[lbo-talk] More "school reform" nonsense

[Miles Jackson]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> There a number of possibilities. Excuse him from teaching while still
> paying his full salary. Ask him to give semester grades without
> assigning a final paper. Do a quick and slopp job of grading his papers
> for him, dividing the work up among a dozen or so colleagues. Factory
> workers of the past would try to carry an ill or otherwise 
> incapacitated fellow worker. Refusal to grade papers and letting someone
> else grade them is not incompetence but some psychological glitch. He's
> an injured fellow worker.

I'm a little surprised by the appeal to motives here; let's pull back 
from the psychological diagnosis.  What you're suggesting is a gross 
waste of public resources.  If people do not carry out basic job duties 
in a public organization, other people will have to do the work, 
obstructing them from carrying out their own duties.  If the work is not 
done, then the organization is not fulfilling its public mission.

When I think about an auto factory or the University of Phoenix, I 
completely get your argument.  Work slow-downs cut into profit margins, 
boohoo.  I just don't see why you're using the same argument about work 
in a publicly funded organization that is contributes to the public 
good.  If I do not competently do my job at my community college, I am 
wasting public resources that could be used to help educate more nurses, 
welders, and computer programmers.  --It's a simple socialist premise: 
in public colleges and universities, we're pooling public resources to 
contribute to the common good.  I think we should do everything we can 
to support that socialist experiment.

Miles