Creating Creative Criminals

It's almost unimaginable how stupid educators can be. Almost. This story is so disgusting that no punches need to be pulled in the name of "polite criticism."

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — A Missouri high school teacher apologized for asking students to write about who they would kill and how they would do it.

Michael Maxwell said it was a horrible mistake he regrets, according to an Associated Press report.

Maxwell said the request to describe how students would carry out a murder was merely a writing exercise. Maxwell teaches a beginning drafting class and it was not clear why he asked the class to write fiction.

School officials in St. Joseph said the teacher will likely keep his job. [Emphasis mine]

Oh yes, you read that right.

Parents as Customers

People who support the vague democratic principle of public schools, funded by the entire tax base, will often say that education is a right and that our system of government depends on an educated populus. (In a future article, I hope to touch on some interesting moments in the history of education that shows the fallacy of this argument.) They will go on to pronounce how the only way to ensure equal opportunity for education is to have this enormous, shared tax as well.

But supporters of private schools often argue, correctly, that choice should be involved when a parent sends their children to a school. The very idea that parents should be perceived as customers, with the students as the resultant products, seems obscene to many public school supporters.