I’ll never forget the time in an HISD middle school, back when I was in middle school myself, in which a group of students awaiting the start of the school day, leaning against a freestanding exterior wall, toppled the wall over onto some other students, killing one of them. Every effort was made to blame teachers for not policing students adequately before school, but in fact the students were doing nothing even remotely reprehensible… who expects a wall to fall over just from leaning against it? The real fault lay with the school board’s tightness with both construction and maintenance budgets: the wall was not built to spec, and the deficiency was never dealt with. But teachers are oh-so-convenient targets of blame…
The politicians who perpetrate such frauds have not a shred of honesty or decency about them. In a just world, teachers and other public employees could bear their contempt as a badge of honor.
]]>