Rick Jones, known to his web fans as Curmie (short for Curmudgeon), has had a busy year in his day job as a tender of young college-age minds, and his excellent blog was not as active as years past. Just in time for his annual awards for the worst transgressions in the field of education, however, he has returned with a vengeance, exploring at length and with his usual superb ethical instincts several incidents I have not had time to tackle here. Among them…

• …a bullying high school football coach who decided the school band had no right to perform at halftime, and a principal without the guts to put him in his place (as in “the sidelines”)
• …stunning examples of outrageously unethical and unprofessional conduct by school personnel nonetheless deemed insufficient provocation for relieving them of their jobs
• ...a jaw-dropping incident where the  Cleveland State University Chapter of the Association for American University Professors has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against law school dean Craig M. Boise because it claims that his awarding some AAUP members merit increases of $666, constituted a sly suggestion that they were creatures of Satan!!!!

…and more, including his take, nicely complimenting mine, on Robert Reich’s complaints about how rich people and others choose their charities.

Rick, in one of his posts, makes the oft-heard point that the many awful incidents of miserable judgement and outright misconduct, if not criminal conduct, on the part of teachers and administrators should not be projected on the education profession as a whole, since these are relatively rare. I hear him, but I am not convinced. Continue reading →