teachers just as bad as I remember.

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I went to my large local bookstore about 10 am this morning. There were two school buses out in front. At first I thought, oh, this might be nice, maybe some event which might add to the atmosphere. But then,

I hear a teacher yell at some kids, "No kids on this side of the store," in that loud grating voice I'm very familiar with.

I heard, "If you don't have your ____ , then bye bye." And she repeated it, "If you don't have your _____ , then bye bye." As if they're giving a command and you don't immediately obey, maybe because you don't understand or maybe it just takes a couple of seconds to orient yourself, then just go more hardcore. They the authority are putting themselves in a trap when they don't need to.

I heard, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have asked you to stop talking." So, the kids sat on the ground in row not allowed to talk. And the "ladies and gentlemen" had some kind of sarcastic something to it.

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Way, way back in school year 1972-73, I was age 10 and in fourth grade. We are walking back from the library or something else. The teacher stops our line and in this loud grating voice tells us that we are distracting the other classes. It occurred to me that her yelling at us was more distracting to the students in the surrounding classes. It was kind of an important event in my life. I saw that someone in a position of authority could be wrong, too.

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In the 1990s, I taught one year of high school math at a private Catholic high school. I did not do a particularly good job because I was not mean enough and not enough of an authoritarian. A more experienced teacher might call this just being firm and being organized. Plus, I spent an awfully lot of time on writing lesson prep and coming up with juicy, good sample problems --- and this whole part was my strength. If I had to do it over again, I would use off-the-shelf lesson prep and scantron tests, and use the time saving for staying organized as well as keeping up my emotional energy. That is, the less is more approach.

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In what other field do you have one person attempting to supervise twenty-five inexperienced people? I don't think they do this with a seasoned accounting trying to supervise twenty-five new graduates. Only in education do we use this old-fashioned approach. Maybe in a few other fields, but not many. And I don't think it's the best approach by a long shot.