Comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” is known to zing and call out both left and right on his late-night show. The self-described “common sense liberal” was in rare form last week when he attacked teacher unions for their role in destroying the quality of public education:
Standardized testing was dropped until schools saw how dumb that was. And yet, the head of the teachers union in Chicago still maintains that testing is “junk science rooted in white supremacy.”
And her union tweeted during COVID, when many Americans felt we could have gotten back to normal sooner, that “the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny.” No, it was rooted in reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The teaching of which is apparently job none in Chicago because only about one in four students in the city are proficient in either math or English, and absenteeism is off the charts. … Our schools need to do better. Our kids need to be in school, and when they’re there, they need to have the phones off and the brains on, learning the basic things we used to teach.
Bill Maher must be a regular reader of the HOTLINE. He sure sounds like one.