Super Math Teacher Jaime Escalante
I am not surprised that Escalante has decided to quit public school teaching.
Escalante’s success in teaching an academic discipline is an aberration in a school system that lobotomizes its students. In fact, those who begrudge his success would have offered him unconditional love, moral support and admiration had he been a championship football coach, the sponsor of a massive fund-raiser or one of the countless mindless, frivolous non-academic extracurricular frills that abound on the campus of every school, college and university throughout the nation.
Teachers who ask for academic reforms must be punished! Five years ago a former principal took away the French classes she knew I loved to teach, and last summer I was blacklisted when I applied for a French teaching position in another school.
Our public schools will never improve until anti-academic administrators are replaced with those who will reward dedicated, brilliant, hard-working and gifted teachers like Escalante, instead of kicking them out of the school system!
GILBERT A. RUBIO
La Puente
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