2 cents worth about education

I was blog hopping and read Bad Tux, Quaker Agitator and Left in Dakota posts on the subject of schools.

School is a kid's work. If my job consisted of being in meetings all day with a boring speaker or a series of boring speakers I too would be disruptive or napping. In my own experience, the ratio of good teachers to mediocre or bad teachers is about the same ratio as I encounted in worklife managers and bosses. Most suck and an hour of class feels like two. It takes an exceptional person to be a good teacher and no amount of tenure or money can make a poor one improve, in fact I believe experience usually leads to less enthusiasm every year. It was my experience that the teachers with discipline problems were also the teachers with poor speaker skills. Steve Jobs says the problem is unions and the inability to get rid of poor ones and maybe that has a kernel of truth to it. I think the real problem is how school is structured so that kids can be good factory employees (when such things existed) and good soldiers and their true inquisitive nature is stymied. They are taught to follow orders rather than to self-motivate. The last thing society wants is more free thinkers. I think I read somewhere that the German education system made the students do the work of teaching themselves. They were given projects and the teacher talks very little - and this was before computers. How easy would it be now to educate yourself? Granted it would be worse than being in a class with a teacher that excites and inspires, but it would be better than the average fare.
DISCLAIMER: I taught for a year and a half and I was not a good one, but I knew it and got out. I was horrible at student teaching and I should have never been given a teacher's certificate even though I got good grades.