Earlier this week I bragged to Stephers that, having been at this since 2006, I’ve seen many bloggers burn out. But I keep going. It seems easy to sit down and write. I very promptly ran out of ideas. Karma is real.
The above video features one of my favorite comedians (I have many), Norm MacDonald, telling us that despite pompous pronouncement, teaching is not the hardest job in the world. It is the easiest. To teach a second grader, you only need have a third grade education.
Of course he is oversimplifying, as it is comedy. However, I endured 16 years of teachers, and remember but a few, and do not imagine any but a very small select group of perhaps three were people of any notable intelligence. Of course, I did not think that at the time, as I was a student and they had me in captivity and I had to listen and learn stuff. But in retrospect, I didn’t learn much of importance. I did have to learn accounting to make a living, and that was useful.
In other videos (I listen to comedians daily – it helps me get through life) I’ve heard Bill Burr take on the same subject, about how mothers and teachers have the hardest jobs. He wonders how their jobs compare to being washed off a boat in Deadliest Catch or having to put out oil well fires in Iraq. I think that such praise in general goes along with other pandering attitudes, as “woman are smarter than men” (applause and whoops), not true, not false. Just nonsense. Men want to sleep with women, so saying stuff like that is required, but I don’t imagine to many of us believe it for real. I’ve known some very smart men and women, of course, and tip my hat. But as a general rule, people are as smart as they have to be to survive, and in that sense, teaching people who are by definition dumber than you cannot be terribly difficult.
With summers off, of course.
Look around … how many have figured out that the pandemic is not real?
I’m gonna pay for this post, I know.
Piece of Mindful 
How many disease management technician/workers figured out the pandemic is not real? They believe they are smarter than the average bear, too as they follow science like processionary caterpillars. They are the ones most fearful of the unwashed masses contaminating them while they do their heroic work of testing and injecting. Both classes are doing what they are told.
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In the education system created by the psychopaths behind the curtain, a teacher’s job is to make students happy and content with, and even proud of, mediocrity.
A couple of years ago, in search of a private voice teacher, I reached out to a man whose wife, I’d heard, taught singing. The man was, himself, a mediocre and cloyingly sincere acting professor whose class I’d endured in order to finish my Bachelor’s degree in my forties. I didn’t have high expectations for his wife, but I figured she must know more about voice than I did, and her tips and feedback might be of value to me. But my former professor told me that his wife only taught small children because she didn’t feel she was knowledgeable enough to teach adults. I thanked him politely, but my blood boiled. What on Earth makes people think it is okay to teach kids a subject you don’t feel knowledgeable about?
Well, our education system makes people think that, of course. As the Covid farce clearly demonstrates, an educated and intelligent citizenry is the last thing our leaders want.
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I think the good teachers are the ones who are psyched when their students are smarter than they are, either within a specific field of knowledge, or with raw brain power such as an ability to calculate, speak in poetic meter, introspect like Descartes. A good teacher will find a way to have those gifts contribute to the class’s learning experience.
The idea that you only need to be a year ahead may work for some subjects. In some cases it might actually be best, given that once one is an “expert,” one tends to be an assh*le, simply because one’s mind is packed full with personally synthesized knowledge, and this necessarily makes it MORE difficult to put oneself in the place of the other.
A second grader who asks good question might make a fine university professor.
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Well they always say in the old one-room schoolhouses, the older students helped the younger – but that’s when it probably was more about learning the subject matter.
In modern schooling, the subject matter is just misdirection – to take your eye off what’s really being “learned” – training in the regimentation, submission, obedience, bureaucratic forms, tolerance of mind-numbing boredom, being warehoused, being “socialized”… I remember the topic of home-schooling came up in a high school class of mine one day – my peers vigorously condemned it. “They won’t be properly socialized!”
Gatto’s distinction between schooling and educating is the nub of the matter, maybe. I think even he says that achieving the latter is not really up to anyone but the gods, no matter how fine the teacher.
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I think anyone who does a job I’d hate to do or couldn’t possibly do but which is really important is a hero. I’ve taught adults but to me the patience required to teach children and the ability and energy to manage a classroom strikes me as monumental. What I hear from teachers where I live in NSW is that they’re really overworked because they have to do all this record-keeping and admin stuff as well as their actual preparation and teaching. I really think teachers are heroes but then people who fight fires and do other dangerous jobs are too. The thing is though people are drawn to occupations – some people love teaching children and some people want to fight fires so no doubt in their minds, they’re not heroes at all but even though I recognise they’re drawn to those jobs anyway and want to do them I still think they’re heroes.
Also, I know Norm is just being a comedian but the idea that teaching is just about knowing more is not what it’s about. As indicated in other comments, it’s about teaching children to think, helping them overcome learning difficulties, challenging them and making learning interesting. “Knowing more” is way down the scale in terms of importance and I’m sure many a class has been taught by a teacher who’s only reviewed the material moments before – I know I’ve done it 🙂
Unfortunately, Bill’s been taken in. I posted a comment on his appearance with Conan about “anti-vaxxers” … and for the first time since I woke up to psyops 7 years ago I’ve had an ongoing debate with someone where we’ve strenuously disagreed with each other but maintained a respectful attitude the whole time. So far we’re up to 166 comments between us! The whole time we’ve done about a comment a day each but I didn’t get a reply yesterday and I wonder if finally a breakthrough has occurred. Perhaps Paul is now going through some painful cognitive dissonance. I kind of feel bad for possibly waking him up and he would really be getting it all at once massively because we’ve ranged over a few events – it’s not like waking up first to 9/11 and then Sandy Hook, etc, it’s like all at once. On the one hand, I feel a certain reticence about waking people up because I think, “Well, where has it got me? I’m alienated from friends and family and I feel so unhappy living in a world of lies that I had no clue about till I was 53 and survived perfectly well till then,” but on the other, “I’m like, well, I don’t want to be in a world where I’m forced to have a vaccine which is completely bogus and may well harm me.”
If anyone’s interested this is where I comment thread starts.
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Just to say if you wish to see the comment thread, right-click the video and choose Copy Video URL. Paste into browser window and when you go down to the comments you’ll see the thread.
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“I became a teacher because I love children!” (Not even close)
1) 4 years of college then begin teaching at age 22
2) Work 32 weeks a year, get 20 weeks off
3) Great pay, healthcare and retirement benefits
4) Actually teach maybe 5 hours per day
5) Get to stroke ego acting superior to children
6) Retire at age 52 with $million dollar stashed away at taxpayer expense
7) If retirement money runs low float another bond at taxpayer expense
8) Get another 3-4 weeks of personal and sick days from the 32 weeks
9) While teacher take paid personal day, sub teacher gets paid at taxpayer expense
10) Get paid extra cash to coach a team or do some sorta club activity
11) Buy a house on the lake that most property taxpayers cannot afford
12) Become an administraitor and make even more ridiculous amounts of cash
13) Take your narcissism to another level with easy prey all around
14) Fill children’s minds with complete garbage, most of which is useless
15) Become a College Professor and become even more arrogant and pompous
16) Use assignments to collect intelligence data on the child and family!
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Yes, that can certainly apply to some teachers, I’m talking about others. Also, I live in Australia so it may be a little different here, I wouldn’t say teachers are particularly well-paid here. You can certainly go into teaching for the holidays but you still get faced with 30 children in a classroom for a number of hours per day … and no amount of holidays would entice me to have to do that.
Administrators and college professors are something else entirely.
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We can belittle any profession, even sacred cows like virologists, or far down the ladder, bureaucrats working for IRS without knowing it, CPAs. . Interestingly, for me alone, my best teachers were in college, and both Jewish.
Still, the idea that students learn because teachers teach is backwards. Students learn by means of their own curiosity. As the saying goes, a classroom lecture is a means by which notes on a piece of paper are transferred from the teacher to the student’s piece of paper without going through the mind of either.
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Ah Petra, we OffGuardian readers and commenters do get around don’t we? Piece of Mindful generates a lot of very thoughtful content. I’m afraid alienation is the true “default setting” for conscious existence, Jesus Christ the only 100% remedy. He takes waking-up to a whole different plane. God bless you!
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Another celeb who I thought would be speaking out against and even making fun of the scam demic, masks and vaccines. I have a hunch after watching much of Bill’s previous material, that he knows better but his carear in the public spotlight relies on him saying otherwise. I already knew Conan was one of the evil sellouts.
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Check out this bizarreness… Giant wicker man-like statues slated to come to 21 cities…. with cheesy promo video, as added cherry on top:
https://thegiantcompany.ie/
A fb contact says this group is highly tied to Agenda 21 players, including some “United Cities and Towns” group (forget the acronym.)
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I want to see Fauci amd Gates in a Wicker Man.
I want to hear the screams as I enjoy a nice IPA.
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Was out working in Japan a few years back.
Saw a class of young kids (adorable as can be, probably 5 -6 yrs old) out on the town with their headmasters.
All single file, in uniforms, backpacks, and for the boys ball caps.
I witnessed one sweet little boy being a boy…he stepped out of single file.
Suddenly one of those “sweet young Japanese ladies” literally thrashed (verbally and physically) the young little boy. I could not believe severe treatment.
One cannot, or should not, believe those who “provide you an education” and then steal from you throughout your entire lifetime, have your “best intentions” at heart.
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