The New York City public school system, on the other hand, mostly has to
get butts in seats, because that's how they get their money. It's not that
the teachers don't want to teach kids; it's that they don't have to. And
as anyone who's ever tried to write a novel in their spare time knows, anything
onerous that you don't have to do generally runs afoul of other priorities.
You loathsome creature. Just because you are self-indulgently lazy and wouldn't know a conscientious person if she whacked you in the head with a 2x4 doesn't mean the rest of us are like you. Confine your disparaging comments to undereducated econobloggers who would rather stroke themselves than do their goddam jobs.
And thank God you never finished that novel. It also would have taken the place of more deserving writing.
8 comments:
Megan seems to be under the impression that all public schools are some kind of ghetto dumping ground. There are plenty of decent public schools with a student body that isn't comprised entirely of the poor. She is so completely out of touch and clueless. No conditions exist outside of her own experiences and the caricature that she imagines the world outside of her protective bubble to be like.
I love this: "It is true, to be sure, that vouchers will not ensure that everyone gets to attend the kind of ridiculous private school that I attended, tuition $38,000 and counting." If she attended the school, one can conclude that she has graduated and is done with it. How is her tuition $38,000 and counting?
will not ensure that everyone gets to attend the kind of ridiculous private school that I attended, tuition $38,000 and counting.
I thought people of her supposed social circle weren't supposed to mention specific amounts when discussing the endlessly fascinating subject of filthy lucre, because it might come across as EXTREMELY declassé bragging.
Which it does.
She doesn't mind it one little bit when you call her "out of touch" with mere middle-class beings like ourselves. In fact, she accounts our disgust as evidence that she has succeeded in elevating the public perception of her socioeconomic level. Or, to put it simply, she says things like this to show off.
Because that is the actual, fundamental purpose of ALL her blogging: to preen, and to flaunt her Upper Crust status in front of a national audience.
Odious, yes. But amusing in a way. She evidently isn't aware that behaving in this fashion is actually illustrating her ridiculous LACK of class, in all senses of the word.
It shows that, far from being a genuine member of the American aristocracy, she's what we would have called (in another day) "ill-bred."
Take care today and the next few days.
Ah, Julia, that's an interesting point I keep forgetting to bring up. I could not be more bourgoise, but my parents were poor at first, and my grandparents even poorer. Everything I know about elite behavior and being a lady or gentleman comes from books and movies. But even I know that a lady does not discuss how much one pays for something, even for education.
McArdle must feel very insecure in her position as a east coast elite, since she constantly reminds us that elites look down on the little people and her education was very expensive. She has an exaggerated sense of importance and superiority, yet knows deep down that it is exaggerated. She sucks up to people she perceives as elite and condescends to those she thinks are not.
What a mess. She's wasted that incredibly expensive education because she's not quite bright enough to live up to it, and now has to justify her work constantly to herself. Yet she's also not motivated or industrious enough to persevere through hard work and dedication. She Becky Sharps her way into minor academic celebrity instead. And to stay there she constantly has to manipulate and flatter others, while disparaging poorer people to feel good about herself.
My god, it's a merry-go-round of emotional disfunction, all on display daily in the online pages of the famed Atlantic Monthly.
Thanks, vmh.
CP, that ticks me off too. She sneers at anything "below" her level of experience when she has no idea of anything outside her experience. She constantly insults teachers using criteria that often doesn't exist. In the south teacher's unions are usually very weak. They have little effect on anything. So many other of her assumptions are wrong that it would take forever to go through them all.
And we are supposed to sit here silently and listen to this joker disparage our jobs, our goals, our ideals?
We're not exactly being silent, Susan, even if we are, largely, being unheard.
Julia - this is something I've noticed about Megan since she was blogging at janegalt.com or wherever. She's just barely smart enough to know that modesty is a virtue, but too wholly immodest to actually contain it. She disguises her boasts in ways that should be pretty transparent, but clearly there are people who fall for it. Like when she started spelling in British -- it was a way to get other people to brag for her that she wrote for the Economist. "Gee, Megan, you must have a hard time switching back between spellings, writing for a British magazine!" Or when she complains about how difficult it is to find clothes that fit because she's so tall and thin and beautiful, or never misses an opportunity to mention her degrees and stellar education. If I were her, I wouldn't brag. She doesn't have much to show for all that time and money that was spent.
Vouchers are coupons for money off private schools. You stil have to be able to afford the school in the first place to use the voucher.
In GA,I can get maybe 3 grand off a 15K a year tuition for my son. I still gotta come up with the 12K. It's a bunch of shit and she knows it.
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