bland, PC nicknames and regalia.