Some time ago I wrote about poor Christian entertainment. I suggested that the movies were a feeble attempt to be Hollywood action movies with "God" tossed in here and there.

I happen to like a few explicitly Christian movies. There are also some which I consider watchable, if not wonderful.

One of the great Christian movies is Robert Duvall's The Apostle. In it, a pentecostal minister has some serious weaknesses. He has quite a temper, can drink too much, and, at times, has been a philanderer. In a moment of temper, he kills a man.

He runs away and starts a new church under a new identity in a little town in Louisiana. There are all sorts of spiritual moments. In the end, he faces up to the crime he committed and is taken to jail. The credits roll over a road gang of prisoners who he is leading in gospel praise. It's a movie of hope. His story is extreme, but many of the others in the story have realistic struggles both in their lives and with their faiths.

Last night, I watched God's Army. It is a Mormon movie. This isn't the place to go into my feelings on the Mormons. What I liked was its universal themes of faith and redemption. It may have lacked great actors and a great script, but it is a decent and watchable movie with real crises we face as religious people. The story centers around a Mormon missionary who is on his own for the first time and not really sure of his own faith, beyond basic lip service.

I don't want to do an exhaustive list. With school taking my time, I'm forced to be more concise (not easy for me!). However, I think that what these movies do that makes them successful is to be Christian movies exploring Christian themes. If I want an action movie, there are plenty out there. Shoe-horning God into it or setting it during the Apocalypse does not make a movie Christian.

I'm hoping to see some more good movies. One is out that covers the end of the slave trade in England. The star played Horatio Hornblower (and I'm afraid I don't recall the title of the move or the actor's name). The Mormon director I mentioned also did a few other movies that I'm curious to see. Good stuff is out there, but it does not compete with big-budget action movies very well.

I've noticed a lot of advice books out there on topics ranging from classroom discipline to weight loss to finance. I've sometimes thought I should throw myself into the market by telling the horrible truth about these things. However, nobody wants the truth. They want a quick solution.

Take classroom discipline as an example. There are all sorts of programs out there. They include Assertive Discipline, CHAMPS, Discipline without Stress, Love and Logic, and a number of other programs. They all promote themselves as the solution to classroom discipline problems. Teachers and schools grab onto them as the magical cure-all. They all have good advice, but aren't necessary.

Here is the "trick" to good classroom discipline: be firm, consistent, and fair. (Maybe I'll call my book the FCF Answer to Discipline.) Teachers (including me at one point) expect to find a trick that enables them to have a well-managed classroom. They search in vain to find one. There is no trick. It's actually hard work and, in the short run, difficult to keep up. The rewards come in the long run.

Let's take money as another example. Dave Ramsey has made a fortune peddling what he calls "God's and grandma's guide to financial peace." He is honest enough to admit that there is no trick to getting (and staying out of) debt. However, he does make a lot of money off of common sense. This seems to show that society views a common sense approach to debt and money as something new!

His method: don't spend money you don't have. Spend less money than what comes in. Do without. He tosses in a few details, but that is essentially his plan. Interestingly, if you don't borrow money and pay cash for a cheap used car, you won't be in debt. In the long run, you'll end up wealthier than you would if you borrowed money. His solution is boring, but it works 100% of the time.

Suppose you want to lose weight? The answer is to eat less and move around more. The pounds won't "melt away". However, if you follow this method, you'll find yourself buying ever smaller and smaller clothes. It will save you lots of money (except in the clothing budget -- but that's a good problem).

Are you consumed by stuff? Too much clutter in your life? Throw things away! Don Aslett made a fortune peddling this idea in a whole series of books.

So many of us are looking for the "secret" or the "trick" to whatever it is we want. The trick is that there isn't one. Most of these goals are accomplished with hard work and a lot of time. Luckily, the change that results from this type of common sense approach is more long-lasting.

Consider the "tricks". Suppose, for example, I gambled and won a bunch of money. If you look at those who came into wealth suddenly, you find that they don't know how to handle it. They end up losing that money and possibly declaring bankruptcy. When you get your fortune more slowly by working for it, you learn how to handle it as it grows.

If I diet with a fad, the pounds may well melt away. However, I haven't changed the underlying behavior that brought me there. I'll gain those pounds right back on.

If I try to manage my classroom with the latest mind-game, I may have a peaceful classroom for a while, but it won't last. I still have the underlying problems that created the poor environment in the first place. I wouldn't exchange my past (or future) struggles for anything. Every year, my classroom gets better. Someday I hope to be a good teacher who also has money, has good weight, and has no clutter around. Then I'll sell my book on common sense.

There is a lot of legitimate concern on Townhall about teachers and schools going liberal and doing things that are more akin to indoctrination than education. No question, it's a legitimate concern. On the other hand, we have plenty of examples of parents protesting ridiculous things to the point of being almost anti-intellectual. We need to find balance.

This entry has been sitting in my "drafts" folder while Townhall was fixing its blog editor.

One thing that we need to dispose of right away is the notion that one side or the other has evil intent. Usually both sides are doing what they perceive as best for students. When we discuss by assuming malicious intent on the other side, we're not discussing. We're in an all or nothing battle based entirely on emotion.

Up in Canada, a group of Mennonites founded a private school in a small Quebec town. Thus, they were able to teach their way. Now, the provincial government has told them that they must close the school and send the students to the public school.

Now the argument comes over evolution and morality and I don't think I need to explain who is on which side.

The second tale is a father who is objecting to the required reading list given to his 15-year-old son by his local public school. His specific objections came from promiscuous usage of the f-word in one particular book and objectionable morals in others.

Perhaps because I am both a teacher and a conservative, my feelings are mixed. As a teacher, I know that some parents are always going to object to what I do. I'll listen to concerns, but my solution has mostly been to grow a thick skin. Once in a while, a parent makes a good point and I alter my practice. However, I cannot write  100+ individual curriculums to satisfy each parent and student.

Fortunately, I live in a conservative region and I'm quite conservative. Overall, it's a good match. If I came in blaring gay rights, things would not go so well. On the other hand, I suspect I would not be a good match in a more liberal area. So, teachers and schools must take their communities into account. Even so, someone always rocks the boat. That's where the thick skin comes in.

The Canadian threat to take children away is scary. On the other hand, I find the idea of an Islamic school that teaches the virtue of jihad and suicide bombing equally scary. The problem is not the religion. The problem is how that religion is used. Somewhere, there is a line.

I certainly sympathize with the father. I make a particular effort to ensure that any materials I use in class are clean. A girl in my Anatomy class was objecting today to the presence of male genitalia in her Anatomy textbook. My response was the human beings do not look like Ken Dolls. I make sure things are clean, but these students are 17 and 18 years old. It's time to admit in our anatomy classes that boys and girls are different, and not just in hair length! If I taught elementary school, I'd never use this text, even if the writing were age appropriate.

I do question some things. I've never read the books the father was questioning, so I can't judge those specific books. I will say that I don't use language such as he described. I write fiction as a hobby and don't use it. I don't use it with my friends. I can accept a writer using such language once or twice to give a flavor. Overuse just deadens the reader's sensibilities and actually detracts from the message.

There is a line, and some books cross it. However, some people are just looking for trouble. I remember a group of parents from one of the more unique churches in my hometown raising a small row over a required book in English. It was Adlous Huxley's Brave New World. While the environment it describes and the morals it describes are horrifying, it is also an excellent depiction of how a totalitarian government could subvert our morals and our freedoms by appealing to our base instincts and desires. Furthermore, it was handled with the right balance of taste and shock. For example: it notes that a particular sexual situation occurred, but does not describe it to titillate the masses.

Oddly, George Orwell's 1984 did not earn protest, even though it was read in the same class. That book contains sex outside of marriage. The "hero" notes that he hates goodness, hates purity, hates all things righteous. Later, he is subjected to a rather sadistic torture that seems to dwell on graphic detail.

Of course, Orwell's book focuses most on the violence while Huxley's focuses on the sex. Possibly this is in line with the general tendency of moral crusaders to condemn sexual depictions in movies while ignoring non-sexual violence.

The moral of this story is that we must:

• Keep in mind community standards
• Find out why the material is being taught
• Respect parents' rights to raise their children
• As parents we should realize that our children are growing up in a sinful world and must be armored against it rather than just sheltered from it
• Realize that motives are not necessarily evil or politically driven (this comes back to my second point)
• Realize that we're not always going to agree
• Recognize that there are lines of what is acceptable and what is not

It is a little known fact that the Germans used submarines during the first world war. Their use in the second world war is well documented in many films and books. Their use in the first world war is largely forgotten. It was a u-boat that led to American entry into that war when it fired upon the Lusitania and killed a number of Americans.

There is some controversy over the Lusitania and what really happened, but that is not the point of my story.

The role of the u-boats was the same in both wars: to disrupt shipping. Mostly they traveled on the surface like regular ships. They would submerge only for attack or to hide. Movies such as Das Boot and U-571 do a good job depicting u-boat life. The former is particularly good at depicting the day-to-day claustrophobia, filth, and discomfort of submarine service. Of course, these are second world war movies.

The u-boat that inspired this entry traveled the coastal waters of Great Britain. After sinking a number of ships, it struck a mine and sank.

Such sites are considered graves. One doesn't go into them as a casual tourist, and one does not disturb them. it's the same respect given to cemeteries. The trouble is that it happens to be lying about 77 feet down in an area that is full of ship traffic. This has caused it to shift about. One concern is that it may break loose of the mud holding it in place and rise up. (I'm not certain how that works or if I'm simply misreading the story.) Since the water is so shallow in this region, any shifting could cause it to interfere with ship traffic overhead.

One solution which has been proposed is to move it. However, this creates some problems. The first is the obvious danger to the divers who would be involved in moving it. The second is that this is a grave and is not to be disturbed. Frankly, the first is the more serious concern.  Cemeteries are occasionally moved, often for less serious reasons.

I am grateful to the Daily Mail for its occasional coverage of this forgotten war. It takes me out of my education focus and reminds us all of a generation that is almost entirely gone but which set the stage for the 20th century.

Today was the first day of school. At lunch, I came into the cafeteria just as the kindergarten class was finishing up. At my school the kindergarten teacher sits with the kids during lunch. It was definitely needed! I won't relate all the little events that transpired during that short time, but I will say I'm glad I chose to teach high school!

The teacher wound up taking her meal back to the kitchen and asking them to hold it until her kids had recess (and she got a break). At that age, the kids are quite helpless. Also, differences in maturity are much more pronounced than what I see in my classroom.

She has students who still can't tie their own shoes, students who don't know to blow their noses, and other such things. Then she has students who enter kindergarten already able to read.

I have been to her classroom. The students need her constantly. They have shockingly short attention spans. They cannot do anything without making a mess, and they have to be told in detail how to clean the mess up. It also requires a lot of help and supervision from her.

Not me. I don't have to eat with my students and show them how to handle the environment. I don't have to tie shoes or wipe noses. I have tied a few neckties, but that's different. (and so far I've resisted the urge to tie them too tight)

My students can do a lab. I supervise, but most of my interference is minor correction or a focus on the handful who truly are lost. I sometimes have to explain what I mean by "clean up," but my students have a much clearer concept of it.

I think we have a good kindergarten teacher. Even if she weren't, her job would be safe from me.

Each of us finds our comfort level. She is comfortable with that mothering role. I lack any kind of mothering ability (maybe because I'm male). A lot of elementary teachers tell me they couldn't handle the teenagers. It definitely takes different personalities with each age group.

It's a bit off topic, but this makes me think of families. Some parents are good with little kids. When their little kid turns into a teenager, they are still parenting a little kid. Others are better with teenagers and their little kids don't get the support they need. Having two parents is good because it helps balance out parenting styles. It also isn't necessarily gender based.

My wife can have the little kids. I'll start noticing them when they're about 10 or so!

In the closing days of the second world war, the USS Indianapolis went on a secret mission to deliver half of the uranium core for the nuclear bomb that ended the war. As she then traveled to rejoin the fleet, a Japanese submarine fired a torpedo which took off about 60 feet of the bow (front) of the ship.

She immediately began scooping water, tilted,and sank beneath the waves, her screws still turning. It is believed that 200 of her 1100 man crew perished immediately. The rest were left in the waters of the South Pacific to face another nightmare. Of the 900 survivors, only about 300 were finally rescued.

The USS Indianapolis was forgotten due to her top secret mission. No one was looking for her or her men. They floated for days. Men tried drinking salt water (soon dying in agony), men hallucinated, and, worst of all, the sharks were attracted to the smell of blood, vomit, and urine in the water.

While floating helplessly, they were attacked by sharks. It's impossible to know how many men were actually eaten by sharks. What we do know is that of the 1100 on the crew, only 300 were finally pulled from the water. Even this was luck as a pilot just happened to look down at the right moment.

The Navy was embarrassed and the family of these men and the media were asking questions. A scapegoat was needed. Rather than admit that no one was looking for this ship or tracking it, the Captain was blamed. He was court-martialed for not maneuvering properly to avoid submarine attack. He spent the end of his life battling mental illness and finally ending his life in suicide.

Read the story, courtesy of the Daily Mail.

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I'm glad to see Townhall finally fixed the hyperlink manager. Now I can start posting all the entries from last week (like this one).

If you've joined the computer era (and if you're reading this blog you have done so), then you've certainly encountered obsolescence (or you will). I'm not going o try to compare computer brands or operating systems. This isn't that sort of discussion.

Computers have a tendency to become obsolete. My parents bought a TI-99/4a back around 1981 or 1982. It was a pretty swell machine. It could actually play 3 sounds at once, had 16 color, 16 kb of memory, and a built-in cartridge slot. We could also load programs from the tape drive (as in cassette). We later bought the expansion box, an enormous, heavy gray thing with lots of flashing lights. This added a 5.25 floppy drive, expanded the memory to 48 kb, and had a few other features I've forgotten. We didn't buy it, but there was also a modem. It had two rubber cups to set the handset of a phone into.

I was pretty excited when I got to college. My college was one of the first to require a laptop of each student. My class had the Compaq Contura. It was amazing! 256 colors, a 2400 baud modem (built in), a trackball, windows 3.1, 4 mb of memory (that I expanded to 8), and a 130 mb hard drive. I was in nerd heaven. Of course, a few years later, I took a class with some sophmores (I was a senior) and we ran some simulations. They got done while mine was still "thinking." They also had CD drives. Grr!

I won't wander through my whole computer history. Suffice to say, I'm conversant with them. I'm typing this on a 3 or 4 year old iMac -- the one where the screen rises on a stalk from the dome-shaped base. Compared to my previous examples, it is Star Trek. However, this summer I started running into some of its limitations. It is showing its age!

The USB ports are all USB 1.0. Compared to USB 2.0 on the Linux machine at school, it's deadly slow. I also discovered the the DVD burner in it is too fast for the hard drive. When I make movies longer than about 35 minutes, the hard drive can't keep up, the process fails, and I have a new coaster instead of a DVD. My Linux machine at school can do it, but the software is hard to work with. The hardware is better.

Now, I'd love to buy a new iMac. In fact, I accepted the junior class advisor job again this year even though it's not my turn. The money will be earmarked for a computer, but I won't be buying one this spring. I'll be using the old computer for a while yet.

Here's the deal: it may be starting to show its age. I may be running into its limitations, but it still does the job more than adequately. Two years from now, this may not be the case and I'll replace it.

Other objects last longer. My TV is older than me. My car will be around for a long time yet. My old laptop is retired, but I still use the printer that came with it. Some of my lab equipment is older than the school building.

This ties into education because we all want the new and the best. My  classroom fails to impress. Nothing has changed since it was built. Although I need some faucets replaced, it's otherwise not a problem. The room has been well cared for and still looks decent and works just fine.

As I've toured some schools, I wonder who they are trying to impress. As a taxpayer, I hate seeing my taxes wasted. Why do schools renovate things that don't need it or replace computers before their useful life is up? Answer: to impress. School boards and superintendents like to show off. It makes them feel useful.

Other schools lack the money or else are trying to keep taxes as low as possible. I've been in them. Some schools have terrible environments. My first job was at a school which still had its first computers in the computer lab. They were 10 or 11 years old at the time and had replaced the electric typewriters which had been in the room.  At that same school, snow would blow into my room in the winter and only some of the faucets worked.

My long, rambling point is that schools have two responsibilities (as far as infrastructure). The first is to the taxpayer. They must maintain what they have and keep it through its useful life. The second is to their students. There comes a time when renovation and replacement are necessary. Schools need to balance these two responsibilities. I do so with my own money and they must do it with our money as well.

(And hopefully Townhall will fix whatever is wrong with the "link" button on their blog program. I have two written and can't post them yet because I can't put in the links.)

Today I made it to Dickinson and it's miniscule bookstore. I finally purchased the newest Harry Potter book. I had no desire to brave crowds when it first came out. Then I traveled a little, but not to anywhere with a bookstore.

The woman behind the counter asked how many copies I was going to buy. She said she had just heard a story about a family with 11 copies of the book in their family. Now, at $35 a pop, that's $385 or so (did it in my head as I can't find my calculator, so please don't criticize the math). Her point was that there's no reason a family can't share a book.

While I do agree with her, it occurred to me that this was probably a family that valued reading. Seen through this window, I'm impressed. I do question 11 copies of the book, but it could be a large family or she got the story wrong.

If you teach a child to read and enjoy reading, you've opened up the world to that child. You've made it easier for that child to succeed in school. More importantly, you made it possible for that child to succeed after school, learn new things, gain new skills, and not depend on someone else for information. Does the video game, iPod, personal TV, personal DVD player, or anything like that do the same for your child?

Children like different things. I loved science fiction (and still do). Oddly enough, I'm now a science teacher. My parents didn't quite "get" my taste in reading, but didn't stop me. My brother enjoyed nature stuff and reading my father's college forestry books. Now my brother is getting his Ph.D. in forestry.

As a teacher, I've heard the complaint that kids don't like to read. I remember one conference in which the parents both told me that I shouldn't expect their son to read since he doesn't like it and I'm not his English teacher. Their son apparently didn't read anything for fun, even magazines. Clearly I wasn't going to back down on something like that. When they went to my superintendent, he was a bit more blunt than I was. His exact words were: "That's ridiculous."

The trick to getting your child to read is to let him pick out books he likes. I think that part of what got me into reading was that my parents read more adult books to my brother and I. I recall my father reading the Hobbit to us in probably kindergarten or first grade. Then he started on the Lord of the Rings. About the point where Gandalf got yanked of the bridge by the balrog, my father went to a meeting. My mother just didn't read it right, so I started reading myself. I also began getting my books from the adult side of the library.

What happened was interest. Reading and English classes in school always bored me. Even now, looking back as an adult, the only required books that I liked were 1984 and the Scarlet Letter. I'd read the first for fun some years before. The second surprised me. Otherwise, nothing. Of course, my high school was not big on reading. I read a lot of classics (though not quite mainstream classics) all on my own.

Let your child pick his books. He will find something he likes. Don't try broadening his horizons by forcing books on him. Your job as a parent is to get him to like reading. The school will do its best to kill that interest. You don't need to help. (Did I actually write that?)

First impressions count. With the first day of school coming up, students and teachers are making first impressions. So are parents and society at large. One of the important impressions we should be making is that education is important.

Today I read about a teacher who had a terrible first day. She'd just entered teaching. 10 minutes into her first class she fainted. It turned out that she was extremely dehydrated and spent 2 days in the hospital. I expect she's more upset than her students.

On a more serious note, this is an opportunity to create an impression that education matters.

Parents

What message are you sending? Are you openly criticizing your local school as a place of political indoctrination? Are you openly dreading a particular teacher? Two of my friends have always been careful to not criticize the school or particular teachers in it. This is for good reason. By doing so, they undermine the school and thereby undermine education. They have very strong opinions, but are careful to keep them away from the kids.

Do you value education? Do you tell your kids that homework comes first? Do you make sure homework gets done? Do you have a special place set aside for homework? Is your child getting enough sleep? Are you monitoring your child, even as he becomes a teenager?

Teachers

Are you making it clear that your classroom is a place of business? When your students first probe for weaknesses, what do you do? Are you keeping students busy? Is it useful busy or is it just busywork?

Are you teaching your subject? Are you prepared or are you winging it? Do you look the part?

When students walk into your classroom do they get the impression that education matters?

Schools

Are you giving a good impression? When I walk into your building do I see physical symptoms that education is something your community cares about? Is your building clean, neat, painted, and well maintained? Do you make the effort to make visitors feel welcome or do you treat them like intruders?

Are you ensuring that education is actually going on? Do your administrators get into classrooms regularly, even just for a few minutes, to find out what goes on in the classrooms? Do you ensure that teachers have the tools they need to teach (not necessarily everything they want)?

Do you keep your BEST people in mind?

Communities

Do you sit in the local cafe and whine about the schools or do you actually get involved and solve problems? Do you ensure that your school has the (reasonable) things that it needs to do the job? Is the school important to your town or do you view it as a parasite or a baby sitting service?

I leave you with this picture. Here is a town that was so proud of its school that it placed it at the head of Main Street. It's an old building, but beautifully maintained. What this town lacked in money (or students) it made up for in pride.

The debate here on Townhall and elsewhere on DailyKos and many other websites besides is closed minded, cruel, and, at times, openly  threatens bodily harm. Wild hyperbole is the norm. Ridiculous exaggeration is quite common.

I don't want to revisit that unpleasant world by quoting it again. Read the discussions on almost any column in Townhall. You'll get an ugly taste.

What brings this up is a column I read today written by a woman who apparently works for Fox News. Since I don't have TV, I really have not watched Fox, CNN, MSNBC, or whatever else is out there. I don't have a basis to judge any network. However, when someone has to face hateful vitriol because of their views, there is a problem. The spewers of hate are closed minded and are apparently threatened by the idea that anyone holds a different viewpoint.

I've said before that my few readers are quite friendly, even helpful in their comments. My experience blogging here has been great. I haven't changed any minds, and I don't think anyone has changed mine, but I know I understand others better, and I think some of my readers understand my view better. This is the essence of being truly open minded.

An open minded person does not need to accept every freaky behavior as normal, does not need to accept every kind of music as equal, and does not need to accept all cultures as equally valid. An open minded person is not threatened to learn about alternative views. It doesn't mean agreeing with them. It simply means being willing to learn.

If you want to do better in your science classes in college, take more math in high school. Taking advanced science courses is helpful for courses in that specific field of science, but math leads to success in all branches of science.

I've noticed that my students, including the "advanced" students want to take their senior year off. They tend to avoid math and Physics. Enrollments in Senior Math classes and Physics are lower than those in other courses. This is caused by a combination of "Senioritis" and bad advice.

These are the facts. On a 100 point scale, every year of high school math a student took added 1.86 points to his grade in college chemistry, 1.84 points for college biology, and 1.28 points for college physics. That means that a full 4 years of high school math add nearly a full letter grade to both chemistry and biology and about half a letter grade to physics. This is nothing to be sneezed at.

Now, I'm certified to teach math, but it's not my favorite. Science is my love, especially Physics. These next facts are hurting me as I type them. Each year of high school physics boosted the college physics grade by 1.32 points. Other sciences had no effect, and physics had no effect on the other sciences. High school biology boosted the college biology grade by 1.35 points but, again, had no effect on the other sciences. High school chemistry added 1.72 points, but again, no effect in other sciences.

What this comes down to is that you should take the sciences you intend to specialize in, but not bother with the rest. However, you should take as much math as you can get. (I should note that I have no information on the liberal arts.) It also points out that every high school science course should include a lot of math.

In the interests of full mathematical disclosure, it should also be noted that the study identified a correlation, not a cause and effect relationship.

The teacher shortage must be dealt with surgically. Though some of what I suggest will benefit all teachers, we don't need to attract more elementary teachers or more suburban teachers. We need science, math, foreign language, and special education teachers. We also need teachers in the inner cities and in certain rural areas.

I have a few suggestions for dealing with the shortage. They're not going to rock anyone's world. People will read them and think, "That's it?" My response, however, is to ask how many of these things are being tried? Not many. When they are tried, the implementation is limited. Scarier, many involved want the shortage to continue, even get worse. If teachers are happy, unions can't use it to maintain membership. If schools can get teachers, they can't squawk for more money. If it's solved, people like me won't find it so easy to get a job on the merits of our license alone. We might actually have to become good at our jobs. Only the students and a nebulous "future" are harmed by this shortage, and neither of them has a voice.

Recruit

One of the best ways to get teachers into less popular areas is by recruitment. I've found that the teachers where I've taught tend to be local or from similar towns. Since these are small, rural towns, they won't appeal to a lot of people. I have a bias against cities, so I'm unlikely to go there. Schools need to recruit alumni to come back and teach. Too much can lead to "inbred viewpoints", but it can also be a way to help out with the shortage.

Schools also need to start young. My school has a "mentoring" program in which a high school student gets paired with an elementary student. It's a voluntary program, but what it does is get the idea of interacting with youth into their heads. I'd also like to see a student tutoring program set up. This would be another way to recruit locally. These programs are practically free.

My school also has a student worker program and I've thought about getting involved. Run correctly, it would be a great chance for a student to get a taste of teaching science. We have other students who help out in the elementary school (far more popular). I can also see where the experience of helping out the junior high science teacher might be a great help.

We also need to improve instruction in science and math. There are valid reasons why students don't go into these areas. The chief one is that they don't understand them. If we improve instruction at the high school level, more students will go into these areas in college. Couple that with the opportunity to get a taste for teaching, and you'll find more students interested in teaching in these subjects.

Financial Incentives

This week I cited a study that suggested that financial incentives are not working the magic that people think. This surprised me at first. What a financial incentive will do, however, is help a school stand out when a candidate is evaluating several schools.

However, we have to be careful. Should I be punished because I want to be in the school, teaching a shortage area while the new teacher gets benefits for coming? Also, as the new teacher, that financial shot in the arm might be nice, but if it's only for one year, then what?

Longer-term benefits might be better. College loan forgiveness would be a huge help for people, and it's a benefit that will last a lifetime. It might also attract a teacher long enough to fall in love with a school or town. I've met more than a few teachers who came to North Dakota because of the Air Force. They resented the posting yet, as they lived here, they fell in love.

Naturally dangling a signing bonus (especially one that requires spending a few years at the school) cannot be thrown off the table. Nor can extra pay to get a specific teacher or to fill a specific job be ignored. The limitations of these bonuses must be remembered. If I can get a 9.5 month contract rather than a 9 month contract, it may not be much at once, but over a career, it will be a great benefit.

Climate

Professionals want to be trusted to do their job, rewarded for doing a good job, and have the ability to do a good job. None of this is specific to any subject, but it can help a school attract and keep good teachers. It is amazing what good discipline can do for the longevity of employees. Schools can give teachers the resources they need to do their job, and schools need to recognize that some subjects cost more to teach than others.

The living climate is also important. One reason I won't teach in a city is my ignorant stereotype of city life. Those who won't teach where I do have some ignorant stereotypes of rural life. Teaching colleges could help by giving students experience in all teaching climates.

Also, schools need to get rid of address requirements. Some schools require teachers to live in the district. It sounds good that they be part of the town in which they teach. However, this also scares away a lot of good teachers. I know a lot of teachers who commute to small towns while living in cities or larger towns. (North Dakota is kind of the reverse of the rest of the country). They like their small towns, but don't want to live there. Usually, the address requirements are in large city schools like Chicago.

Common Sense

I've read many articles about the teacher shortage and its solutions. Some readers may be disappointed that little that I've suggested here is innovative or magical. Fair enough. However, I would also point out that few schools actually do these things.

One of the reasons is that the unions fight anything that doesn't benefit the collective. The union doesn't want a speech therapist paid extra, even if the school has been desperate to fill the position for several years. (Hint: Kenmare, North Dakota) Another is that schools lack the leadership. As long as they're getting by, it's good enough.

One of the scariest solutions is to cut back on teachers. In a lab setting, I need a small class or else an assistant (for safety reasons), but when I lecture, there is no harm in having a larger class. I prefer the smaller class, but early in my career, I taught trigonometry and Algebra 3 to classes of about 45. Not an ideal solution, but workable in the hands of a good teacher.

In North Dakota, we could also shut down schools. There are a lot of small schools in the state located close to other schools that could easily be consolidated. If two schools each average 13 in a class, they could easily be combined.

The solutions to the teacher shortage should be targeted. It should also be remembered that they're not exciting or innovative. They've been talked about for years, but rarely implemented.

The two largest universities in North Dakota have decided to make the costs of credit more real to students. They will insist that students who pay their tuition with credit cards pay the processing fees. As KFYR reports, this has a few people upset.

It is a little known fact that the merchant has to pay a processing fee every time you use a credit card. Frankly, I think that ALL merchants should pass it on to their customers. I stopped at a gas station in Underwood that did so. The cost amounted to a few additional cents on each gallon. Now, whenever I'm in the area, I always make a point to buy gas there (and pay cash). Think of it this way, if the user of the credit card doesn't pay the processing fee, that means that the rest of the customers are paying it.

At the college level, this is, apparently, about $165 for those paying tuition. (I am relying on KFYR's numbers.)  At least one member of the State Board of Higher Education thinks this is unfair. Apparently she thinks it is fair to make the other students pay these fees or, more likely, she doesn't understand how credit cards work.

What these students do not realize is that they will pay a lot more for this tuition through interest fees and, possibly, late fees. I don't feel like setting it up on a spreadsheet, but just imagine the magic of compound interest acting on tuition. This is how people stay poor and in debt.

The money is out there to pay for college. If you are a parent reading this, I suggest doing what my parents did: cut back on spending and save the money. Now there are even good savings vehicles for education. If you are a student whose parents didn't save, I suggest not using your credit card. You may want to consider working and taking night classes while saving as much as you can. When we look at the college drop out rate, does anyone want to risk going into debt for something they may not even get?

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I'll finish my teacher incentive topic tomorrow. I heard (and read) this and it touched a sensitive spot.

It's no fun when you have a perfectly good opinion and the facts just won't support it. You might decide that the facts are faulty. They come from an ideological bias. You might decide that they are false. You might just ignore the facts, confident in your belief. Or you can dismiss them with a comment like, "Statistics are lies, you can say anything you want with statistics."

I bring this up because I'm about to attack some popular views on the right and left wings. Yesterday, my bias was pretty plain. Today, I'm forced to gingerly walk a middle road, leaping from side to side as needed. The ideologically committed don't like doing this.

Teacher Satisfaction

Recently, 9000 college graduates from the 1992-1993 school year were surveyed. Of them 20% had entered the teaching profession. Despite the myth of high teacher turnover, the study found that only 18% of those teachers had changed  occupations within 4 years of graduation. Other professions varied between 17% to 75%. In other words, teaching ranks pretty well. I've heard and read plenty about the high attrition rate. Apparently it's not quite the problem one would suspect.

So what about another popular union myth? Of those in this group who left teaching by 2003, only 13% said it was due to salary. Of those who remained, 48% were satisfied with their salaries.

Education Week asked the two major unions to comment. They declined to do so until after the story was posted.

Of those still teaching 10 years after getting their degrees, 90% said they would choose teaching again and 67% planned to remain in teaching the rest of their working lives. The rest of the article notes some interesting racial and gender differences that don't relate to my main point.

Another interesting part of this article was that nearly 50% of all graduates had never considered teaching. The reasons they cited were lack of interest, having another job, and inadequate pay. Also interesting was that math, science, and engineering students were most likely to leave teaching.

Union power comes from unhappy teachers. This may be a problem! It would be interesting to do this study over a long period of time, including that before unions had a serious influence over education. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible. Did unions create the current climate, or did it evolve for other reasons?

Attracting Teachers

With what has been said, we see that money isn't quite the big deal the union would have us believe it is. A popular conservative (and school board) solution to the specific shortages I mentioned yesterday is incentive pay. If you teach a shortage area or are willing to teach in a struggling school, you get paid more.

I once took a job in which I was offered $3000+ in benefits for signing the contract. After I signed it, they changed their mind on the incentive pay and pulled back to about $1000. Since this also required me signing a new contract, I was certainly free to refuse the job. I applied for the job for reasons unrelated to money, and I took the job despite these unpleasant shenanigans. I also mostly enjoyed working there.

Education Week recently did some research on incentive pay. One problem they discovered is that the incentives can lock people into teaching who don't want to be there. In fact, there is little evidence out there that incentives attract teachers. The most effective incentives are loan forgiveness.

Part of the reason incentives haven't done better is because teacher candidates are more concerned with working conditions or the general salary. My own incentive (the one I got and the one I was promised) lasted only a year. After that, nothing. A signing bonus means little if it's a one-shot deal.

Editorial

Schools need to target their needs. A general increase in salary will not help as much as targeting shortage areas. They must also remember that money is not the only incentive. People who choose to enter teaching are rarely motivated just by economics. Other things must be done to attract good teachers. We need to look at what actually does work, not just what our particular ideology says should work. Finally, any incentives must be made to look longer-term. It's no use to have a revolving door for teachers. Schools must find a way to attract and keep the good teachers.

Tomorrow I want to look at that.

The short answer to this problem is that there is no teacher shortage. Every year, many teachers can't find jobs because they're already filled. The long answer is a bit less rosy, but not the nightmare that the union and schools would have us believe.

One of the trickiest aspects of the shortage is that it is not broad. It is specific to certain subjects and to certain regions. In general, there is a huge excess of Elementary teachers. Secondary fields do not have such an excess, but several fields do have an excess: social studies teachers (though not in some areas of it), English teachers, and PE teachers. The greatest shortages are in foreign language, science (especially Physics), mathematics, and special education.

The regions which suffer the greatest shortages are the inner cities and rural areas. This is particularly true of the high poverty regions. I've noticed the reservations in my own state go begging even for elementary teachers.

Some areas are just simply growing too fast to keep a supply of teachers. Las Vegas suffers from this. It is growing so quickly that it cannot adequately plan for its future needs. This is a tough situation for a school district to be in.

Somehow, by fall, most schools fill their classrooms. Those that do not are usually in those areas of chronic shortage I mentioned before. Here in North Dakota, it is usually only the reservation schools that can't fill their classrooms. The rest manage to find certified teachers (sometimes of dubious quality).

The solutions that have been offered such as better pay and working conditions will apply across the board. This broad brush approach doesn't solve the problem. Any solution to the teacher shortage must be specific and targeted because the problem is very specific.

Unfortunately, this goes against everything that the collectivists (unions) believe. Broad solutions that would help these specific areas would be far too expensive. Targeted, specific solutions would be far less so. There is no general teacher shortage. Let's focus on the problem areas.

In the next few days, I'd like to look at some solutions.