Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 19, 2022

Next time, ask to go the bathroom when the teacher is about to check the homework.

Next time, just ignore him, Miss Wormwood.

Well that’s one way to beg for a better grade.

good job, Calvin, opening your mouth for saying that statement

Well he’s right anyhow.

Nice try, Einstein!!!

He should at least get a little credit for that statement.

They are! Teacher’s strike season….

Calvin, timing is everything when you’re sucking up.

Ms. Wormwood has been Calvin’s teacher for—how many years?? She has has enough experience to take his statements with a LARGE grain of salt!!

BTW, doesn’t Hobbes do Calvin’s homework??

Trying to butter up an old hand like Ms. Wormwood? Wasted effort.

It’s scandalous how perceptive teachers are, too.

Sounds like me when I am trying to slip something past the talented and beautiful censors at Go Comics.

I think while it might stunned her for a short while, Miss Wormwood, saw through Calvin’s ruse ! !! !

I feel like Calvin’s raising a very good point, even if he was just saying it to act up in class…

It was worth a shot…

Miss Wormwood reads Calvin like a book.

This six year old is way ahead of his comrades. Mrs Wormwood failed to understand the statement once again.

Nice try, Calvin!

I totally agree with that last statement.

Still, a noble effort of buttering up the teacher. I’ll remember it next time I forget a conference call.

When I taught high school, I had less kids that did their homework than did it.

Too obvious to sneak by, Calvin.

Calvin says they are not paid enough to grade homework.

Got to admit, for a moment he’s got her thinking!

What gets me is that some people think that a teacher’s day is done at 2 or 3 PM when the bell rings… and that teachers get paid a FULL year’s salary and get to goof off for 3 months! I’ve seen this first hand. My wife (whose parents were both in the educational field) had to quit being an elementary school guidance counselor because of budget cuts. It’s hard for me to stay apolitical in this comic strip when I look at a certain former Secretary of Education! (Please forgive me for getting onto my soapbox)

Unfortunately the teachers’ union has corrupted education to the point I don’t think we’ll ever get it back. Teachers are not rewarded for good performance. Unions demand every “worker” be treated alike. States pay teachers based on their seniority.

I am a retired teacher. I have never worked a 6 hour day! The formal day was at least 8 hours, then planning, checking work, meetings, after school activities, and so on. Summers usually included weeks of classes to keep our certificates up to date and to rise on the pay scale. Insurance was paid half and we paid half, not free. In addition to the classroom days, there were days for training and such. School supplies had a very small budget, the rest came out of our pockets. I taught in city schools, small towns, and rural schools, everything from Head Start and Kindergarten to Juvenile Detention. Try it!

About 40% of those people who major in education, get a teaching job and start teaching find another job before their tenure year. Very few who survive that five years are poor teachers. I have taught and I have worked in an office. The major difference is that when you are working in an office you do not have to be paying 100% attention 100% of the time. This isn’t a demand from the front office. It is necessary to maintain the classroom discipline and get the job done. A poor teacher pays for it in student disrespect, and they pay for it heavily.As for summers off, there are mandatory inservice classes and meetings that take up a lot of time. That time will be needed to work on your graduate work, since most districts have the bachelor’s track set up so that raises after about 5 years don’t keep up with inflation. The masters is pretty much necessary for a living wage. Another option is to work a summer job. A friend of mine started mowing lawns and within three years was making too much to make it sensible to come back to teaching.And, when you leave work, you leave work. Each class requires about 20 minutes of prep time if you are revising lessons you have done before. If it’s a new lesson, an hour or two is more likely.After getting a total of 6 1/2 years of college and working for 32 years, I was making about 75% of what my nephew was two years into a sales job.All of the ideas for improving education add about 20% to the classroom hours, and no additional money seems to be available to get extra people to help with the job. Paying the people who are doing it more might make them happy, but it’s not going to increase the quality, because it would be an overwhelming amount of work. Eventually, they are going to get to the point where no one with the intelligence to do the job is going to be dumb enough to take it.

https://www.ThisDayTrivia.com/trivia/september-19?f=Henry-Peter-Brougham#Henry-Peter-BroughamHenry Peter Brougham

Born September 19, 1778 d. 1868

Scottish orator. Quote: “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”

when “No Child Left Behind” was first introduced, it occurred to me that to make this work, either the bar should be lowered for children so that no one fails or raised so high for teachers that the bad ones need to find another profession.

I had one teacher in elementary who could have very well been the model for Calvin’s teacher… looked like that and was just as savvy.

Calvin is almost as manipulative as Ella in the Mt. Pleasant strip. LOL….

Miss Wormwood is a little hard to bamboozle, isn’t she? Teachers who have seen it all have an unfair advantage.

Haha. She sure saw through all that didn’t she?

Some people are impervious to sycophants.

I love how Calvin pounds his fist into his palm to emphasize his point.

In some schools, teachers are essentially out on the streets!

Saying the right thing for the wrong reason.

Here is one list for the US https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-10-worst-us-states-for-education.html