JIM “PAPPY” MOORE: School Reform All Can Love

I do not recall a time when so many teachers were unhappy with teaching. Or so many parents were unhappy with schools. Or students behaved so badly in schools. Allow me to suggest a few major changes.

Rule One: children do not have access to their cellphones for the entire school day. None. Cellphones are the main problem for teachers and administrators. Take them away in the first minute and only give them back in the last minute. It will be up to their parents to regulate them and their phone usage before and after school.

Rule Two: no homework for any student, ever. None. Never let any assignment require anything of students or their parents during non-school hours. Enough with the useless homework. Enough with every teacher acting as it they can require students to even look at any assignments during non school hours. Get used to it. Homework is a boring waste of time and always has been. A child’s duties outside of school are to be decided by parents. If parents let them use their phones for ten hours, so be it. If they decide to impose other activities, it’s their job as parents. Stay out of the home hours of parents and students.

Rule Three: Require all State legislators to take the same test they require high school seniors to take, every year they hold office. If they fail, they have to take remedial classes until they can pass the same tests they want our kids to pass.  Suspend their pay until they do.

Rule Four:  Teach students less, but teach them better. Teach them basics. Stop trying to cover every conceivable topic. Stop pretending we might make them all scholars. Set the bar low. Make sure they get basic skills like understanding how to count money. Like learning how to write a complete sentence. Like learning the concept of a paragraph. Like learning really simple math.

Rule Five: Parents get punished for misconduct by their children. They have to pay fines. They have to go to remedial parenting classes for bad conduct by their kids or themselves.

I think these changes would really help America’s public schools. Teachers cannot teach if children can use cellphones, or if children can be disobedient or disrespectful.

Get on board with my Five Part Program to revolutionize today’s public schools. Make the brats pay for bad conduct. Make their parents pay for bad conduct. Stop the tyranny of the cellphones. And stop the most useless practice ever invented: Homework assignments. Get it done in school hours, or don’t get it done at all.