G'Aftern Vern,

 VH> I gather, though that your students are there voluntarily.  That they
 VH> do not have a culture that disdains education, and are not the fourth
 VH> generation on welfare.

True enough ... but kow-towing to their ethnicities would be as 
wrong as I did so in any other situation - I've taught from year 1 
to to postgrad and over to the elderly,  and the best processes 
are much the same;  people are people.

 MM>We're trying - involuntarily.  Our best teachers win promotion to
 MM>higher positions in lower decile schools at the rate of 15-20% of
 MM>staff per year.  The Board wrings its hand in anguish,  but if
 MM>effect we help train up good teachers to move on into schools who
 MM>need them more....

 VH> That's a good idea -- if implementable.

As I said - involuntarily;  New Zealand has an `Educational 
Gazette', the official publication in which all regulation changes 
and innovations must be placed.  All vacancies appear in it, and 
all teachers get a copy.  The only way promotion can come is by 
applying for higher-grade jobs - and that's how we lose our top 
teachers...   overall, quite a nice system. 

 VH> Our problem here is that the
 VH> worst schools are in the worst areas.  Well-paid teachers don't want to
 VH> live in those areas.

Exactly so here ... but if you really want to be a senior 
teacher,  then a few years service in a `worst' area is he way to 
secure it.

 VH> In some areas, such as Chicago, the single profession most likely to
 VH> send their children to private schools are public school teachers --
 VH> because they know how bad the public schools are.

Mmmm ... our problems here are more likely to over teacher-parents 
shepherding their offspring up the system....

 VH> You will note that both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, with great
 VH> fanfare put their children in Washington, DC public schools when they
 VH> became President -- and quickly withdrew them and sent them to private
 VH> schools.

Heh-heh...  `Do as I started off, not as I ended up....'

 MM>The redundancy courses offered by the colleges would then benefit,
 MM>and after that hopefully the dismal `scientists' and wafflers will
 MM>have acquired real skills as waiters or dish-washers...

 VH> You assume such people can actually be made to work.  New Zealand ain't
 VH> Singapore, you know. :-)

Sigh ... I suppose so  ...  especially as those who believe in 
Rational Man are most unlikely to be taught to think...

It'll be the wall and the machineguns in the end, then.

Miles.

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