Jon Stewart is a smart man. He is funny and generally witty. So it makes me especially angry when he completely misses the point on the recent national controversy over public employee unions in Wisconsin. His most recent guest states that the focus should be on poverty and not about finding bad teachers. Jon Stewart concurred, saying that there are bad fast food restaurants and bad everything yet those other industries are all doing fine.
Sadly that is a perfect illustration of why we need competition. The fast food restaurant industry does fine because consumers are not forced to go to the bad ones thus forcing the bad ones to go out of business. There's no such competition in the education system. Bad schools and bad teachers don't "go out of business". Occasionally a really really bad teacher gets let go, but it's almost always for immoral conduct rather than nonperformance of his/her students.
Jon Stewart is totally oblivious to this distinction between the education system and other industries. Furthermore it seems when something is said in a sarcastic tone, the audience is also expected to suspend their logic and rational judgment. I hope that somewhere in the cacophony of condescending laughter and cheers coming from his usual audience, at least a few people realized the stupidity of his argument.
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