JOHN ROSEMOND | Parenting Today's teachers: Are they just lazy or truly dedicated?

On the members' side of my Web site at www.rosemond.com, debate simmers over whether today's public-school teachers, as a group, are lazy or dedicated and self-sacrificing. Everyone agrees that not all teachers fit either description. The question regards the norm and whether the norm is slowly slipping toward lazy or rising toward dedicated.
The debate began when a parent complained that her child's sixth-grade teachers assign homework but don't grade it. They check to make sure it's done but don't even collect it. When the parent in question challenged her son over a homework assignment that was sloppy and inaccurate and told him to redo it, he told her his teachers didn't care whether homework was done correctly or not, only that it was done. She subsequently discovered that this is, in effect, true.
I told her that her son was learning some very dangerous lessons in said school; that she should remove him and either find or create -- by home-schooling -- a quality educational environment for him. I bemoaned that I am hearing more and more such tales of taxpayer waste as I travel the U.S.A. "A once-great institution has been corrupted by the agendas of teachers unions and radical 'reformists,'" I said, being slightly redundant.
That kicked off the controversy. The next day, the site was full of people responding to the sixth-grader's mom and, of course, me. A good number of parents offered that their children's teachers didn't grade homework either. In all fairness, this practice seems to be more prevalent in middle, junior and high school.
Other concerns
Parents also complained that their children's teachers send home work that requires parent involvement. One parent wrote, "My daughter's teachers want me to do what I'm paying them to do." Balancing this was the observation by another parent that teachers are spending more and more classroom time doing what parents are obviously not doing: disciplining children. Apparently, a "trade" of sorts is taking place: Parents send undisciplined children to school, expecting teachers to discipline, and teachers send undereducated children home, expecting parents to teach. It would appear that certain trade embargoes are in order.
Then the debate branched off into the issue of small classrooms. For 30-plus years, the American public has been told that smaller classrooms are the key to better learning. This flies in the face of historical and cross-cultural data, however. For one example, during the height of the baby boom, classrooms were, by today's standards, "horribly overcrowded," yet children in every demographic and socioeconomic category performed at higher levels than do today's kids.
As classroom size has shrunk, academic achievement has declined. If any conclusion is to be drawn, it is that bigger classes lead to better learning. I'm convinced that classroom size is a red herring; that the real issue is the behavior of the children.
School policies
Thirty years of meddling by teachers unions and the incorporation of various "progressive" philosophies have resulted in a public education system that rewards mediocrity in both pupil and teacher. Whereas a private-school teacher can be terminated with cause, it is nigh unto impossible to find sufficient cause to terminate a public-school teacher, especially once the teacher has gained "tenure" (permission to rip off the taxpayer).
I'm interested in what my readers think about these issues. If you feel so moved, send your thoughts to me at Teachers, 1391-A E. Garrison Blvd., Gastonia, N.C. 28054. I'll share my findings with the class.
XJohn Rosemond is a family psychologist.